Ehhhh... maybe 50 years ago. Most states have criminalized or otherwise punish faithless electing.

Liberian government isn't looking too strong or credible. Declaring a community-wide quarantine could bring an armed response if citizens are so distrustful, they wonder if it's intentional genocide.

I should've been more clear -- I meant opening an exchange account for their KYC/AML crap. They have other documents you can use, but I remember those are what I had on hand.

I don't think that's the general feeling of people, but I could be wrong. It's definitely "innovative" in pushing the boundary of invasion of privacy, but assuming the scanning works quickly and without error, it should be a quick process which I don't imagine will bother many if it's sold as a way of enhancing their security rather than weakening their privacy, which is how the government tries to sell it. The bigger reason, though, is that it can be difficult to find local buyers in some areas, might end up taking something like an hour to put together and meet someone for maybe $10 in BTC, and some people might just not be comfortable buying bitcoin from someone in the exact same way they'd buy drugs (well, with the exception that they can establish trustworthiness through something like OTC, a forum, or LocalBitcoins). -And with an exchange, the process of opening an account is slow and invasive, requiring scanning in documents and sometimes even a visit to the notary (or Google Images.... *whistles*).

ETA: Actually, Idunno if anyone does BitInstant's model anymore, but going to 7/11 or whatever and filling out a WU-like form might be the better option. I don't remember what all was involved with that, but IIRC, it wasn't very invasive.

Because fed gov also says bitcoin is currency, and then there're obviously state governments, most which haven't decided how they want to treat it. They can obviously be in conflict with each other, too, just as guidance from federal agencies has been. A state can legalize marijuana dispensers, but the federal government can still prosecute operators. -Or more likely in our case, a state can still prosecute operators of something the federal government explicitly decriminalized.

You can guesstimate the location with what's called GeoIP, which generally goes by your ISP's location data. GeoIP data is effectively public since it's so easy to determine, but is frequently wrong, especially if you have a dynamic IP address. For example, though my PC location is static, I'm usually reported as being 50-200 miles from where I was reported to be the day before. Further, without a warrant, your ISP will generally not give the exact location of the user (rather, the address the IP address user is registered to), and GeoIP is extremely vague -- it says something like "Detroit," not "125 W. Monroe St."

Theymos is pretty good about protecting IP information here. He doesn't permit mods to view it, almost never releases it even if the user's a known scammer, and after there was an issue where people were using images to collect IP data, the forum started serving all external images itself (therefor preventing the user from connecting with the original image host).

What??? No, guys... what the Hell. You add your seasonings to the coffee filter, not the liquid drink! Cinnamon is a great proof-of-concept. Add a generous pinch to a small handful of ground or crushed cinnamon in with your coffee grounds. Fresh-ground ginger is another great.

If you're going to add something to the liquid, make it Irish whiskey.

I complained about the horrible idea of these scary palm scanners at announcement, but there's not much alternative in the US if you operate something with more than play money, and in many cases, it is still a superior method of exchanging than through traditional routes. For example, you don't have to scan and transmit your birth certificate, house deed, and ID over the Internet, then answer a bunch of invasive questions.

This is a sector I believe will become heavily black market in the US unless the state steps in quickly to issue clear and lenient guidance. Machines are exceptionally cheap (<$1k) and few location owners know jack-shit about what you're doing outside that you're paying them, say, $300/mo to keep a small machine in their store and drive foot traffic. I think sites like Silk Road may also end up having a strong influence on what happens with orders on the back-end. Already, except for "major" traders and margin lenders/lendees, I don't think there's really any legitimate competition to person-to-person BTC<->USD trade in the US. For small "lawful" buyers, I think ATMs are the way to go, while for medium-large buyers, I think they'll still want to stick with exchanges. Either way, if ATMs do become a black market sector in the US, the governments have nobody to blame but themselves. Bitcoin's been around for a long time, now, and on governments' radar -- there's no excuse to take this long.

There are a few ATMs which allow you to sell BTC in the US, but these are likely not "legalized," where they operate in undefined gray territory and have not received proper clarification from state bureaucracies nor even made an effort to contact them, probably because they have no legal resources (or are just betting they can skirt by without heavy-handed punishment). I own a small stake in a company looking to put a one-way "kiosk" (you can only buy BTC, where it's really more like a vending machine) in IL, but the state is still reviewing our arguments and their definitions. They drag their feet. However, a few ATMs sprung up in IL in the meantime, obviously without proper clearance and who operate at significant legal risk.

Vacations are very helpful. One of the benefits of having an extremely strict Baptist (really, more Anabaptist) family is the unspoken threat of silent judgment, which maybe sounds paradoxical to any addiction professionals. Nobody would dare smoke in front of my preacher grandparents, for example, even if they're visiting one of our houses. An extended vacation with them, then, can be very beneficial long-term. We're planning on visiting them in Florida for a couple weeks in October and, as a result of knowing I can't show any vices outside caffeine addiction in front of them, I've already given up drinking outright (though I don't drink much these days, anyway) and've moved to a cigar a day from 15-20 cigarettes in an effort to quit smoking while wife has severely cut back and now goes outside to smoke.

I'm not so sure about that. There's not really a marijuana mafia, AFAIK. The government doesn't crack down on marijuana too hard, and there's more than a handful of young people willing to get into the business independently. It's quite different for drugs like cocaine, where governments respond extremely harshly, thus requiring a high level of organization and funding to stay alive and outside jail - and with stakes so high (because of the government), it's definitely going to encourage a very aggressive/deadly environment.

Prostitution has a similar situation, with a very "normal" rate of mortality compared to other jobs, though a high rate of violence where illegal. Though all we hear about are abusive pimps and gangs in news and movies, a recent study found only ~10% of underage prostitutes had a pimp. For adult prostitutes, this was 7% in Miami, though stats on this are hard to come by. Either way, there clearly isn't some pervasive hooker mafia/union.

$5k? He's clearly joking. Nobody's that cheap.

Something non-tangible, I suppose, though honey badger has most animal mascot type use.

All fiat money is debt. Annual inflation is effectively the annual interest rate the government charges you for holding it. Holding cash as an asset is, in reality, a liability. Just because there's no bill or receipt showing how much value your USD loses each month, that doesn't mean it's not happening.

If your mortgage is @ 3.5% annual and CPI increases 4%/yr, you are effectively making .5%/yr on your debt even though nominally, it looks like you're losing wealth (when in reality, you're gaining wealth and losing money). 4% annual inflation, though, is historically low, so it's clearly a fantastic time to buy since inflation rates always cycle and you can get a fixed-rate mortgage at 3.x% with good credit. What to buy is a bigger question... Idunno about houses.

I'd guess margin cascade is the simplest explanation, compounded by psychological impact of the cascade which encourages non-automated trades.

As an aside, it looks like:
Volume > volatility when BTC falls.
Volume < volatility when BTC rises.

Am I remembering the rise and fall time periods right?

"Some parts of America have already adopted the new address system but the UK is playing catch up. Sky, Virgin and BT have already issued some wifi boxes to their residential customers capable of using it, and Virgin is running both systems in parallel, but none of the companies has entirely made the switch."

Wow... so the big, clunky, expensive, dedicated routers in the UK are almost as technologically advanced as an end-of-life $2-used cell phone.

This is correct, though maybe it wasn't "entirely" rewritten. In the original instance of BFX, the Bitcoinica influence was very visible, even in the GUI. IIRC, BFX did actually purchase the code even though it was leaked soon after Bitcoinica collapsed. This allowed for a partial public audit as weaknesses in Bitcoinica could be tested in BFX, and there was at least one instance of a carried-over vulnerability (this is practically ancient history, though). They rapidly improved the code to the point where it's likely very close to a complete rewrite. I don't think it's fair to compare BFX to Bitcoinica anymore, at least as far as code goes.

It takes a special kind of asshole to take something alike open-source, then violate the alike provision presumably because they're worried someone will do exactly what they did.

Name&shame sounds like a good course of action. These companies are clearly untrustworthy and should have relevant accounts labeled as such. I don't think bans are really necessary or deletions favorable. I'd be worried about unintended consequences of a hard policy vs. a "decentralized" community response via the trust system. The more exposure the company has on the forum with an extremely negative trust rating, the better.

If this community could accurately predict short-term price, we'd already be there. You're wasting your time asking.

You'd do better to flip a coin and at least have a unanimous decision on whether or not you should sell.

It's likely uploading transaction queue and blockchain to multiple peers (8+) while you only receive one copy. Running a sync'd client is roughly like seeding a .torrent. You can force Core/QT specifically to reduce how much data it's sharing with an application-level throttling program like NetLimiter -- it functions fine throttled to ~3kb/s up, ~5kb/s down, keeping in mind you wouldn't be contributing anything significant to the network that way.

Yeah... you were kinda being a giant dick to someone respected inside and outside this community. He asked a simple and legitimate (though kind of OT and perhaps with an agenda) question, you reply with a whole lotta vitriol.

Sounds like a fine idea. 80% of my daughter's name comes from a character out of a drug-influenced religious book (maybe that is redundant). The other letter comes from a space satellite mostly just to make the "majority link" much more difficult to determine (and to ensure it doesn't sound fairy-y). I was pushing hard to name it Moose if it came out a boy, but this was unpopular among family members...  Satoshi's a pretty damn difficult name to use a similar method for, though. It wouldn't work at all if he isn't Japanese, and anagrams all look terrible... Ihotass... Tish Osa [last name]? Ash Soti [last name]? Otis Ash....

Anyway, she certainly didn't get a 150BTC trust fund for it.