The best measure of end-to-end fees would be to start with $100 cash and an empty PayPal account, convert the cash to bitcoins, sell the bitcoins, deposit the result in a PayPal account, use a PayPal debit card to withdraw the money from an ATM and see how much cash you end up with at the end. (assume a theoretical ATM that could produce exact change)
|
|
|
Step 1) Sell your coins at Gox, BitStamp, BTC-E, or Crypto, and withdraw a USD coupon. Are there any plans to automate this step in the future and just let people give you the Bitcoins directly?
|
|
|
I was thinking along the lines of, "You think Bitcoin is fundamentally flawed because: ____. This argument betrays a misunderstanding one or more of the following known economic principles:______ Your ideas have been tried in one or more of the following alternative cryptocurrencies:______"
|
|
|
The most telling thing in this thread is that no one seems willing to defend our current policy. Is there anyone left who believes prohibition is a good idea? I open to hearing a sensible argument.
Find someone old... Or a prison guard, or a cop, or a large scale drug trafficker... Those people benefit enormously from prohibition.
|
|
|
Instead of asking businesses if they will accept Bitcoin it might be more successful to ask if they will accept Paysius or Bit-Pay. Doing a quick Google search for those terms is going to get the merchant to the relevant information they need a lot more quickly than a search for Bitcoin.
|
|
|
Why do you assume that anyone is talking about anything?
|
|
|
It would be a lot easier to cut back on pointless, redundant threads if there was a canned response for them. Something in this style, but adapted for Bitcoin criticisms: Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
|
|
|
Good job, you've identified a critical failure in Bitcoin that nobody has ever though of before.
Before the entire system collapses there's still time for you to send all your Bitcoins to the address in my signature line so they won't take you down with it.
|
|
|
Allow users to upload an optional public key to their profile and, if present and valid, all system emails to the user get encrypted with it.
|
|
|
I took a look at Tor Mail today and have some serious questions about what's going on with them.
Hosting IMAP and SMTP servers isn't free and they neither have ads nor do they charge for the service. Where is the money coming from?
|
|
|
Is that an example of answering the question with a question or questioning the question with a question?
|
|
|
What will it take to make people boycott all these threads?
|
|
|
What does that have to do with anything?
|
|
|
Rick Falkvinge (founder of the first Pirate Party, the one in Sweden)
Businesses that accept Bitcoin because it routes around problems with the legacy banking system:
Air VPN TorGuard
|
|
|
A suggestion to all the people who are opposed to one or more fundamental design features of Bitcoin:
Don't use it.
Thank you for your time.
|
|
|
You would have to examine if it is a controlled/scheduled substance. Other rules may apply too. For example, spray paint is not illegal, but selling it to a minor in your state may be, same thing goes with the anti-meth-ingredient ID laws some states have for ephedrines. I think there are no laws prohibiting you from giving aspirin to someone, but the prilosec may have a 'non-prescription' dose that the prescription exceeds.
There are so many laws now that it's no longer possible to guarantee that any action you take doesn't violate one of them. That's why it's best to use services like Silk Road, because even if you think what you're doing is legal you can never be entirely sure.
|
|
|
I have some really boring drugs: prilosec and aspirin. It just seems like a waste to throw them away.
Is it illegal to sell OTC drugs online? These are technically "prescription" and were dispensed as such, but they are identical to generic prilosec otc and plain old aspirin that you get without prescription.
I'll assume the risperidone I have is illegal to sell online.
If you're worried about it being illegal sell it on Silk Road. That way the risk is low even if it is illegal.
|
|
|
|