What I'm becoming more curious about is how an asset can operate once it gets bigger than a solo operation.

So for instance, let's say the asset grows and needs to hire help (and pay the non-bitcoiner a salary).  Let's say this employee works in the U.S. in the same state that the asset issuer's founder is in.

Would the operator be risking penalties from the state for not withholding social security taxes?  Even if the asset wanted to do the withholding, how could it be done?  You can't get an EIN for a "project".

Does an asset need to incorporate once it grows any bigger than being a solo operation or at least before it can hire any non-contract employees?

Here's a list:
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Domain_Name_and_DNS_Hosting

Plenty of options:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Advertising

The operartor of Bitcoin-Central also is the current owner and operator of InstaWallet and PayTunia.

Bitcoin-Central was one of the earliest exchanges.  There had been times where service was not good, including the scenario you are reporting -- withdrawal requests not being honored in a timely manner.  Eventually in those instances things did clear, but not without funds being unavailable for extended periods of time.

You might try a PM with davout, though it shows about 48 hours or more since the last login:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1929

Unfortuantely, those providing advice didn't say:

Step 1.)  Make a backup of your wallet.dat before you do anything

Fortunately, this individual was smart enough to do that anyway.

In trying to help, we should consider a promise that is part of the hippocratic oath ... Primum non nocere (First, do no harm):
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_non_nocere

 - http://cryptoxchange.com/Store

Lots of options:

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Precious_.26_Base_Metals.2FCoins

Technically wouldn't the IPO'd shares at 0.08667 be "same time or earlier" than my bid, and thus no matter my bid amount as long as it is at 0.08667 BTC or higher, the trade will occur at 0.08667 until all those at that price have sold out?

I would think that to be a flaw in how IPOs are handled.  You want to have bidders willing to go higher, to know the true demand for the IPO'd shares.  This way it makes it that the investor needs to personally attend the account during the IPO, rather than allowing orders to be entered well in advance and let the system market do what markets do.

Is that domestic bank wire only or are international wire transfers accepted as well?

A link directly to the video:

 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dJx95cTQ2o

Everything is covered, local currency, barter, time banking, bitcoins and more.

The part about Bitcoin starts at about 0:10:40 into the video.    Stay on after the news bit in the middle, the post-show conversation is good too.

Error?  You mean the warning saying that it hasn't finished catching up?

So, step 1.  Make sure you are on version 0.6.2.

Step 2.  The blockchain is large ... 2 GB.  Check disk space to ensure you aren't running out of space.

Step 3.  How many connections?  Hover over the "ascending bars" in the bottom right of the client.   It will tell you how many connections you have.

Ya, there are a lot of funds held by shorts locked up.  So there may be a rally with the buying, and a selloff once the refunds start arriving.  Or not.  Who knows.

It is such a great name that ...     

there is already a company using it.

In fact, that's what a bitcoin exchange in Brazil uses for customers buying bitcoins:
 - http://site.moip.com.br
 - http://www.mercadobitcoin.com.br

There are different scenarios that will cause merchants to start accepting bitcoin.   Bit-Pay claims to have 550 merchants now, so we will probably see some ecommerce site that attributes partial credit for its growth to the cost savings it gained when using bitcoin.  And that will get a little press and that might be a catalyst for a snowball.

Additionally, there could be a killer app causing there to be many more people with bitcoins to spend.  That's really what needs to happen before retail merchants are anywhere near seeing bitcoin as being worth the effort.  Perhaps something like SatoshiDICE getting real popular (think 1000X current levels) might cause this to happen at some level.  Players can get BTCs by depositing cash at 7-eleven, but cashing out to bank is a hassle.  They might just prefer then to simply pay for a meal with bitcoins instead then, for example.

But it never hurts to put a bug in their ear ... "I'ld prefer to use bitcoin".  Just don't be disheartened that it doesn't happen right away though.

Are you using the most recent client?   If not, you might wish to as it handles fee calculation better than some previous releases.


Yup, the system is targeted to 1 hour (6 confirmations, and 10 minutes per block target), so right now blocks are confirming on average a little longer than 10 minutes.   The fee paid will have no effect on speeding up the process once the transaction is included in a block.

If you are referring how long it takes for a transaction to confirm, what that means is that the transaction gets included in a block and once that happens then it will confirm after a total of 6 confirmations (for most services, such as exchanges).

So you are likely concerned with how long before a payment makes it into that first block.  Inclusion in a block, regardless of fee, can be something that takes any where from under a minute to over an hour even if no miners have solved a block.  When the fee is insufficient, that can take even longer -- up to a day at current levels when there was no fee paid at all, though even those are unlikely to take that long.

A transaction with a fee (e..g, 0.0005 BTC) may be included in a block faster than a transaction with no fee paid, in some instances.

A larger fee doesn't necessarily guarantee any faster inclusion.  

So a 0.0005 BTC fee will generally be sufficient to get your payment included promptly in the next block in most instances.

Now if you are sending low priority transactions (e.g., small amounts, like 0.02 BTC) or the client chooses many tiny amounts that you've received to make up your transaction (which would occur if you receive tiny payouts from a mining pool or SatoshiDICE payouts) then a larger fee may be necessary.

The client will tell you the amount you would need to pay if it is more than 0.0005 BTC.

If instant confirmations are useful, there are several options.  Funds for redeemable codes are settled immediately once the code is claimed.  These codes are available in either USD or BTC currency denominations.   If the recipient accepts green transactions for immediate credit, some services (e.g., Mt. Gox) allow withdrawals using the Green Transaction option.

If the recipient trusts the sender or if the purchase is a trivial amount, the recipient might offer to treat the transaction as payment received on 0/unconfirmed.  This is recognized just a few seconds after payment is sent.

tl;dr: The fee is 0.0005 is sufficient unless you are sending spam-like transactions or have received spam-like transactions.  When that happens, the client knows how to handle it.

Just out of curiosity, in the U.S. there are now many methods for easily and cheaply obtaining bitcions.  BitInstant and AurumXChange both have cash deposit at a bank for a fee.  BitFloor's fee is just $1 to deposit cash at Chase and some other banks.  BitInstant just launched their other methods (7-11, walmart, CVS drugstore, and lots more) methods.

Was the choice to use Western Union made without being aware of these options, or if not, would you mind sharing the reason why you went with this method?

It sounds like the BDB database might not have been shut down properly or for some other reason cannot use its log file to recover.  The error doesn't say which datafile has the problem.

Firstly, make sure you have made a backup of your wallet.dat

If the problem is with some file other than wallet.dat (which is more likely to be true) then you can use a utility that only uses wallet.dat.

There is a utility, pywallet, which will let you export the keys.

 - https://github.com/joric/pywallet

e.g.,  $ ./pywallet.py --dumpwallet --password="my encryption passphrase"

Otherwise, to do this within the bitcoin client you'ld need to either delete the blockchain and other data, index and log files (or pull a clean copy from the nightly snapshot).  This will hopefully let you start up the client then.

As far as why you were getting the "can't connect to server" was probably because you weren't running a bitcoind server.  Create a bitcoin.conf with rpcuser= and rpcpassword= , and then e.g..,
  $ ./bitcoin-qt -server
  $ ./bitcoind dumpprivkey [bitcoin address]
(if you have passphrase encryption, you'll need to open  it first, e.g., for 1000 seconds)

  $ ./bitcoind walletpassphrase [passphrase] 1000

then
  $ ./bitcoind dumpprivkey [bitcoin address]

then close bitcoin-qt when done.

"we make on average, 2 to 2 1/2 % of [payment volume]".

Not bad for a 0.3% exchange fee + 15 minutes of exchange rate risk exposure (plus a daily ACH transaction).

So, the weekend dip indicator is NOT flashing green (previous 7 day high is above the prior 7-day period's high).  Thus the strategy doesn't sugget any specific course of action to take.

Last week the bitcoins sold at $5.055 when following the weekend dip strategy were never bought back.  Thus if there happens to be a selloff, cash is waiting at various levels under $5.

BitAddress.com might have that:
 - http://www.BitAddress.org

or Blockchain.info's javascript might as well:
 - http://www.BlockChain.info/wallet