Your idea has been tried. You are describing MintChip, Canada's virtual money. Ever heard of it? ... exactly.  

Where are you sir Harry?
That can make a big difference.

Now is the time to write a letter to any of the officials who are attending the meeting. It will only take a minute. But could send the value of your bitcoin to the moon.  



Just fill out the form in the link below:

http://www.hsgac.senate.gov/contact

That's a bummer man. 
Unfortunately if there is any way to game a transaction, it will get gamed with bitcoin. Anonymous cash brings out the crooks. Trust no one.

I think I heard that yesterday was China's big online shopping day. Bigger than black Friday and cyber Monday put together. I wonder how many bought with bitcoin?

Let "Joe" believe what he wants. Bitcoin is now to big for me and you to deal with the foolishness of 3rd. rate reporters. I would just say "Oh, ok Joe. Thanks for the heads up." Then I would finish buying my new beach house with bitcoins.
Eventually Joe's single bitcoin will be worth $1000 and he will talk about how he was always into bitcoin. 

If i knew for sure I wold tell you. But you will have to guess with the rest of us. Personally I think there is a huge amount of growth in value coming, so I bought some.

I think ignorance plays a large role. Either normal ignorance or the willful type.

These are real concerns, but there are also ways to deal with them.

You could try this.
Put all the coins you are saving for the long run into a wallet and get it offline. Burn it to discs or USB drives and protect it like you would jewels. I recommend a safe deposit box, but any high security should do.

If I were going to use windows, I would not keep any coins (private key) on my machine.

Hjwdi%3?hiuqofC9ybsyq!YFrdEDe

A password should look like the example above. Long, random and using caps, numbers, special chars, etc. Never use a word or anything remotely connected to you, such as a pet's name or a child's birthday.

I remember hearing this argument when bitcoin hit $1.

Crap, I didn't think I would need to start pricing tickets yet. At this rate the party is going to happen faster than it can be organized. 

I just look at what I paid for the bitcoin vs. what the value is when I spend. As long as I get a discount on the price I'm fine spending an appreciating asset.

I've been following your work. Very cool to see a POS device!

i asked myself the same question when I first bought a bunch. ...at $0.74.

I would advise these steps, assuming you are in the U.S..
First set up a trade account at an exchange. Let's say campbx.com.

Now you will need to fund your account. Send a USPS money order to them and wait for it to be credited to your account (maybe a week, maybe less).

In the mean time I would download the bitcoin-qt client from bitcoin.org and start the long process of synchronizing with the network. Downloading the block chain may take days and is not very interesting.

Now that you have dollars in your exchange account you can begin buying bitcoins. You can pay current price or set a lower price you will pay and hope someone comes down to meet it. When your buy price and the ask price come together a buy will be executed and you now have bitcoin. Yay.

The next step is to withdraw the coins to your bitcoin-qt client. The exchange will need a receiving address to send the coins. Your qt client will generate receiving addresses when you request one. You withdraw your funds to that address and you will soon see them on your copy of qt.

The last and MOST important step is making multiple copies of your wallet.dat file.  If you were to loose that file or it became corrupted, you are screwed. Your coins are gone forever.

Keep your wallet copies secure! Put one in a safe deposit box, mail one to your Uncle in Boston, whatever. Almost all problems are fixable if you have that file.

It happens. 10mins. is just an average.

Bitcoin is a joke... and the joke is on the author. 

So how many of you have written your representative about bitcoin? I would suggest that your efforts writing them will yield more fruit than posting here. The regulations that evolve around bitcoin will reflect your inaction, not the tyranny of government.