It's not my main savings account. That's in ING, and is used monthly to pay bills and such. This is my long-term one, where I know I won't need the money for quite a while. While I'll need to pay for a new Android tablet in about two weeks, and pay for a short trip to London around January, the larger expenses won't come due until at least 1.5 years from now. I fully expect Bitcoin to survive that long and increase in value substantially. If Bitcoin collapses in value and I lose all my money, though, although the loss will be substantial (close to $10k), it's nowhere near the amount I have invested in my other accounts/mutual funds, and the bills that will be due then I'll still be able to pay with my earned income. I'm essentially gambling on either having to pay those large expenses over a long period of time with my normal income, or with a single huge windfall from Bitcoin.

By the way, I guess this is one of those examples where people wining about "early adopters" should put up or shut up. I'm not an early early adopter, but I still got in somewhat early, and am taking a considerable risk with Bitcoin. Thus, I expect to be paid back a considerable return. Yet those complaining about "early adopters" seem to still be sitting on the sidelines, doing nothing but complaining, despite it still being pretty early to get into this.

My bitcoin wallet loss has finally prompted me to root my android (glad I did, and I guess something good came out of the loss). On a rooted android, it is possible to use Titanium Backup to back up the wallet and export the wallet file. Tested by wiping my bitcoin app and all associated files, reinstalling, restoring backup, and my coins are still in there. The wallet file is called prodnet.wallet btw, and is stored in the \data\data\com.bitcoinandroid\files folder. That folder is inaccessible unless your phone is rooted. It would be very usefull to be able to export/backup that file to another more accessible location from within the program itself for those who aren't willing to spend 3 risky hours rooting their phone.

I'm buying whenever I get some spare money. Since I'm using Bitcoin as my main long-term savings account (money I use maybe once or twice a year for things like vacation or electronics), I buy at whatever the market is at every two weeks.
I don't plan to sell at any specific price. When I need the money, such as when I need to pay my credit card for an expensive trip, is when I sell (I use credit cards for everything due to the cash back bonuses). I don't plan to ever sell all or some specific amount of my Bitcoin. As long as it stays above $14 overall, there's no reason for me to keep my money in USD.
I expect the price to keep going up over the months/years. There are too many variables involved to make any sort of price predictions, but I wouldn't be surprised if 1 BTC was worth $100 or more by next Summer. Based on the growth of the new sellers and new services (banks, escrows, etc), I think it may reach $100 by the end of the year, but I am likely completely wrong (it may be much lower, or much higher). Either way, I think the huge spike in growth we saw over the last two months was a bit of an anomaly, and it will have slower and more steady growth from now on. (again, I'm likely VERY wrong)

Been playing with and twirling mine almost non stop for almost two days now. The pictures don't do the coin justice btw. It's much bigger than I thought it would be, and the gold is much more yellow-gold colored than the washed out photos. Definitely a nice conversation starter piece

x) Monetize the web. Put your address at the bottom or your blog posts or youtube videos, and people can pay you a bit if they like your work, without having to go through third parties or paying high percentage fees.

I can confirm that reinstalling the app WILL erase your own wallet, and WILL overwrite whatever backup you may have in the cloud, so unless Google has an older backup of the wallet file and can give me access to it, these 2 coins are gone for ever as well
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1DWwhv9Kg3SE9GBX7Kk9A11nw3B3MUBe2t

Not TOO upset, since these were mined and I have plenty more, but, still, it's money lost
So, PLEASE make the ability to back up a wallet to the SD card or computer a HIGH priority!

(p.s. reason I had 2 on there is because I was hoping to go shopping in NY for some food)

Sadly, I haven't tracked the data footprint (unlimited plan here), but the total file size is about 14megs for the block chain, and 24.19 megs for the whole thing

Mine took about 5 to 8 hours to finally finish spinning (I had to keep the app open and running for a long time). It started Force Closing the next day though, which is upsetting, since it worked extremely well when it finished spinning.

When it was working (having some issues now), the payment would show up instantly with 0 confirmations, and would even show a notification and play a sound. Confirmations still took the normal time-to-find-a-block amount

*yawn!*

I think the moral of this story is that, if you ever think you have an idea of what price Bitcoin will go to, MAKE SURE to start your post with "I am pretty sure I am wrong that Bitcoin will..."  At least that way you'll be safe when/if inevitably Bitcoin does something COMPLETELY different.

BTW, my Dwolla didn't manage to get my money transfered in today yet, so that probably means that I won't be able to buy until Monday... which means it's still likely BTC will drop over the weekend and will be back to $14~$15 by the time I can buy it.

With the volatility and potential growth in BTC, it would be INSANE to do any kind of FRB, because there's an extremely good chance that whatever you invested the MtGox money in will be left in the dust by the return on BTC itself.
Using redeem codes, on the other hand, is an excellent idea, because it means transfers/sales are not limited by the 1block/10min chain, and there are no transfer fees at all to move BTC around between customers.

I was hoping for a directory, like /etc/....

Mine started ForceClosing suddely this morning. Anyone know where the wallet.dat file is stored on the phone or backed up to? I need to reinstall the app, and am worried if I uninstall it, I may lost my single freshly mined Bitcoin.

Did anyone figure out where the wallet.dat file is stored on the phone yet? Mine started forceclosing all of a sudden, and I want to back the wallet up before uninstalling and reinstalling the app, just in case when I uninstall it wipes my wallet with the brand new shiny Bitcoin in it :/

I'm a bit late to this party, but regarding deflation and employment:
I think people as a whole would have a MUCH bigger resistance to their wages doing this:
up, up, up, up, up, up, DOWN, up, up, up, up, up, up, DOWNup, up, up....
in a deflationary environment, than they do to the current inflationary:
down, down, down, down, down, UP, down, down, down, down, down, UP, down, down...

Regardless of the fact that both scenarios are exactly the same in mathematical terms, we humans are just too irrational to accept the scenario where we are hurt quickly and heavily, over a scenario where the pain is drawn out over the course of a year.
Of course we could also just have each paycheck decrease in amount, thus making each payment adjust for deflation and make the pain constant and one we are used to, but, we humans also prefer nice, predictable, round(ish) numbers, and having seemingly randomly calculated (percentage-based) numbers every time will make life rather difficult to plan (how much will I have for bills? Will I have enough to go out to a movie, and what will the price of that be? etc.)

So, my argument, really, is that although deflation and inflation are both mathematically the same in the long run, we humans may just be too irrational to accept it.

Like with SecondLife's Linden Dollars, I fully expect that the idea of having to pay for the currency when you used to be able to get it for "free" will turn people away (SecondLife used to pay everyone a "stipend" of 50$L a week, but then stopped it). On the other hand, many people making money for free just makes the money worth less. I think making people pay for it will reinforce the idea that this is a real money alternative. Linden Dollars survived, and now process I think something like a few million of transactions a day. I believe Bitcoin will to. One way we can push it along is by convincing people that transferring money into Bitcoin to buy stuff with Bitcoin online is no different than transferring money into PayPal to buy stuff with PayPal dollars. The volatility of the currency exchange is still a bit of an obstacle though.



Actually, I think we need increased trading. Trading, not buying-and-holding. Traders add liquidity to the market, meaning those who want to buy and sell can do so quickly. They also stabilize the market, since if there are way more traders wishing to buy and sell around, say, a $17 mark, it will take A LOT more than just a few 1000BTC to make the price swing up or down wildly. The crazy volatility has actually been due to a severe lack of traders (aka, small volume) on the market. Traders also provide a valuable service, that being that they are willing to exchange their time (sitting on the money/trade and waiting) in exchange for someone who has no time and needs stuff NOW (retailers or customers wishing to exchange money)

Oh. Well that's a weird system then I guess there's no real way around it though. But you are right, once done, I think it says something like "funds have been dispersed" or something.

ONLY if you assume that human population is not a "living system." Sure, we are altering the ecosystem, and are using up natural resources, we as a living system are quite the opposite of "in decline." Some of the other living systems that are popping up due to our activity are on the increase as well, such as rodent populations, certain types of insects, farm animal populations and bacteria and viruses. That part of the "living ecosystem" is thriving. So, the real question is really, WHICH living system do you think should be thriving at the expense of other systems?
Granted you could be saying that our economic activity is using up some of our limited resources, and that activity is unsustainable, but then you're also proposing that we can use technology to make it sustainable, which I don't see a reason why we wouldn't anyway...


How is this not what we are already doing, with people and businesses pushing for more and more green tech? Though you have already claimed over and over that you don't believe the markets deliver what people ask for (i.e. you seem to be rejecting a part of the market that goes against your believe of "capitalism=bad") when the people are asking and willing to pay more for conservation, or when companies find it cheaper to conserve.


One could say RBE/TZM people believe that somehow an invisible hand will convince EVERYONE to believe the same thing and, guided by faith in some scientific calculations, force them to submit themselves to that one god-like scientific figure/entity that will fix everything... There's likely more faith involved in believing that people will agree to go against their own free will and nature, and would be willing to submit to a single group/entity's wishes just because that group/entity tells them they'll be better off.

Oh. I was just wondering what the "Release request made on June 21, 2011" was about. When I was using the escrow, the "release date" was then the money was allowed to be transferred to the address listed.

Please tell me, what is the different between transferring money into PayPal to buy stuff with PayPal, and transferring money into MtGox/TradeHill to buy stuff with Bitcoin?