Yes, but why?

I'm running 0.3.21-beta

So you leave an encrypted version of wallet.dat in your .bitcoin folder. What does your client do when it sniffs around and finds no wallet.dat file?

No, I'm saying the "Your bitcoin address:" in my local client. The address changes each time I receive coins from Mt Gox.

I'm pretty sure when I send coins from Mt Gox to my account the string in "Your Bitcoin address:" changes. You don't think so?

Question 2: Why does the client create a new address every time I receive coins?

Question 1: Why should I generate new addresses?

I want to see the answers to this because I am so confused about the wallet! I just encrypted my wallet.dat, I think, using truecrypt. That is, I encrypted a BACKUP of wallet.dat. But the original wallet.dat is sitting there on my drive unencrypted and seemingly vulnerable as hell! I still don't get how to have a long-term, deep storage wallet and another spending money wallet.

Any help with this stuff would be most appreciated. Might even get a tip!

Exactly! What does THIS mean?
4  create a truecrypt disk with image stored on this USB drive so that all bitcoin files and datadir and
therefore wallet.dat are on this truecrypt disk and make a .bat or .sh file which starts bitcoin client from this USB drive.

I now see that the wallet is one of the weakest aspects of bitcoin so far. This is going to continue causing misery for so many!

You're not being unduly cynical. In fact, the Establishment is worse than can even be described with words. These guys use their intelligence agencies to blow people up and then blame it on the enemy of their choosing, like 9-11. Then, they pull convenient draconian legislation out of their pocket, e.g., Patriot Act, and clamp down on entire societies. Their crimes would fill volumes.

I called someone "spineless" yesterday, clearly an ad hominem attack, not very productive but it felt good. Should I be punished?

Fantastic post. The regulators that Garzik invites into bed with us are an organized criminal gang with a flag on the wall.  They are ruthless and evil and will hurt us.  They will never play by any rules.  To court them is disaster.  One must fight them when one can and run from them when one can't.

I think there is considerable risk keeping dollars or bitcoins at Mt Gox because the exchanges will be the first target of governments. Can anyone tell me why Mt Gox limits the amount of bitcoin that can be withdrawn?

Has anyone ever pointed out to you how spineless you are?

Agreed. Garzik didn't make friends here when he criticized "ron paul libertarians" (which I thought was kind of strange), when he characterized users of silk road as stupid, and that he needs to help the long arm of government reach bitcoin. He came off as a righteous toadie for the State.

Be careful what you listen to here. I understand you are using this as a brainstorming thread, but the thing that incorporated all these suggestions would be a monster indeed. A simple, easy to follow interface, with more complex features available but not front and center is a time-tested design practice.

All exchanges have certain basic features and so it might be helpful to point out where other exchanges are NOT doing so well. Mt Gox does a good job on the simplicity front, unlike bitcoinmarket.com which seems to think currency pairs are a virtue. Bitcoin2cash requires a user to keep an order that he wants to buy in memory while he changes to the buy screen. Forcing users to keep things in memory is a bad thing. But it's nice how they have buy and sell orders side by side, unlike bitmarket.eu, which requires one to scroll up and down to see both.

I don't know, I could go on and would be willing to, but I'll wait and see what comes of this thread. Thanks for asking!

Aristotle defined the characteristics of a good form of money:

1.) It must be durable. Money must stand the test of time and the elements. It must not fade, corrode, or change through time.

2.) It must be portable. Money must hold a high amount of 'worth' relative to its weight and size.

3.) It must be divisible. Money should be relatively easy to separate and re-combine without affecting its fundamental characteristics. An extension of this idea is that the item should be 'fungible'. Dictionary.com describes fungible as:

"(esp. of goods) being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind."

4.) It must have intrinsic value. This value of money should be independent of any other object and contained in the money itself.

Does bitcoin pass the test?

Are you saying that Garzik is slick enough to have said what he said but have a different agenda in reality? That would be impressive if true. I actually think he believes what he said and is apparently naive to the sheer evil epicness of the power centers run by dynastic, multi-generational banking elites.  Some of the comments Gavin made make me think the same of him.  I remain very wary of these so-called "leaders".

I would hope that when they sell out their own customers some enterprising and more realistic and better-informed developers create anonymous ways to exchange bitcoin.

Just watched Garzik "tip the scales in the favor of the good guys." With thought leaders like him who needs enemies?  I don't understand why he would want btc exchanges to comply with ridiculous "know your customer" rules.

Hmmm...in all the recent articles and discussions I've read about bitcoin, I haven't heard much about what The Establishment really CAN do about bitcoin. It doesn't make sense to me that the Lords of the Universe will go down with a whimper. I heard on Hiro White's poscast just a few ways that governments could attack bitcoin. They could dominate the mining of bitcoin greater than 50%. They could make illegal the video cards used to optimally mine bitcoin. They could DDOS bitcoin sites. They could force ISPs to block bitcoin activity. They could imprison and even assassinate bitcoin leaders.