Trust isnt a binary thing. Its just a matter of how much you trust it.

For instance, like all miners I always have at least a tiny balance at the pool I mine. Am I certain it wont get hacked? Clearly not, but  Im only risking ~0.1 BTC there.
I tend to keep a bigger amount of BTC on my blockchain.info wallet, so I can access it from my smartphone. I absolutely do not have 100% trust in that either, but enough that its practicality warrants the risk of a few BTC. I have more BTC stored in Casascius coins. I dont have absolute trust in that either, but once again sufficient trust for the amount I invested in it. Well, at least at the price I paid almost 2 years ago. I may have to reassess. I have balances at exchanges, at online poker sites, betsofbitcoin and other places that are at risk of getting hacked or scamming me. Case in point, I will probably lose a fair amount of money on the bitcoin-24 debacle.

A significant portion of my BTC reside in my qt wallet, but one shouldnt fully trust that either, its not impossible my PC gets hacked or infected, no matter what OS you use or security provisions you take. Lastly, the bulk of my BTC are in cold storage. Thats as secure as it gets, but you guessed it, even that isnt 100% sure.

So its all a matter of weighing the risks. And that applies to investing in bitcoin anyway, no matter what medium you use to store them.

BTW, this might be slightly off topic, but do I read this right? A deposit address at bitpay is free, and as long as the amount is bigger than $20 or €100 they will convert it to your bank account for free. Does that mean Bitpay can be (ab)used as a free exchange, at least to sell coins? When I check their exchange rates here:
https://bitpay.com/bitcoin-exchange-rates
THey are actually a tiny fraction higher than MtGox prices. But that may just be a delay thing.

They are neither cast nor carved. They are stamped, just like our regular coins. That enables fine detail and yet they are quite resistant. Maybe not quite as sturdy as fiat coins, I believe the metal alloy is slightly softer as the pressure at which they are stamped is probably not as high as the huge machines our mints have, but the samples I have are quite tough, not sure if its any worse than normal coins,  and much more resilient than the hologram anyway, thats always going to be the weak point for someone carrying coins in his pocket.

To give you an idea, this is a scan of an older, abused 25mm sample coin:




Its a common name for the entire line, assuming there will be one over time. We cant just call it "a 0.1 bitcoin coin",  people need a way to differentiate between coins from various suppliers.

The only way I knew off to convert bitcoins to euro or dollar for nothing was bitcoin-24 and that turned out to be hugely expensive.
IN the real world there is a need for services offered by companies like bitpay and paypal. And those services are valuable and cost money. I see nothing wrong with that.

The cool thing about bitcoin is that you have the choice. You dont have to use and pay for services you may not need, but having those services is definitely a good thing.

Seems like they changed it. If so, I stand corrected. Last time I checked they posted their 0.99% fee in big font and hid the 2% conversion fee. I found that rather sleazy and it also made bitpay more expensive than paypal or visa for most merchants. I guess the increased volume and number of customers allowed bitpay to seriously drop their rates, that can only make me happy.

Point remains however, its not free, and one shouldnt expect all bitcoin related services to be free. Bitpay offers a real and valuable service and Paypal could do that just as well.

Bitpay charges 1% fee + 2% to convert the bitcoins to fiat on your bank account. Do you think thats evil or somehow incompatible with bitcoin?
Not that I think this will happen any time soon, but if paypal can add value to retailers or customers by providing escrow, conflict resolution, currency conversion, insured online wallet,  shopping basket and other tools, then more power to them, and all the better for bitcoin.

We dont know exactly what year the last bitcoins will be mined. But perhaps we could use the % of coins minted to date.

The Vitruvian Man pictured on that coin is not just a naked man, and the context is certainly not business; as Im sure you are aware, its a famous drawing by Da Vinci about anatomy where nakedness obviously makes sense. LIke I said, biology. Other examples you may find will probably relate to the ancient Greeks or Romans, where the context is historic.

Its not that Im offended by nudity (although, some Muslims might be), its just that it doesnt fit here IMO.

Then give elementary OS a try. its based on ubuntu, runs all ubuntu apps but has the best UI Ive come across so far.
oh and no problems with bitcoin-qt

The solution Bitpay offers is trivial for Paypal. I mean no disrespect but Bitpay is a 2 or 3 person startup without any unique technology or skills;  thats definitely the "easy" part particularly for a company with such resources and that has more experience with merchants accepting online payments, shopping baskets, interfacing with banks etc than anyone else in the world.

The difficult part is the selling, or possibly buying of bitcoins. Bitpay doesnt do that, they use the same exchanges we do. Is MtGox ready for Paypal? I would say they are not. If paypal/ebay were truly serious about bitcoin, they would have to start their own exchange; or buy MtGox and make it work.  I dont think anyone sees them go quite that far and help and lend credibility to what is an opportunity but also a grave threat to their business.

In short, I dont think paypal will do anything with bitcoin in the short term. Long term, only if they feel they have to and if the ecosystem around it is mature enough. But the fact they arent laughing at bitcoin sure is good publicity.

Im painfully aware of those issues, and I do agree that a malicious (or incompetent) supplier of physical coins would be terrible for bitcoin. Its also a reason I want to do this; someone besides Mike is going to sell such products sooner or later and at least I trust myself more than I trust someone I dont know . No matter what I do, I can not make you trust me, but thats ok. I prefer taking the risk of not selling enough coins to pay back my investment over seeing someone else pull another pirate like scam with physical coins.

I have ample respect for Mike and will gladly use his expertise and implement his good ideas, possibly even his tools, and draw from the community at large, but its not an insurmountable challenge to produce the keypairs on an offline airgapped machine and securely format and/or physically destroy the ssd or usb key afterwards, wipe printer memory if applicable etc. I will explain in detail how I go about doing this before I actually produce these coins, but I cant do that now as I am yet to decide whether I will print keys or buy a laser engraver, use QR codes or not. I will be experimenting first once I receive some blank samples. I also have yet to decide on the software, Ive looked at the tools Mike published, I will look in to Armory. Either way I will be completely transparent about how I make these things.

If we are honest, when applying sufficient paranoia,  common sense and proven software, the real issue isnt accidental leaking of private keys, its deliberate theft. Mike is currently trusted for over $8 million worth of bitcoins. Thats a huge amount of money to trust anyone with, and frankly more than I would even want to be trusted with.  Im not sure how to put this without being misunderstood, its not like I distrust Mike, but publishing personal info (which I will too) or crypto signing messages (?) isnt enough to warrant $8M worth of trust. We are all taking a leap of faith here, myself included as I do trust him, at least for the handful of coins of his that I own. By comparison, my first production run will amount to $15K worth of bitcoin at todays value, assuming I would sell out, which is far from certain. Thats not pocket change, but I think you will agree its quite a different level of incentive,  its almost 3 orders of magnitude lower.

Trust is built over time, and while its never absolute, I have to start somewhere.

You make two valid points.
Regarding the year, it would be cool to introduce a new year counting, instead of AD, we used AS "Anno Satoshi" but no one would understand it and a coin is not the place to invent, let alone explain a new dating system. Unixtime might be more neutral, but it would hardly look good ('1366873851") and having a precision down to a second makes no sense.  AFAIK, all other bitcoin tools, including the official client, blockchain.info etc all use the "christian" year, so Im not sure this is a big deal, but perhaps I should just drop it all together.

The point about the silhouettes is quite valid. Although I dont like the idea of naked people (that seems more appropriate when you refer to people in a medical/biological sense, rather than a business sense) and they shouldnt be too cartoonish either. Ill see what I can do to make them more generic though. Thanks for bringing it up.

Doesnt make any sense for paypal to use bitcoin in the way you describe. They already have their own coin and network. The main difference is their coin is pegged to local currencies, but they can still transfer that money instantly and basically for free from anywhere to anywhere they want. For paypal, bitcoin doesnt add anything in that sense. The only thing paypal can do that does make sense, is accept bitcoins as deposit and convert them to a paypal dollar/euro balance. And perhaps offer a bitcoin wallet service, so you can store bitcoins like you store dollars and euros in your paypal account. Both of those would help rather than hurt bitcoin; regardless if you choose to use it.

Current short list:

Cryteq
Hardcoin
Bitbob (isnt that nickname of someone here?)

Cryteq sounds the best to me, but Im slightly worried Crytek may not like it. Bitbob is kinda funny, as my first name happens to be Bob .

Keep 'm coming.

Not having to [deal with PP] is a good thing. Not being able to, not so good. Having the choice can only be a good thing for everyone involved.

I beg to differ. Buying and selling bitcoins for paypal has been a hot issue for as long as Ive known about bitcoin. And having paypal accept bitcoins for funding their accounts would be fantastic. No one will ever again have to ask "what can I buy with it".

It even also makes sense for paypal and its customers; the irreversibility of bitcoin is a double edged sword. Sometimes its a god sent, but just as often you do want an escrow service or some arbiter. No matter how much you hate them, Paypal is perfectly positioned for that. In short; this is is the best news I heard all week.

Tasteless? What makes you say that? I think its subtle (keep in mind actual dimensions, you will barely be able to make them out) and looks rather good, while the symbolism of users exchanging coins directly and globally seems perfectly appropriate. Isnt that the essence of bitcoin?

As for the slogans. I can certainly appreciate "vires in numeris" (who came up with that actually?) but Im gonna stay well clear of any political slogans. Its a coin not a socio political pamphlet.

I probably will, but certainly not before I ordered everything myself and have a firm shipping date. Otherwise Id have to call it "butterfly coin" .

Belgium, EU.

I was going to say, one day they ought to erect a statue for you, but instead as a tribute, maybe I should mint coins with your face on them instead .


Its another reason Im going for small denominations. Depending on final cost and pricing, if I were to steal all the unredeemed coins at some point in the future, I could probably not even double my revenue and its not exactly going to be enough to pay for a one way ticket to an exotic island. What I could potentially gain is a pretty low incentive, particularly compared to the 100BTC bars and the like that you are selling.
If you were to steal the bitcoins you have sold you could probably buy the island by now .

.

I mostly agree.
Im not entirely sure yet if or how I will handle this as a legal business, but plenty of people here already know who I am and were to find me.  
As for my trustworthiness; that will be for customers to judge and weigh against the incentive I would have for ripping them off. I know you are speaking in general terms, but for the record, my first batch will be 1000 coins of 0.1 BTC. Assuming I actually manage to sell them all, subtract any redeemed coins and whats left is a very complicated, expensive and risky way to try to con people out of ~50 BTC. I can think of easier ways.


Feel free to offer. I can always say no .