I think the word you're looking for is "pinups".  Everything else is just good ol' delicious smut. 

Personally I think there's already plenty of confidence - that's why the value is as high as it is now.  What we need is more commerce which long-term will drive the value far more than trying to improve market sentiment.  The currency has to be useful to justify what you're making through mining.  Otherwise people are "investing" in a useless fiction.

I think everyone WTFed at Ayo_4_Yayo's comment, and we couldn't help but swivel our attention toward you.

Honestly at this point it's more interesting than beating the dead horse (fox, whatever) that started the whole thread.  I can't tell if he's trolling or just tragically misguided, but either way I don't think anything more we say will influence him.  I wish him well and I'll help if I can, but I just don't get the impression that he's taking any of the criticism to heart.

I love it.  Don't cover it if I ever come to visit.  The world needs more of this.  

Total BTC is https://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc .  The 20% number is just a guess, but based on BTCDD we're seeing decent turnover and the 20% number is probably fair.  I'm still considering how I should formalize this number though.

The three day hold is also an estimate, just based on the fact that loading money/BTC into and out of an exchange takes some time and it's somewhat inconvenient if you're intending to buy something.  Most purchases probably run the cycle in less than a day, but some will hold a week or longer, so I picked three days.  It's very arbitrary, but I think I'm being generous on the whole.

The really flimsy part of my argument is the $10,000 figure.  It's not based on anything other than spending some time looking at bitmunchies, bitspend, etc: we don't have numbers, but they're doing OK, but not exactly giving the impression of huge business.  For better or worse, TSR is probably the best measure of real utility right now.  It's a small but significant niche.

Feel free to contribute better numbers or another technique to compute a value floor if you think you know a better one.

http://www.furnation.com/Wookiee/2002/W_Morning_Chester.jpg

... except I expect your table leaves less censored and more hanging out.

Mining is fine, since mining just uses RPC to the pool server and doesn't directly participate in the BitCoin P2P network.

And in practical terms, performing your transactions through TOR is fine too.  There are plenty of non-TOR nodes to support network stability.  Even if everyone decided to send all transactions through TOR the network would be fine: we'd just need a bunch of non-transacting relay-only public nodes.  There are probably already a lot filling this role, though there's no easy way to measure it.

I don't really care if you're just yanking my chain.    I've been slowly refining my "fundamental value" argument for a while, and this let me write another draft.

Like I said, I don't expect my fundamental value to ever really drive the price; I'm guessing that the bottoms will be around 10x what I calculate, but it's hardly a science.  It's more just a useful reference for when people keep asking "oh my god how long can it keep falling": well, it'll stop sometime before there.  Other than that, who knows.

My fundamental value is a floor based on commerce.  My assumptions:

• The price is driven by utility (people who use coins to buy things) plus speculation (people who buy coins mainly hoping they will gain value)
• Utility is based on enthusiasts (people who use coins but do not use an exchange, IE, treating it as an isolated currency) plus practical users (people who use coins as a proxy for their local fiat)
• 80% of coins do not hit the exchanges, either due to loss, long term hoarding, or enthusiasts
• The remainder are traded for utility (upon which I base my price floor) and speculation
• Actual commerce in BTC is around USD$10,000 per day

The practical-utility cycle is: buy coins on an exchange; store them in the wallet for a few days while shopping; buy goods; merchant sells coins on an exchange.  The fundamental value is the minimum required to fulfill this need.  Here's the formula I use:

Utility == ($10,000 commerce per day) * (3 days average time coins are held) / (  (7.2M total coins) * (20% coins in circulation)  ) == ($30,000 stored value) / (1.8M coins) == USD$0.0208 per BTC.

Note that I've already included hoarders in that price.  So, in my opinion, the remainder of the difference between the $0.02 floor and the $5.00 current price is speculation.

My speculation:  I don't think it will ever hit my $0.02 floor.  As the price starts dropping close to that (perhaps $0.20) the floor will start cushioning the fall, and when that happens people will become comfortable holding coins for longer periods.  Unfortunately at those lows it's cheap for speculators to start driving it up again (Yay! the crash is over!  BUY BUY BUY), though the next bubble won't be nearly as big as the first.  The bottoms of the speculative waves will find a practical bottom around $0.20, at least until utility is increased by stability (longer hold times) and greater daily commerce.

So, your turn.  How do you compute fundamental value?

Your BitCoins are just as real as your bank account balance: they're a few lines in a computer's database.  Neither has a concrete location: both BitCoin and your bank replicate the data widely, and withdraws may be performed anywhere where you present the proper credentials.

My method puts the fundamental value in the low cents range.  How do you compute fundamental support at $5?

You will have 100.

Bitcoin pre-generates addresses for your next 100 transactions (Either new addresses as you describe, or automatically generated ones for the "change" when you spend), and stores them in the "key pool".  As long as you back up your wallet before you use them up, you're safe.  You can also set it to use a larger key pool if you go through a lot of addresses and can't back up frequently enough.

More info here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet

My sig says it all. 

It makes things safer, but not 100% safe. In the June hack the hacker deliberately crashed the price to .01 to try to transfer more coins out.  I don't know if it worked.

If someone roots the server they might be able to circumvent the transfer limits.  There are more possible levels of protection - they might store the wallet on another machine that only processes transaction batches, verifies that there are no excessive withdraws, and doesn't have any other communication with the outside world.  That's how I'd do it, but I can't say if Gox does.

+1 to use any of the exchanges that nmat listed.  They do exactly what you want.  It's really not complicated.

If you're not comfortable with that, you can trade locally with cash:  http://www.tradebitcoin.com/

Yes, the coins have something like a "Serial number" (it's the address you receive the coins on).  It's easy to trace the history of addresses that a coin passed through, but harder to figure out who actually owns those addresses.

The full answer is somewhat complicated.  You should read this:  https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity

You're mixing up the ROI of holding Bitcoins with mining Bitcoins.  If there was a rise in the ROI of Bitcoins you own, the price would clearly go up.

But there's no ROI on holding Bitcoins.  It's not like a stock that pays dividends.

I know he's a fur.  So what?  Bitcoiners are still way bigger drama whores.  

Hey now, there's no need to rag on furries like that.  How much drama have we heard about people losing everything because of their bad investments in coins, mining rigs, MyBitcoin, and what not?  Furries as a whole are doing better than the average bitcoiner.

That list only shows transactions that haven't been accepted into a block.  Try looking up the transaction ID or the address you sent to on https://blockexplorer.com/ .  If you're not sure how PM me the address you sent to and I'll look it up for you.