Is there perhaps anyone local who will do a trade in-person with you? - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Local Look at Bitcoin.local, BTC Near Me, Ubitex, etc. Also, you might put a buy order in the #bitcoin-otc and see if maybe someone will see it and inquire directly. - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otcAnother option might be to try a friends and family connection. For instance, if you have a family member or friend located in the U.S., for instance, they might assist by accepting funds from you through PayPal (or credit card if they have Square, for example), and then deposits cash for you in an exchange account with ExchB, for example. In Canada, the same thing is possible -- through VirtEx. |
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Bottom line is that power is not unlimited nor is it free for the taking. Those NOT paying will have their day. Because there are so few was to monetize "free" electricity, landlords generally are unaware that a tenant or two are exceeding by a good margin the average electric consumption for a unit. In other words, landlords can stay irrational longer than miners can stay solvent. :-) (with my apologies to Keynes) |
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planning to buy 11 more of those NEXT month
oppinions..? Where do you plan to find 44 ATI HD 5970s? |
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As many miners will sell their entire mining proceeds and the amount of true Bitcoin commerce remains at minimal levels, Bitcoins are primarily held by investors and traders. Just as with other currencies and other investments, the exchange rate will fluctuate both in advance of and in response to other events -- even those which wouldn't seem to be related.
For instance, some investors might be lightening up after seeing the FinCEN ruling on "prepaid access" -- something that is just a few weeks away from going into effect but could significantly impact bitcoin's prospects if the action by the U.S. government does indeed apply to bitcoin transactions. That is an event external to bitcoin that would still cause volatility whether or not we have an options market or whether or not we've finally reached a point that bitcoins are useful by themselves without needs to exchange them out to fiat.
When demand warrants, more and more methods for hedging will appear so that exposure to those exchange rate fluctuations can be minimized.
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sha256 & ripemd160 being broken Though this would't likely be something that happens overnight. At a minimum, checking in on things annually would probably be recommended. Not just should the wallet be archived but kept also should be a bootable o/s installation to be able to read that wallet.dat as well. It wouldn't be surprising that the client ten years from now might not even use the database engine (BDB) that today's client uses. This was briefly discussed here: - http://bitcointalk.org/?topic=2348.0 |
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And realize this is just the surface I just had a conversation with someone who runs a consumer-to-consumer used-auto listing service. Normally there are all kinds of problems with trust for both sides of the process. The seller takes a big risk in letting the potential buyer test drive the car, for instance. I suggested that bitcoins could be used to help increase the likelihood that the potential buyer returns with the vehicle. Having an escrow agent, such as BTCrow.com in the middle, for instance would help to protect both parties. Additionally, showing up with a pocketful of cash to a location of the seller's choosing makes many buyers uneasy. With bitcoin and a smartphone the buyer needn't carry cash at all. If everything checks out, the buyer can complete the purchase on-the-spot. These are two examples of niche uses for bitcoin that aid certain types of commerce. They are examples that show how Bitcoin can help improve our lives. These two examples are, to reiterate your statement, "just the surface". |
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What sort of company handles customer money like this? Thousand dollar transfers missing for days, no notice or communication with those effected. And then you have to chase your own problem down and walk them through it.  The problem is that there are two very young and very hungry aggressive organizations involved -- Dwolla and Mt. Gox. Both organizations follow the "release early and release often" approach to software development. Established financial institutions dance to the beat of a different drum -- one that is less tolerant of risk but at the same time is much more expensive and moves much more slowly. Here's an example. Apparently Mt. Gox has a dependency against Dwolla's web interface. When Dwolla makes changes to their site, Mt. Gox's interface breaks. Dwolla isn't concerned enough about edge cases like Mt. Gox to provide a separate environment so that those interfaces can be readied in advance. As a result, these changes to their site are terribly disruptive to Mt. Gox's customers who use Dwolla. |
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people that are involved are either techies or financial professionals. and libertarians. Ask five different Bitcoiners why they are interested in the currency and you might get five different answers. That's good having more than one core selling point but that's also bad because that means it gets harder to come up with a single message to deliver. There are things that nearly all have in common -- a distaste for banks. Using Bitcoin to marginalize banks to where they become an insignificant part of our lives is something we would all love to see happen. I wouldn't know where to even start in trying to communicate that message though. This is a relevant thread: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=12842.0Rick Falvinge has some great posts exploring the "why"s of Bitcoin. His series starts here: http://falkvinge.net/2011/06/16/bitcoins-four-drivers-part-one-unlawful-trade Getting Bitcoin used as a payment method can happen after grass roots interest from consumers, but more likely it will get traction when merchants, game developers and ecommerce organizations start to see how bitcoin brings benefits over alternatives (no chargebacks, significantly lower transaction fees and nearly instantaneous "settlement"). Perhaps directing some more attention toward identifying the merchants that should be using bitcoin and convincing them to consider it is the most beneficial (to bitcoin) first step for this PR initiative? |
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i dont understand why it is so difficult to get a block when there are thousands of blocks available There is one block that will be solved in the next ten minutes (on average) and it is worth about $400 at current exchange rates. Tens of thousands of miners globally are performing 12,960,000,000,000 hashes in the next second and another 12,960,000,000,000 hashes being performed the second after that, and so on until a hash is found that matches the criteria specified by the difficulty level. When that happens, the current block is solved and the next block begins. Difficulty will increase automatically every so often so that blocks are solved at a target rate of one every ten minutes. That's the technical reason. If you instead are asking what is the purpose of this hashing, it is the method bitcoin implements to make it so that the blockchain can be trusted as being correct. Since there is no central authority, this "proof of work" system is what ensures that trust is not misplaced. |
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Also how many confirmations does it take to be sure it is real? - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#Why_do_I_have_to_wait_10_minutes_before_I_can_spend_money_I_received.3FI am curious how does someone send fake bitcoins? Without mining, you can try a race attack where you spend from two nodes (say, node A and node B) with the same coin at the same time to two different merchants. It is possible that one merchant will see the spend from node A and another merchant will see the spend from node B. Of course, as soon as there is a block, whichever spend reached the miner first will be the one included in the block. If the merchant accepts as payment a transaction on 0/unconfirmed then that merchant has exposure to this race attack. There is not yet a system developed to counter this but a solution to this is for the merchant's node to listen to many nodes especially those of pools to see if there was another attempt to spend. Within seconds the merchant can know that no other spend attempts were attempted and if a race attack were being attempted the chance of it succeeding drop to almost nothing. While there are possible but not likely explanations that a double spend would be attempted, the risks to a brick and mortar merchant when accepting bitcoin on 0/unconfirmed are likely less than other risks faced (e.g., shoplifting, credit card chargebacks, etc.) There is another attack if the attacker is mining. If a block is mined, the bad actor miner then makes a purchase with a merchant but then after securing the goods, announces the block which has that same coin spent to a different address -- likely one owned by the miner. This is called the Finney attack: - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses#The_.22Finney.22_attackThe bitcoin client doesn't "confirm" until 6 blocks. Waiting until 1/unconfirmed will lessen the risk to a Finney attack. Waiting for 6/unconfirmed will lessen to nearly zero the risk that a payment received will be lost to a double spend. |
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I know about exchanges, but I'm looking to buy with PayPal. There are people on #bitcoin-otc marketplace who will accept paypal from trusted sources. - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Secure_Trading#Use_Bitcoin-OTCPerhaps a first purchase using something like a MoneyPak will help you to build trust, and then PayPal could be used later. Bitcoin is a prohibited purchase in PayPal's user agreement so it is probably best to avoid them entirely. |
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Bob might be working his ass off to improve bitcoin, which in turn raises the price of bitcoin. But Joe sits back and enjoys the fruits of Bob's labor by simple holding on to a bunch of bitcoins he did almost no work to acquire. Bob probably owned bitcoins prior to Joe, and Joe's purchase of the bitcoins took them off the market which decreased the supply of bitcoins for sale and possibly helped to cause the exchange rate to rise. The gains in the exchange rate either motivated Bob to continue his work or he may have even took some profits and sold at a higher rate, using the gains as bootstrap capital to help fund his endeavor. i.e., that's not communism. |
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FYI,
From the #mtgox IRC channel:
> (03:58:38 PM) MagicalTux: m03sizlak: dwolla changed their site, it means I need to re-code all the withdraw process. I modified it but it seems to not have been enough, I'll have to fix it more
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I wonder how my android bitcoin wallet app is able to accept bitcoins w/out downloading 500 MB of stuff? Android Wallet is based on BitcoinJ which is a librarry that uses "headers only" instead of the full blockchain. |
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