I predict you will be assassinated before that 24 hours is up if you're correct. 8D

This conversation was my absolute favorite... The guy on camera right was very concerned about how Bitcoin was a scam, monopoly money, had no value, and was having a real hard time understanding how transactions occurred at the customer/merchant level. The conversation was getting louder and louder and approaching an uncomfortable level at which point the older guy in the middle, we called "the money man" of the group, left. The guy on the right continued for a little bit but gave up and left too. The guy on camera left stuck around and watched the demo bit-pay had for their mobile checkout and pay card stuff.

About an hour later, the guy on the right came back to the booth with bitcoins in his eyes and full of excitement. He finally got it and was tossing these ideas around in his head about how he could start using Bitcoin in his business. It was a very rewarding experience to be a part of. Fun times.

Should have saved this for April. 

The only problem I see is that PGP is, to the average user, this ominous, difficult to understand thing, that users have historically not taken part in..

Bitcoin, however, if it becomes ubiquitous, will automatically be in their hands because they are using Bitcoin. They will automatically have the technology to do digital signatures and possibly public key encryption through their Bitcoin keys - if the client can deliver a user friendly interface.

Not only do you understand, you're eloquent in your explanation. Unlike some other people around here. Thank you and Fuck MyBitcoin.com.

I dunno... I'd have to ponder it more... but if they used a shared wallet, like instawallet, Bitcoins in your mybitcoin.com account might have actually been stored in another bitcoin address. What address you put in to is not necessarily what address you get out of.

I'm not defending mybitcoin.com AT ALL... but your logic is flawed. You can't determine, with only this information, who is actually spending the Bitcoins - hackers or site owners.

There's no need to pollute Bitcoin... The keys and addresses books are already there. Just a dialog box or two to sign messages - or whatever depending on what kind of applications are innovated.

PGP does work well, but hasn't it been like around since the dinosaurs and the average person still hasn't adopted it? If Bitcoin become ubiquitous as a currency, we've already pushed a huge portion of PKI to everyone in the world at that point. Just a few more dialogs boxes to go and everyone's using decentralized encryption and digital signatures. The thought of that makes me kinda wet. Doesn't it have the same effect on you?

So so many people in this thread misunderstand what Deflationary means. How can we have a meaningful discussion without a common understanding of what it is?

First, we should all understand that Inflation is an increase in the money supply. The government prints more fiat to spend on its programs. This increase in the circulation of currency devalues everyone else's holding in the currency since there is simply more of them.

The great trick being played on us by all the central banks of the world is not that goods and services get more expensive - but that their shitty fiat currency decreases in value against those goods and services due to their wreckless (and greedy) inflation.

Give that Inflation is the increase in the number of units of a currency, it follows that Deflation is the decrease in the number of units of currency. This results in the currency being worth more against products and services over a period of time.

Before Bitcoin - there has never been a truly deflationary currency. Not even Gold. Gold inflates and deflates all the time due to manufacturing requirements and new mines. Hell, we even created gold in nuclear reactors already.

Bitcoin is currently an inflationary currency  - inflating itself into existence. But it is already being deflated - Remind yourself of the polish exchange that lost 17k BTC. Those Bitcoins, and others already lost to forgotten passwords, failed hard drives with no backup, etc are gone forever, computationally impossible to recover and never to be circulated again. Once the Bitcoin inflation period gets close to the end, we will have already begun an ever increasing deflationary period. We will never quite reach our 21 million mark and ever lose more and more due to people's unfortunate acts of negligence. It's conceivable that only 20 million, or perhaps 19 million bitcoins will ever be in circulation (accessible) before the mining process reaches 0 BTC reward. It just depends on how much bad luck or negligence people experience.

One thing is true - Bitcoin is the world's FIRST truly deflationary currency and it is an social experiment I'm very excited to have the opportunity to participate in - although I might not ever live long enough to see how it turns out.

This is great and all, but it has no variables for the human factors like optimism, fear, greed, risk, and personal financial conditions (to name a few).

Bitcoin is young. These are all things that can be addressed as developers and users understand new ways to use Bitcoin.

Besides, there are currently plenty of ways to protect the keys beyond what the current client provides.

BTW guys, If you can't find any booth babes, I'll put on a Bikini and strut around for a few Bitcoins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo&list=PL82F1B07C3D2D409A&feature=plpp_play_all&loop=1&autoplay=1

If you load this YouTube link, it will loop these four Bitcoin videos. All. Day. Long.

WeUseCoins
Alpaca Socks - Min Max (music video)
Bit-Pay Mobile Checkout
Bitcoin Radio Ad

I'm starting to think this would be most beneficial for rapid micropayments with zero fraud or at least usable fraud mitigation.

I just had an epiphany... if traditional PKI could be performed with Bitcoin, then couldn't merchants require the association of a bitcoin address with an account and effectively render the multiple confirmation time problem null and void?

For instance, a user could setup an account with their public key with a merchant... then at the time of purchase, sign a challenge with the private key as a authentication to that account. If the user does do some kind of fraud, it's linked to an account for reporting to an authority (or whatever). With the authentication, the merchant could trust 0 confirmation transactions instantly.

This might be unpopular, but I believe that individuals with limited computing power can contribute to the security of the network by continuing to mine with no real expectation of earning an inflation or transaction award - distributing their "honest node" hashing power to combat the potential for evil collusion.

Finally some visitors for me... Can't wait to hang out with you guys!

Has anyone discussed using the PKI of Bitcoin as an encryption and authentication method? Specifically, since it puts digital keys in the hands of every user, is it possible for a system to present a challenge string to a user, have them sign it with their "registered" key, and prove an identity? Can the Bitcoin keys be used to encrypt to public keys in the same fashion as PGP?

It seems like Bitcoin indirectly pushes a PGP type solution to end users in a way that can be intuitive for the average person if a client could accommodate this kind of feature.

Personally, I think we need a new thread for $7.   

Unfortunately, I agree. The split-key stuff can't get developed fast enough IMO. It won't prevent all scandals, but it will put a HUGE dent in the numbers when it gets used properly.