It is called prepaid.  

The reality is consumers like it.   In the US the prepaid segment of cellphones is growing 3x as fast as post-paid (recurring bills).  In a couple years the post-paid segment will likely flatline and at some point prepaid will be the majority of plans.  Prepaid cellphone plans now cover everything up to and including the top of the line smartphones and 4G computer/hostspot type devices.  Sure post-paid with overages, hidden charges, unintended payments, etc are GREAT for the merchant but consumers will go where they find the best value.   "Why you no come back?  I want to rape you with hidden fees and unwanted payments" 

http://www.bitmit.net/en/user/TangibleCrypto

As more products become prepaid more consumers will expect/demand it.  There is almost no product/service which can't be prepaid.  Someone will open the first prepaid gym.  It is only a matter of time.  Pay $x for 20 workouts.  The smart merchant analyzes his consumer behavior.  If you know the average consumer quits before using 30 workouts then you can significantly "discount" the units the consumer will never use.

i.e.
$10 for 1 workout
$50 for 20 workouts
$70 for 50 workouts (w/ a BEST VALUE icon)

Change can be scary but if you are offering a clunky recurring billing payment and your competitors are offering a prepaid card you are going to lose.
At best any workaround could be described as clunky.  The fatal flaw will be the lack of universal support.  Are you only going to accept payments from customers using wallets that support it?  Bitcoin market is already small can you afford to make it smaller?

Bitcoin is revolutionary so it requires some out of the box thinking.  There isn't always a direct equivalent but they are alternatives.    One idea I just thought of would be to setup your service/site where when the user logs in it informs him of how many days/units he has left.  Some smart programming could recommend users personalized "one day only sales" to get them to re-up before the last minute.  To continue the gym example, if the user just finished a great workout, that night send him an email offer about discounted price (limited time only of course).

The key word was IF.   I believe in the potential of Bitcoin.  I wouldn't be here if I didn't and I certainly wouldn't have started a company to explore ecommerce using bitcoins if I thought it had no potential.

Still potential =/= tangible utility.  Assuming it does and thus price is supported by current utility is a fallacy.  

BRACE YOURSELF:  Bitcoin "may" never live up to that potential.  Regulatory, technical, or social issues may prevent it.  

Once again keyword is "may".  The OP was about Bitcoin failing.  I think Bitcoin failing is very unlikely but Bitcoin stagnating and becoming a niche technology with a much smaller valuation is certainly a "possibility".  Bitcoin doesn't need to fail in order for the future valuation to be much much lower.

Well it was an almost year long research project at the University of Carnegie Mellon.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.7139v1.pdf


They did a complete scrape of the entire SR every day for eight months and dumped the listings, feedback, and order statuses into a database.  From that and analyzing the daily changes and timestamps they built a model to extrapolate daily and monthly volume.    Slight more than just "pulled by the number of forum users or someshit".

While obviously is some error (it is an estimate) it is the most detailed look at the SR yet.   It seems unlikely their methodology would be so bad that they are off by a magnitude.   Their estimate is SR operator has gross revenue of ~$200K per month.   If it is $150K or $400 it doesn't really material change the assessment that Pirate operation is simply too large to be the SR tumbler.  Hell even if the SR operator GROSS REVENUE was $2 million (a stretch to think their methodology was that inaccurate) it seems very unlikely they would give 60% of that away for "tumbling services".

No the 8 BTC fee is for creating a NEW asset (i.e. you wanted to have an IPO to issue a new contract or bond).

If you want to buy shares in an existing asset there is only the 0.5% fee.

No.  I retain >50% ownership of the LLC.

No it is complete and utter nonsense.   "difficulty drives price" = nonsense.  Always has been and always will.

The rate of supply is fixed (well it will be reduced but the # of miners doesn't change it).  

If there is 1 miner and difficulty 1 the supply rate is still +50 BTC per block.  
If there are 100 million miners and difficulty is 40 quadrillion the supply rate is still + 50 BTC per block.

Miners quitting is like gold miner's quitting where the output (tons of gold) declines as the number of miners decline.   If miners quit the rate of minting remains the same.  If new miners join the rate of minting is still the same.  If mining is non profitable people will stop and difficulty falls but that has no effect on the money supply.  It keeps growing at the same rate*

PRICE rising makes mining more profitable (for a given difficulty) and thus higher prices result in higher difficulty (as the ROI% goes up more miners rush in to get the "easy money") and likewise PRICE falling makes mining less profitable (for a given difficulty) and thus lower prices result in lower difficulty.

so "prices drives difficulty" is a valid assertion although the relationship is often poorly correlated and lagging.  There are other factors which drive difficulty (risk, miner efficiency, block reward amount, potential new products, even the season, etc) but there is some relationship.  

"difficult drives price" was false the first time someone said it and it still is false.




* The one exception would be a massive and rapid drop is hashing power.  Since it take 2016 blocks to readjust if say 90% of hashing power quit right after difficulty adjustment then the rate of supply WOULD be affected and it would take ~20 weeks before an adjustment would occur.  Small changes in hashing power or larger changes over extended periods of time are compensated by the difficulty adjustment.

$8 huh?

So only 25.9% commission.  Customer gives you irreversible BTC, you give them risk prone PayPal and charge 25.9% for the service?

Just making sure I got this right.

Of the three partners the idea of expanding our working capital is mine.  The other two are content to just let volume expand organically and if necessary raise our fees and offer a larger discount on direct sales to manage cashflow and prevent "outages".   They have somewhat reluctantly agreed to at least attempt this alternative method of financing.  The company is so far funded with cash.  

As to why we don't get a small business loan?  The reality is it won't happen.  Not for a business with less than a year of history and certainly not at 5%.  Getting small business loan is far harder than most people think.   Honestly if you have good credit you are just better off getting a personal credit card and taking an advance (liability is non concern because any bank is going to require a guarantor on the small business loan anyways).   Of course all that assumes you are a "normal" business.   Mention bitcoin (or anything techy, confusing, or out of the box) and it is a non-starter.

I can finance this on my personal credit card at 9.9% APR however I am looking to refinance my house in the next six months and a $20K advance probably won't help my credit score.  If I can't secure a loan the backup plan is to wait for the refinance to be completed and then draw an advance from my personal credit card.   You also mentioned home equity. I would never finance a business venture with home equity.  That is just poor risk management IMHO.  Saving a couple % isn't worth the risk of losing your home if things go south.

As for the rate being punitive.  I don't think the loan will be held for a year at least not at that rate.  The note does allow either party to terminate the note with 30 days notice.  If we can turn over the capital twice per month (we currently acheive higher than that) our margin gives us about 7% to 10% gross profit margin on the borrowed funds (which will cost us ~4%).   That is a heavy price to pay but for short term financing it is manageable. 

No.  If that is a concern then maybe it works better to consider this a personal loan to me (that just happens to be repaid through the company unless the company defaults).

No.  Mining is a zero sum game.  As faster miners are developed miners must purchase them or see their share of mining rewards decline.  Regardless of how much hashing power the network has the number of coins added to circulation follow a predictable rate.

The difficulty of mining has no effect on the price  (BTC:USD exchange rate) of bitcoin.    Price does affect network hashing power and difficulty but not the reverse.

Makes sense.  Density follows internet usage/density.    The strange exception is Japan and the rest of eastern Asia.  Those countries generally have above average internet usage/access but Bitcoin popularity lags.

I will add a +1 to don't revise your magazine.  Issue #1 is issue #1 and it should remain that way.  Are you going to revise all the print copies, and issue new ones?

If you feel it is absolutely necessary a footnote being added to the ORIGINAL UNEDITED COPY reporting on the subsequent demise of Bitcoinica is about as far as you should go. 

That would be the worst of both options.  You made it an "auto-win" for scammers and a loser for almost anyone else. 

With a 2 of 2 a scammer has no little economic incentive to enter the agreement.  If the scammer has absolutely no rep (and thus no cost on the tx) it could be economically viable to use a 2 of 2 escrow as hostage to get some free funds.  That can be negated by requiring one or both parties to put a deposit into the escrow.  The scammer now has something at risk (either reputation, or the deposited funds).  If the deposit is more than the expected value of future extortion the "game" is now a net loss for the scammer.

Generally people don't work against their own economic interests.

However with a coin flip on deadlock the scammer will win 50% of the time.  It is unlikely any extortion attempt would be successful 50% of the time so you have improved the odds.

If we consider all the disputed transactions and grouped them into the following categories which do you think makes up the lions share:
* one party is intentionally at fault (scammer)
* both parties generally believe they are in the right (failure to communicate)
* some technical issue (lost wallet, one party dies, funds are stolen before payment, etc)

I would argue that the first case is the overwhelming majority of disputed payments.  The scam and run scenario.  A coin flip hurts the prevention of that scenario.    Go after the biggest problem first.

Which should be resolved this week, "by Wednesday" the bank manager says.  I am not holding my breath but hopefully soon.

The concept is called "coin control" and my understanding is that it is being worked on. 

Great digitally sign a message to that effect with the private key from the address containing your payout funds and I will gladly buy a ticket.

Also what is commonly misunderstood in those articles is they researchers DIDN'T teleport a photon.  They teleported the quantum information about a photon.  It has theoretical applications in the use of cryptography.   


In theory if this somehow this could be done at great distances and the quantum information could be recorded it would provide for faster than light communication but so far that has been found to be impossible.  However despite the name quantum teleportation has absolutely nothing to do with transporting objects having mass.

Maybe someday you could use it to make an Ansible Ansible but not to have your friend Scotty "beam you up".

Truth in advertising he did say "could".  It "could" be the biggest thing since bitcoin or it "could" be a complete loss for everyone involved.

Given the OP needs to beg for a listing fee much less the startup capital my guess is on the later.

DOH!  Fixed.

Which means absolutely nothing for the bondholder.  Those fiat costs only determines the profitability or lack there of for the operator.

Technically a mining bond issuer doesn't even NEED any hashing power.  Given the limited due diligence I would hazard a guess that there is at least one naked issuer (issuing bonds on hashing power they don't actually have).   A mining bond is essentially a negative difficulty synthetic contract.   When difficulty rises you get paid less, when it falls you get paid more.

Someone issuing a bond is taking a wager that difficulty will rise significantly and someone buying the bond is taking the reverse side of that trade.