Can someone just please respond to him by stating gold is infinitely divisible? Has anyone tried that with him?

Depends on what your intent is. But Coinbase is easy and simple. The issue is that they will charge your bank account (which is reversible), so they wait 7 days before they deliver your coins. You will get your coins for the price you put in your order however. After 30 days you can get level 2 verified and buy coins instantly.

Also, first time buyers sometimes get flagged as "high risk" and their purchases get cancelled. It's annoying. But anyone, once the kinks are ironed out it's smooth sailing. Otherwise you're going to have to deal with Localbitcoins or maybe wiring money to Bitstamp.

Maybe I'm missing something, but Electrum doesn't seem to require a password on startup? It just opens. Is this normal? I'm running it on Ubuntu.

Could you elaborate on how Gox is operating like a fractional reserve bank?

I bought coins via Coinbase on 11/1 and received them yesterday (along with my nice value increase on them). Your theory of them scamming you is a stretch. I've bought from them the past several weeks and always have gotten my coins despite the consistent price increase since October.

Get level 2 verified and your worries are out the window. Or you can try to wire money to Bitstamp which will take 5 days and you won't be able to buy coins before the price increases.  You'll be in exactly the same boat you are in now. Life goes on. And I say this as someone who also had my first transaction with Coinbase flagged, losing profits as a result.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say most exchanges don't have the volume nor the bandwidth to support true HFT. It will eventually happen though.

This cannot be over-stated. Yes rich people want to accumulate more wealth, but find me a very wealthy person who still works regularly and I'll show you someone who is working to be challenged, not to get even richer.

Ditto.

Yeah, probably not worth the investment.