There's a number of problems with stores and anonymity mainly if the stores hold my information and their servers are broken into or worst then my information is out in the open. So a solution to solving this would be to include a public key with my bitcoin transaction. The store receives my public key and the transaction and my account which is labeled by public key is credited. When I go to make an order on the stores website, I encrypt my order with my private key, the store then receives the encrypted file and decrypts the file which they then process, take the money out of my account and destroy the encrypted contents. This way at no time will my order or information be stored on a database. In addition, the store can prove that I in fact made the order because the complete order information will be encrypted by the same keypair that I sent with the bitcoin transaction.

I get the feeling that when we're told that we gotta protect something like bitcoin that we're essentially putting our bodies in front of the government. This to me seems like the famous build a human chain around a forest to prevent the tractors from coming in and destroying everything. Eventually the forest is destroyed and everyone goes to jail or the hospital. I think a more proactive approach would be to teach people about bitcoin and how it works. Going to universities and giving a speech to junior programmers about the insides of P2P networks like Bitcoin, TOR, I2P etc which will then give the tools to build their own P2P networks. This to me is the proactive approach that is similar to planting the seeds where a patch of trees was harvested.

In another thread I was making the analogy that you'd have a local network inside a submarine and the crew wanted to transfer bitcoins to eachother but there might be an occasion when the crew would want to buy a shipment of stuff from a city so ever so often the sub would emerge onto the water surface where the sub would them be in radio range to send the bitcoins. From the feedback that I got it sounded like you can't have a segregated bitcoin network like in my example as it would cause double spending? In any case I did come up with a solution for this. Instead of having one bitcoin network you'd have bitcoin networks. The bitcoin Internet and bitcoin intranets. To connect them to eachother people acting as bitcoin to bitcoin traders would handle the transactions that were off of each bitcoin network so for example bitcoin_submarine would have a bitcoin - bitcoin trader who would collect bitcoins from a crew member and then the bitcoin trader would call another bitcoin - bitcoin trader on the shore and tell that person that they collected 10btc and that the 10btc would go to some address in the city which then would become the responsibility of the bitcoin - bitcoin trader on the shore to make that transaction through the network. I guess what I'm saying is that if bitcoin must rely on the Internet for it to work then this might be an alternative solution so in the case that you make, someone in Africa who does not have a link to the Internet, that village would setup a bitcoin - bitcoin trader, someone who can be trusted by another bitcoin - bitcoin trader and then through a computer or a few computers setup in a LAN configuration that village would be able to make local BTC trades while also making global trades around the world without needing a 100% dedicated Internet connection.

I've argued something similar to this before and I'll start by admitting that there were holes in my argument. What I would like to see is a way to show upon transaction that the sender was me and to also allow a 3rd party to see that the payment was from me. When I say me I don't necessary mean that me should be validated by a government ID rather it should be something that some people would accept as identity. In addition, the reason why I would want this in the transaction is so that it will be difficult to show that the transaction was not made by me. For example, I could have stolen someone elses bitcoin wallet and said that I made the transaction when I didn't. I'm not necessary saying that this is the approach that should be taken. I could be completely wrong again in my argument, however I do know through a previous thread that it is possible to send data along the side of a transaction without changing the bitcoin protocol and one of the ideas that I was thinking of at the time which would support my argument was that a transaction could also include your GPG key which would then be your identity and you could prove to the receiver of the bitcoin and to any 3rd party that it was your transaction simply by signing that it was you.

Edit: Here's the topic that I was referencing
Development & Technical Discussion: Topic: How do I know who paid me?  (March 06, 2011) http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4220.0

I already understood that with the current bitcoind client you can't send messages with your transactions because otherwise people would be using it but what it sounds like you're saying is that someone could create a patch for the bitcoin sourcecode which would add this functionality to bitcoin even though there are no plans from the developers to include a messaging feature. In the case where Gaven modified the source to include a vanity feature, someone else in the next half hour could modify the source to allow a PGP public signature to pass with the transaction and then anyone with that modified source would be able to see it or the intended recipient would also be able to see the PGP public key. And finally; this could be done without disrupting the Bitcoin network because you're using something that's already in the protocol?

I did not know that you can send messages with your transactions. Are these messages readable by participating bitcoin clients or something like blockexplorer (if they were to modify their website to include these fields)? Also; how about using this message field to include a GPG public key. That way if someone sends me a Bitcoin, they can also send me an encrypted message through a different messaging protocol which I can then decrypt.

Mining is inevitable and rather than fear it we should embrace mining. One way that I think this could be done is by bringing the privilege of mining to the casual computer user who will make an investment to Bitcoin.

I'll have to agree with you on this one. Like you said, give a few dollars to someone in need and include a leaflet about Bitcoin with the cash. Maybe they'll turn those dollars into Bitcoins.

Bitcoin is like an identity. All the peanut company would need to do is associate your Bitcoin address with your DNA.

How about getting a bunch of removable 3M stickies and sticking them on the bills and other stuff. Then the person receiving the bill can unpeal them and it wont mess up the bill.

http://www.3m.com/us/office/postit/labels/products_color_coding.html

I might just be confusing the topic but what would happen if you had a LAN with more machines running bitcoin than all the machines running bitcoin on the Internet? In that case, would the LAN overtake the Internet?

It might be worth researching sites that offer anonymous like technology such as Tor, I2P and Anonet to see if they have any currency needs. In addition, games and other applications that have their own standard of currency could consider adopting Bitcoin as a replacement or running side by side. I know OSGrid, an opensource Second Life server of connected servers has a currency that they don't use but some of the individuals there might considering adopting Bitcoin as their currency standard.

I would love to be the miner and make my wealth that way but the thing is if I can't exchange it for another currency then what am I going to do with all those Bitcoins? Going back to what it takes to being a miner these days. If you're already into the technologies involved in mining, a beefy computer, GPU and especially social networking with alike thinkers then there's really not that much when it comes to investment. Look at this guy "Extreme World of Warctaft Games Rig: 47 PCs" (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/07/extreme-world-o/) he built a huge computer network just so he can play 47 world of warcraft characters. He obviously loves doing this stuff or else he would not have done it in the first place and plus he makes no money whatsoever. Not a dime in this hobby he has going. I think that there are definitely going to be cases where gamers will hop onto the idea of generating Bitcoins but the thing we gotta realise is that generating bitcoins for wealth will quickly die if the bitcoins to cash traders get swamped and there's no facilities intact that will take Bitcoins for services. In the end, these gamers will probably get tired of their new hobby and leave. Worst of all is that these gamers will probably not care for all the Bitcoins they've generated and will simply throw them away - literally delete their wallet.dat file and all those bitcoins they had -. I think that we need to be responsible for the direction that the Bitcoin network leads. If we neglect the currency then our new currency will end up being the US dollar thrown into the fireplace to heat our homes.

For some reason I only saw the download links in #2 and I didn't see the "What is bitcoin" in #1. I would go with #2 for the video and download layout and then I would take the text format that is currently on bitcoin.org and replace that with the text in #2.

This thread was quite an interesting read. One thing that seems to have become unnoticed is Liberty Reserve's part in the stolen Bitcoins. I think that in the case of large transactions like the ones that happened in this thread there really needs to be an obligation to check whether the Bitcoins are stolen or not. MtGox took the right approach to trace how the funds were stolen and where they went. In fact I think that if Liberty Reserve was not so quick to trade the Bitcoins into cash then there would have been a larger chance to catch the thief with the Bitcoins.

I think in the end all avenues need to be checked and not simply the ones that deal with password security or server security. Simply sweeping this problem under the rug isn't going to solve anything and when problems like these do happen they need to be documented in their fullest. This is the second time I've read a thread where a lot of money was stolen and I can only imagine this problem escalating as Bitcoin becomes more known to the general people and especially to those that do not take security seriously.

Getting paid to do something you love, build beefy computers, hook them up into lans and pretty much sit on it does sound like a good business however I also wonder if all they do with the bitcoins they made is trade them in for USD dollars then eventually those Bitcoin to currency traders are going to have so much Bitcoins that they'll probably close shop. It will end up being like trading furbies. Eventually nobody cares anymore. So my question is why should I take my hard earned money and exchange it for Bitcoins if all I can do with Bitcoins is exchange them back into dollars or maybe I could get another bitcoin client going and trade my bitcoins back and forth...

I would call it a technology achievement demonstrating that technology in itself can produce wealth in the same sense that technology itself can search the stars such as in the program SETI@HOME and the various of other multicomputer technologies programs.

Well I would think that proving that you once owned a gold coin and that you shipped it would be enough. I think there would also need to be a lot of credibility to prove on either side. On the other hand if the person claiming the money was stolen was claiming that it happened after receiving the 1500BTC then I don't see how it could harm you in the very least because now it's about someone stealing money and not necessary that the object was never shipped.

What if the coin was stolen and the police were after it. The person that now has the coin would be out a lot more than 1500BTC

Bitcoins don't necessarily need to be exchanged through a forum. If I see a car on a used car lot which says for sale 5000BTC and I decide to buy it with anonymous currency and later say that I never made the purchase then I better be prepared to back my statement with no car and no title transfer.
Edit: Changing BC to BTC