i'm looking for a private domain registrar that respects anonymity and has decent prices. i'm considering privacy shark, as that's the most obvious solution, but with a cost of $35 / year that's a bit steep. of course, if that's what i have to pay for a nice private, anonymous domain, so be it.

any other alternatives?

Not to mention how badly it mangles the node's filesystem.

Good god, administrating an OpenVZ node is an unending parade of fscks.

+1, fast and easy, pleasure doing business.

+1, Amazon GC

I'm looking to buy a game or two on Steam, plus an Amazon gift card. Basically...

1 Steam game ($50) + $100 Amazon GC

OR

$150 Amazon GC

Great way to get some BTC if you're looking! Send me a PM, or hit me up on Skype, same username as my forum name ( echonaut ).

I'm looking to buy Plexes (in-game, not codes) for Eve online.

If you have any and are interested in selling, please PM me and we can discuss a price!

What VPN service is used? OpenVPN? If so, can the standard OpenVPN client be used, or is a special client required, ala Mulvad?

I will offer 15 BTC @ 3.8 USD for a copy of Brink on Steam.

+1, another Amazon gift card. Quick and easy.

+1

Just bought an amazon gift card, great service and very attentive. Will definitely come back. :]

I am looking into offer XEN-based VPS services in exchange for BTC, and in an effort to spearhead my efforts I am offering 1 XEN VPS, hosted on a CentOS node based in Chicago.

Xen has an advantage over other virtualization software in that it is a fully virtualized, fully emulated environment that does not share a kernel, unlike other VPS solutions such as Virtuozzo. This means that you can install TUN/TAP modules on Xen-based VPSes for VPN connections. As this is based in the United States, setting up a VPN on such a VPS can provide a great way of accessing location-restricted services, such as Hulu, Netflix, or other various video / streaming services.

The specifications on the VPS are as follows:

• RAM: 256 MB
• Disk Space: 30 GB
• Bandwidth: Unmetered 100mbps connection for the VPS, 1Gbps connection for the node (so you won't run into any bottlenecks)
• Dedicated IP
• OS: Any available Linux distribution*

This VPS is unmanaged, meaning that I will not assist you with any software setup, though if you have any questions you can always send me an email and I'll take a look at it -- I just can't guarantee I'll be able to help you. I also will have little tolerance for abuse complaints: anything outright illegal, such as child pornography, will be immediately terminated, no questions asked, and the data immediately destroyed. I do not mind torrents or piracy, but do me a favor and use private trackers. Any piracy complaints will receive one warning. Second piracy complaint will be terminated, but the VPS img file will be saved so you can recover your data.

COST: 18 BTC / month

While this offer is firm and full-service, this sale is for a single VPS because it is a trial of the viability of offering this service, and if this offer proves successful, I will begin service to more customers.

If you have any questions or comments, or are interested in this offer, please don't hesitate to send me a message.

Thanks!

*I have CentOS 5.5 (x64/i386), Fedora 14 i386, Ubuntu 10.10 i386, and Debian 6 i386 already downloaded and ready to install. I can download any other free and open source OS, but setup might take a couple hours longer. Without specification, you will have a base install with only SSH access, and partitioning will be 1GB swap, 29GB in /.

That's my plan if I continue this further than simply 3 gifts, and it's part of the reason I'm limiting it to 3 games at this point. I'll definitely be open to doing more gifts in the future if interest exists.

I'm starting with just 3, just to start, but you can PM me at any time -- even after I've sold 3 -- and I'll be happy to work something out with you.

Any games, from the $0.99 Magic The Gathering expansions I just saw, up to a pre-order for Portal 2.

I am willing gift 3 2 Steam games up to $50 each to anyone who's interested. These can be any games / add-ons / expansions that are sold on Steam, and the price per game doesn't matter, but I'd prefer to keep it to a maximum of $50 (most of the full new PC games on Steam max out at $50). You can buy 1, 2, or all 3. I'm flexible on the BTC price; based on the April 12th Mt Gox price of ~0.89 I'd do 62 BTC for a $50 game, but it's totally open to negotiation.

PM me if you're interested and we'll get this ball rolling.

I'm willing to sell (or buy) EVE Online game time cards ( http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Game_Time_Card ) that can be traded in-game, between characters. These GTCs are bought in 60-day amounts, but come in 2 in-game items that can each separately be redeemed for 1 month of game play time.

At this point I'd probably be looking at 20BTC per 30 day GTC, or 40 for 60 days.

If anyone is interested in this, please feel free to PM me and we can exchange contact information.

Great response, that really helped me a lot.

I do have one question though, and it's more a request for clarification than an actual question:

As I've been reading and reading and reading about Bitcoin, the nagging thought in the back of my head has been: how can I (if possible) use this system to pay for those core things that I need to live, such as groceries and rent. The answer to that, in my mind, has been that I will, at the end of the day, need to convert BTC to USD in order for the BTC to basically "interface" (for lack of a better term) with other, more widely circulated currencies; basically the currencies that we use day to day. That is, I imagine, where an exchange comes in.

My biggest concern has been the trustworthiness of the exchange, but I think I've been considering it all wrong: I've been thinking of exchanges as, essentially, banks that have a quantity of money and I pay them, then they pay me in Bitcoins. There is, of course, the concern for fraud, which is one of the things that BTC is trying to create a system against.

But am I thinking about it wrong? Do these exchanges purely facilitate the trade of Bitcoins-to-USD/CAD/EUR/whatever between the users? So that I go to, for instance, Mt. Gox, put a proposed exchange, and then I'm contacted by the user with the appropriate currency to then do the exchange, and everything is done directly so that there is no intermediary that acts as a bank to hold money for me (or anyone else) to withdraw from? Or is it these services that act as escrow, essentially?

I apologize if these questions seem pretty rudimentary, but I'm intrigued by the prospect of BTC as a thing, and I'm always and forever interested in crypto-anything, so why not get involved in cryptocurrency?