Resistance is futile, the block chain is on its way

I don't get it. Why does people like this guy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3bGAtDzEPo

insist that they didn't tuck away a good lump of bitcoins?

1st RULE: You do not talk about BIT CLUB.

2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about BIT CLUB.

3rd RULE: If someone says "stop" or goes limp, nothing happens.

4th RULE: Only two states to a bit.

5th RULE: One bit at a time.

6th RULE: No fiat, no online wallets.

7th RULE: Bits will stream on as long as they have to.

8th RULE: If this is your first night at BIT CLUB, you HAVE to compile a client.

I noticed a new pin on coinmap.org that excites me a lot.

A farm in Norway is now accepting bitcoin as payment for their real local food products.
Link http://brattlia.no/produkter/

I think this illustrates why bitcoin makes a lot of sense, and it has nothing to do with speculation and bubbles.
Basically, the barrier to markets is so low that anyone can do it. If I fear regulation and speculation of bitcoin it is primarily the fear that it will raise that barrier and stop local initiatives like this from happening.

Bon Appétit

From the videos I have seen from the Texas conference so far I get the feeling that there is a bad vibe throughout the whole conference.
Earlier conferences that has been held in Europe and other places, you get the feeling that everyone is in wonderland and everything is up for grabs.
Also with all the lawyers and legislators coming in, talking about how we (the community) have to expect this and that from government ect.
Sometimes I get the feeling I'm being talked down to as if I was some kind of clever but naughty kid.
Its just a bad vibe to the whole thing.
What do you think?

Has anyone heard of any plans or strategies to get bitcoin into circulation?
I can't imagine btc becoming useful until I have some kind of steady income

Justcoin.com just got a competitor in Norway

https://bitcoinsnorway.com/

After reading this http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0NDM I get the impression that Intel/VIA is up to no good.
Anyone know what the Intel issue really is?

https://twitter.com/EdanYago

Anyone know of an exchange that can sell litecoins without taking forever, preferably using VISA?

We should start organizing good old-fashioned bazaars and street markets selling food and new/used items for bitcoins.
Let everybody participate as both sellers and buyers, and make the currency flow.

http://rt.com/usa/google-schmidt-hopkins-encryption-097/

Does anyone know if there is a MMORPG on the horizon using bitcoin as in-game economy?

It would be awesome if a game like EVE would use this as currency.
A lot more fun than a casino game

Not sure you have seen this. It really cheers me up on a bad day 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_onv9-fHoEc&t=37m50s

The graph shows 691 as highest ever but it was 713 a few hours ago.
Is this some kind of interpolation going on?

Privacy is a fundamental part of what the protocol and software is trying to achieve, and it goes a long way to achieve exactly this.
If that is tampered with, something like 80% of the source code becomes redundant.
The decentralized aspect of bitcoin and the encrypted addresses would no longer be necessary.
Pretty much the entire source code becomes inefficient and/or redundant.

With this scenario a much more efficient model would be to use a centralized solution with a handful of servers around the world and let all the users connect to them using "thin" clients. No need for a distributed network anymore. Transactions would be much faster and easier to fix, change and revert in retrospect.
This is similar to what we already have today when we use online bank services or PayPal, but with the possibilty of lower transaction fees.

With this is mind, which path do you think bitcoin should take?

[all]

What some people don't seems to understand, and Mike Hearn in particular, is that both the bitcoin protocol, and the bitcoin clients, is technically a huge piece of crap.

Who want's to send a magnitude more data than necessary back and forth over the wire?
Who want's to spend huge amounts of time and energy processing the wrong answer to an algorithm over and over?
Who want's to run a offline PC just to keep their wallet safe?
Who want's to encrypt and decrypt every little bit at every level?


Bitcoin is all about privacy and anonymity!

Only a nutjob would use this software if that is messed up.

Does anyone have any insight into this project called dark wallet?

Is it completely open source?

Are the server designed to be a participating node in a flat, decentralized network, so that anyone can run one?