Does anyone know why bitbills.com order page has suspended new orders? I was waiting until they came out of "beta" before I ordered. And now this. Sorry if this was already discussed, but I didn't see it.

TIA,
befuddled

Anyone ever tried mining on ReactOS?

My vague notion is it is it is supposed to be an open source Win XP replacement. The main appealing thing is it claims is that it is binary compatible with windows drivers. I have no idea if the ATI Catalyst and such will install and run on it though.

I've got some dollars. I've got some bitcoins. I need to buy some good or service "A". So long as real interest rates are negative, I'd rather part with my dollars than my appreciating bitcoins. So I hoard bitcoins and I spend dollars. So I'm thinking there's a powerful tendency for bitcoins to serve as a store of wealth like gold rather than as a currency in commerce so long as this state of affairs persists. I expect it will persist, because positive real rates would mean a debt-service burden the us.gov couldn't support and a cost of capital that would sink many companies. A terrifically deflationary scenario. Similar rationale applies outside the US. And so long as the Berrnank and those like him are practicing their theory at the Fed and other central banks, they probably won't let it (positive real rates) happen.

I don't think BTC being used as a store of value is bad for us, or bad for bitcoin. Just seems like a more likely evolution of events to me than anything else.

Well. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.