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A predictions market that allowed bitcoin trading on everything from football matches to elections to stock market movements to TV show outcomes would be fantastic. Hell, I see no reason why InTrade itself couldn't accept bitcoins and have made the suggestion to them. (Though I suppose the volatility of bitcoins would be difficult if you had someone using another currency on the other side of the bet, maybe a bitcoin only prediction market would work best for the time being)
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Hookers and Blow
or:
Why if people want bitcoin to be successful as a currency/platform they need to accept that many early adopters will be in the market of drugs and porn.
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To drive adoption of a new technology it must be either clearly superior to technologies at hand or it needs to fill a giant need, even if it is inferior in other ways. Bitcoin will be inferior in many ways to other currencies for a long time -- It will take time for clients to be built on top of the protocol, it will take time for the market to get deeper, it will take time to keep the speculators from driving bust/boom cycles, etc. Put simply, anyone that is focused in the short term on mom and pop shops accepting bitcoins is bound to be disappointed -- no doubt there will be white market businesses accepting bitcoins, but they will be started by or allied with people already ideologically predisposed to like bitcoin.
However, there are two huge markets that have large needs which bitcoin fills nicely. One is actually the mostly white market world of adult entertainment. No, not paying for a prostitute in countries where that is illegal, but things like webcam sites and streaming video, etc.
Why?
One word: Chargebacks.
The porn industry has the highest rate of chargebacks by a wide wide margin. Call it post-orgasm remorse or the partner gets pissed when they get the credit card bill. But chargebacks and the lengthy process of disputing them eat up tons of profits. Chargebacks are, of course, impossible with BTC.
The drug industry has other obvious uses of bitcoin - and while we have seen some of that on the consumer side of the spectrum with TSR and other sites (which no doubt will grow in number), there are obvious needs to move large amounts of money on the producer/dealer side as well. And while the banking industries blind eye towards cartels (see recent Wachovia case) is pretty much out in the open, there are still obvious advantages to moving funds around using bitcoin.
A fair amount of this money can't be moved in until the market is big enough to absorb it though, which is why I think the demand/consumer side will drive bitcoin growth for awhile.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just saying that in the short-medium term black market activities and white market activities associated with vice stand to be the biggest markets for bitcoin adoption,and people may as well get comfortable with that fact rather that pretend it's not the case.
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Seems like the marketplace is starting to attract possible scammers who want to sell lots of bitcoins! below cost! one time only!
Since there are established exchanges where it is possible buy and sell bitcoins (unlike other things listed in the marketplace forum), can we get rid of buy/sell BTC listings there?
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Seems like the marketplace is starting to attract possible scammers who want to sell lots of bitcoins! below cost! one time only!
Since there are established exchanges where it is possible buy and sell bitcoins (unlike other things listed in the marketplace forum), can we get rid of buy/sell BTC listings there?
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Sorry if there is a feature request area and I missed it. (Maybe even one with up/down votes)
Might be nice to set an arbitrary limit where you have to confirm a transaction. ie; I set if any transaction is above 1 BTC I get a popup that says "Are you sure you want to send 1 BTC to address xxxxxxx?" (Someone else may want to set it at 10). Seems fairly easy to implement (for someone, not for me) and could save a lot of headaches for irreversible transactions.
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Can we get rid of pictures in signatures? especially large animated ones? I don't want every thread to become cluttered with blinking banner ads and lolcats.
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Anyone buying AMD stock expecting higher than normal order volume?
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So, bitcoin has, by it's nature, pretty much embodied the economic theories of a great currency for right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalists. Lots of those features are things that left-libertarians like myself also happen to agree with, so I know there's a lot of us on board. However, I have also been wondering what "features" a left-libertarian (all the way from mutualism ("free market socialism" to use kevin tucker's great term) to libertarian-socialism and libertarian-communism)
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note: If you want to have a discussion about how socialism is fascism, about how left-libertarian or anarcho-socialist is an oxymoron, etc I would first advise you to get familiar with the last 200 years of anarchist theory and secondly, take it to another thread (where maybe I would be happy to discuss it, though I did that enough on all the years I spent in the politics forum at 2+2). If you troll this thread I will totally ignore you.
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for example, time-dollar systems by their very nature, tilt towards egalitarianism by suggesting that people value their time equally (whether it is weeding your garden or fixing your computer or giving you a massage). This is heresy to capital-L libertarians I know, the complete opposite of what a currency should be doing, but in any case, that is there.
Personally, I think the single two most important features of a libertarian socialist currency would be some kind-of decay rate/demurrage that discourages hoarding/savings/capital concentration; the inability to loan at interest (all loans in a mutualist system are generally conceived of as free); and, well, I don't know what else.
Like I said, happy to have discussions or arguments about the pragmatics or the ideals of anarchism / left-libertarianism /mutualism / socialism/ and/or communism in another thread.
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Am interested in renting about 2Ghashes worth of computing power for 1 month. Payment in USD (or your countries equivalent). Potential for longer-term contract if first month works out with minimal downtime and consistent hashing. PM me your terms or make them here.
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I am selling red wiggler worms (compost worms) and worm castings (fertilizer) to the continental US only.
(Sorry international folks, my worms don't have passports)
Current prices:
1 BTC = ~1000 worms
1 BTC = 5 pounds worm castings (pure worm castings, no dirt, should be used as fertilizer not direct potting mix!)Approx spreading rate for established lawns or gardens (10lbs/100 sq. feet) or can top-dress, etc.
Contact me here if you want to work out other arrangements. Bulk discount, etc.
If you need some guidance just google "worm composting"
Worms eat your garbage 24 hours a day and turn it into highly valuable fertilizer. Just think of it like having an organic mining rig in your backyard.
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I have a miner I have pieced together from CL parts. Seems somewhat stable so far, but occasionally restarts, locks up, or otherwise stops mining. It's running Windows 7 now, but will likely turn it into some flavor of linux over the next week. It's been a long long time since Ive poked around in the world of windoze. Anyone have good recommendations for logging tools I could use to find out what it crapping out and start trying to narrow down some causes? processor? GPU? heat? dog kicked out power cord? etc....
would like to at least get hardware stable under windows and be able to mine for a solid 24 hours at a time without any crapouts before I start trying to play with *nix drivers, etc
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I'm sure this has been talked about here before, but I can't find any threads dealing with it specifically.
What would be the advantages/disadvantages of having a cryptocurrency pegged to gold rather than just floating as BTC is? something like e-gold but with the hard to track nature of bitcoin.
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I am seeking other people (say 2-10, though if we get more maybe we can figure out a larger scale project) that want to operate a bitcoin urban farm CSA in either Minneapolis or St Louis for next growing season (This growing season/fall/winter will be making preparations) Think of this as a hobby project, a proof of concept, and a way to get some more goods into the bitcoin economy.
For those of you that don't know what a CSA, basically you buy "shares" in a farm. Based on shares sold, you then get a proportion of all crops harvested during the growing season. It is a way to provide farmers upfront capital for work (since most out the money outlay is at the beginning of the season), to eat seasonally, to support small farms, to share risk, etc.
I have been a community gardener for many years. I have potential spaces for a small proof-of-concept urban farm in both cities (would prefer Mpls but would move back to St Louis if there was a critical mass of folks there). I am nearly positive we could find enough subscribers in either place that would want to both support a micro-scale urban farm and bitcoin.
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