i'm not sure of the technical or potential security short commings, but would it be viable to have an option in a client to download the blockchain (which i understand to be relatively quick) and verify an md5 checksum from multiple trusted sources?

the potential benefit would be more rapidly being up to date, while still being in possession of the full blockchain, as apposed to the thin client option.

http://www.virgin.com/travel/news/richard-branson-and-virgin-holidays-launch-new-currency-1



seems the branson currency symbol is very similar to the bitcoin mark.

found this over on reddit, didn't see it here, and think its a HUGE advance for bitcoin:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/rb0x1/las_vegas_property_management_company_accepts/

its being reported by someone who knows the property manager from this company:

http://haerandempsey.las.mlxchange.com/

got a peek at the set up that is going live April 1st:



April 1st always increases my skepticism, but if this is indeed legit, its imho a huge move forward for bitcoin.

1) can't get the windows client to work properly because i can't get logged in to create a key file.  i try researching the issue on their site, and i seem to randomly get switched to the russian site, then when i hit the english option on the relevant page it brings me to the front of the wiki in english.

2) i was told i could move money from paxum to wmz, but i'm not seeing how.

any advice, assistance or opinion is welcome and appreciated.

is there a difference besides the fees?  at that rate would it be more profitable to mine alone?

i got a single opinion that it would make sense to go with p2pool over solo mining.  just looking for a deeper pool of opinion.

[Bitter to Better -- How to Make Bitcoin a Better Currency]

http://crypto.stanford.edu/~xb/fc12/bitcoin.pdf

Bitter to Better -- How to Make Bitcoin a Better Currency

Abstract.  Bitcoin is a distributed digital currency which has attracted a substantial number of users.  We perform an in-depth investigation to understand what made Bitcoin so successful, while decades of research on cryptographic e-cash has not lead to a large-scale deployment. We ask also how Bitcoin could become a good candidate for a long-lived stable currency.  In doing so, we identify several issues and attacks of Bitcoin, and propose suitable techniques to address them.

i know there is just slightly less than 21,000,000 bitcoins that can ever be issued, but since we don't have an exceedingly accurate number for the global economy equivalent, i'm just using 21m. 

so max number of bitcoins (21,000,000), divided by smallest unit of each bitcoin (.00000001) gives us the max bitcoin units (2.1 × 10¹⁵).

wikipedia gives a 2010 est global economy of 74 trillion (USD equivalent), which we divide by the max number of the smallest unit of bitcoins to find the current value of the smallest unit of bitcoin today, if all bitcoins were in circulation and representing the full global economy.

74,000,000,000,000/(21,000,000/.00000001)=0.0352380952

so just under 4 cents per .00000001 bitcoin, or $3,523,809.52 USD per BTC

with currency markets and exchange offering fractions of a cent precision, is bitcoin capable of becoming a global currency?  yes, i know it would be a good problem to have, but that really isn't much of an answer to a potential technical issue.

disclaimer: i may have screwed the math up as i threw this together pretty quick.  any necessary revisions are very welcome.

using Bitcoin version 0.5.2, just playing around to get as familiar as possible.  had .15 BTC and was trying to send all of it to another address.  kept telling me that i didn't have enough including the .005 transaction fee.

peeked in the settings, optional transaction fee include was set to 0.0000000 BTC, tried again, same thing.

so i dropped the amount and it sent successfully, but included a transaction fee of .005 BTC.

where am i going wrong?

i don't know if hardware is the best place for this, but its about hashing capacity so i thought maybe.

from what i've been reading, it seems the advice is given that it is more profitable to mine with a pool.

if that is correct, at what hash rate under your control would it be more profitable to mine on your own, paying no tax and keeping all the transaction fees?

so i'm very new to the bitcoin community, and have an idea for a business venture that will require trust from people interested in getting involved.

with bitcoins irreversible nature, i'm relatively comfortable with my part, but short of posting a copy of my drivers license on the net (if i was single i probably would just do that, but with a wife and two young kids, i'm not super excited about that idea) is there any way to acknowledge and address valid trust issues of potential "customers"?  i understand bitcoiners have been burned before, and i'd like to put those concerns aside right out of the gate.

i have no problem providing relevant ID and documentation to a few already trusted members, but that would seem to limit the potential audience.

this week i'll start the process of becoming verified on mtgox, then will get myself to the "trusted" account status.  can this information be shared, an if so, does it hold value amongst the community?

any ideas are very welcome.