Most libertarians and an-caps agree that the initiation of force or fraud against someone is wrong and if there are any laws, they should focus on those two things.

But I would say that Bitcoin has proven that people who are exposed to fraud are more aware and are more able to avoid it on their own.

Just like the guy who is working on the BitcoinCard stated that he was considering taking pre-orders but because of the stigma that has within the community he decided not to do it. Everyone knows to be very careful with using bitcoins for PayPal. There are ways of dealing with scammers...exposing them and letting people see that person's history. E-bay ratings is a good example of how good businesses thrive while people who commit fraud can have their business affected. With today's technology fraud should stick to any person for the rest of their life...allow people to make their own decision on whether or not to deal with that person based on their past.

Protecting us from fraud makes us complacent.

Is it convenient to be protected? Sure. Being the first person to get screwed over by someone who was otherwise trustworthy would suck. But the threat of living with it the rest of their lives should discourage people from committing fraud in the first place.

nvm

[Pools]

Currently in Alpha stage (back end created, working on visual side) I am happy to announce BitPools, a new way of pooling your bitcoins with other people and voting with your coins to get big things done.

The customer based overview can be found at the About tab at http://www.bitpools.com

From a more technical stance, when you sign up for your account you will also include an empty Bitcoin address. You will then fill that address with the amount you plan to use toward pledging toward projects. (It has to be empty first to verify that you did not just go out and grab someone else's address). From there you can either create a pool or join one.

Pools
Pools are basically groups of people getting together with a common goal. When a pool is created, the description of the purpose will be spelled out and a minimum pledge to join will be included. When you join the pool, a portion of your bitcoins from your bitcoin address will be dedicated to that pool. But you still hold your bitcoins in your wallet. When the pool grows large enough that they have enough bitcoins to put toward their common goal, then proposals will start being put forward.

Proposals
Proposals can be made by anyone (pool criteria may restrict proposals to only members). This is where it gets a bit more technical, click here to read about Dominant Assurance Contracts. Basically a proposal will be created, the proposer will fund a "Voter fund" with the proposal (or an address will be created and if there is interest, people can support the proposal by sending bitcoins to the "Voter fund"). The proposer will also include his/her own fee in the proposal along with the amount of bitcoins required to move forward with the proposal. Once the voter fund is sufficiently filled, a date will be set up and voting will commence.

Voting
When it is time to vote on a proposal, each pool member will receive a set of addresses with options (or a single address if it is a Yes/No proposal). A file with all addresses and their choice meaning will also be released, encrypted with a password. Before the end of the voting date members will then vote the amount of bitcoins required in the proposal by sending their bitcoins to the specified address. When the voting date has passed, the password to the encrypted file will be released. The BitPools site will automatically tally the votes and determine if the proposal passed or failed. If the proposal fails, everyone's bitcoins will be returned to their bitcoin address. If it succeeds it will be passed on to the address given by the proposer (this could be an escrow account or whatever the voters are comfortable with, that is part of the criteria for deciding to vote for a proposal or not). Regardless of the outcome, the "Voter fund" previously filled will be distributed to all voters. This creates an incentive for people to vote even those who would usually sit on the sidelines. At the very minimum the voter fund will cover transaction fees. If the proposal passess, a new pool will be created consisting of the members that voted for the proposal.

New Pools
When the proposal succeeds, those that funded the proposal will be part of the new pool. The proposal will include the exact same criteria as when a new pool is created. The new pool could be exclusive only to those that funded the proposal, or a fee could be created for entry by new members. The fee can then be distributed in any way to the current members. Imagine a club getting together to fund a club house, the members have already paid for the club house...new members would pay those original members to be allowed access and join their club. Again, this is all criteria that would be included in the proposal. It also allows for many unique ways of distributing fees (equally, more to early members, tiered, etc.).

Your funds are always under your control until you fund a proposal. It only resides in the BitPools cold storage during voting, then is immediately distrubuted once voting is finished.

tl;dr Welcome to the revolution.

Once the price of ASICs come down, it would be great to have people able to buy a TV box that they plug into their network and to the TV.

You would have a menu of potential TV shows and movies. When you select the show you want to watch, it sends your accumulated bitcoins to the bittorrent user that loaded up the torrent.

As people choose similar shows, the box can just queue up the next show that most people pick after the show you picked. So it would be like watching a full TV channel.

And by sending BTC to the uploaders, people will be encouraged to create their own content in exchange for BTC.

Sure, plenty of people would upload ripped movies and Hollywood TV shows, but Hollywood will become a thing of the past. New, decentralized content will be the wave of the future.

I do not have time to do this but it would be quite helpful.

Basically a website you go to. You choose what bank you use (or manually enter the wire transfer fees, domestic/foreign, of your own bank), your country and choose the amount of money you want to spend on buying bitcoins.

The site would then produce a table sorted by the most bitcoins you can get for that amount of money with some information on how long it will take for the transfer.

It would need to factor in volume based upon the amount you want to spend (a site may have a low sell price of $110 but that is only 1 BTC and the next higher trade price is $120).

You could put up a donation link, but you may actually get some real value by having a chart of people coming to your site letting you know how much they plan on spending on bitcoin in the near future. You can set up a trade bot to react accordingly.

I guess I have been using the bank->Dwolla->MtGox->bitcoin for the simplicity of it and I figured it was cheapest since Dwolla only charges 25 cents and MtGox only charges .55%

But in reality, MtGox almost always has the highest price of all exchanges.

So doing bank->wire transfer->1% at some other exchange may allow me to buy my bitcoins cheaper at another exchange if the price is lower.

Plus I will not need to wait almost a week for my transfer to go through Dwolla as the price rises.

Like clockwork. This time last week I would have my paycheck rolling into my account to be traded for BTC.

Rooting for a week long crash has become exhausting. But, alas, it always climbs back up just in time for me to exchange my money.

Global Network of Hackers Steals dollars worth over 385,000 BTC From ATMs

The sophistication of a global network of thieves who drained cash machines around the globe of an astonishing $45 million in mere hours sent ripples through the security world, not merely for the size of the operation and ease with which it was carried out, but also for the threat that more such thefts may be in store.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/global-network-hackers-steal-45m-atms-19148657


Is the dollar safe? Should I sell all of my dollars until this security flaw is fixed?

[Rich folks actually don't spend that much as a percentage of the economy]

http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-getting-richer-2013-4#ixzz2SvozejTH

The richest 7% of American households--8 million with more than $836,000 in net worth--did quite well from 2009 to 2011.
 
Their average net worth rose from $2.5 million to $3.2 million, a 28% jump.
 
The other 93% of American households, meanwhile, lost out.
 
Their average net worth dropped from a measly $140,000 to $134,000.

At current bitcoin prices, if you have more than 7,000 BTC you are on the safe side of the economy. Your wealth will grow while others will fall. If you can get on this boat you should be able to ride the wave of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The folks in Washington will actually be working for you.

And these consumers (the lower 93%) provide the spending that drives most of the economy. (Rich folks actually don't spend that much as a percentage of the economy).

It also shows that the wealthy are saving (hoarding) while everyone else is doing all of the heavy lifting and spending all of their money. A good lesson on how to get (and stay) rich.


Personally, I would shoot for just over 800 BTC since eventually in the next few years it will be over $1000/BTC.

Let us say, for example, that some ultra super rich guy has spent his whole life accumulating half of the gold of the world secretly. He has died and put in his will that he wants the money from his gold to go toward paying for the US government spending. We are talking trillions upon trillions. The only stipulation is that no taxes may be collected while spending his money.

The budget will be met for the next 30 years, there is always the option of falling back to taxing if the money runs out.

Would you be ok with nobody paying taxes for those 30 years? Even rich people and corporations.

Our Bitfinex Sentiment Index allows you to see what the market currently feels like, bullish or bearish. It is based on market participants sentiment.

BSI as of May 09, 2013 - 04:02:19 PM CDT:
1:1 - Bearish

Bitfinex Irrational Index

This index analyzes user behavior on the market and reflects their coherence and commitment to make profit
 Irrational Index for Bear: 85.5
 Irrational Index for Bull: 59.4

I am not sure of the exact formula to come up with these numbers but it has been Bullish ever since I have been checking it before the big crash.

My assumption is that the formula has something to do with the amount of longs vs the amount of shorts on the website. So currently there are a lot of people with shorts out on margin.

From my observation, it is usually the most bearish closest to the low. This is the most bearish I have seen.

Would it be better for Bitcoin if the alt coin world were saturated with thousands of alt coins or would it hurt it?

Does that solidify Bitcoin more as the main coin or does it dillute it?

It would seem to me that having one or two competing coins would create some competition, but with thousands, alt coins would become something nobody would want to invest in.

Tired of waiting for a new alt coin of the day to come out? Want to create your own?

Introducing the alt coin generator.

You simply go to www.altcoingenerator.co and choose from the drop down menus and it will spit out the source code and a precompiled binary for your new alt coin.

Some of the alt coin options:
Name
Script, no script
number of coins total
number of coins per block
time between blocks
number of pre-mine blocks to create
icon

Have a great idea for an alt coin? Use this app and become rich as everyone drops Bitcoin and starts using your coin.

First 1000 alt coins are free. Limit 10 alt coins per user after that.

Watch this quick how-to to get started:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0

Edit: site is currently under construction as I turn this into a p2p distrubuted alt coin itself. Mining will spit out alt chains in blocks of 50 per 2 minutes. Maximum will be 2.1 billion.

No longer will we be able to send someone a satoshi.

I am no longer a satoshi millionaire.

RIP satoshi.

At the top of the forum it shows:
All users of Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind versions 0.7.2 and earlier are required to upgrade to 0.8.1 or apply a manual workaround by May 15.


What do you think will happen on May 15?

http://www.informationweek.com/internet/ebusiness/china-limits-use-of-virtual-currency/218101859

"The virtual currency, which is converted into real money at a certain exchange rate, will only be allowed to trade in virtual goods and services provided by its issuer, not real goods and services," the Ministries said.

I wonder why they failed to mention that in the documentary.

Down below $100....here it goes...


Kiddie porn in the block chain, DDOS on Silk Road, CoinLab suing MtGox...

This will be a long fall.

http://www.10news.com/news/worlds-first-bitcoin-atm-coming-to-san-diego-050213

Users will be able to make deposits and/or withdrawals from their Bitcoin wallets by walking up to a Bitcoin ATM and using a QR code or by entering your personalized Bitcoin wallet address -- then go shopping online.
 
The world's first Bitcoin ATM will be unveiled in San Diego Thursday, and the Company will show 10News how it works and the idea behind Bitcoin.
 

I guess Mother's Day is in a few weeks.

Post some good ideas of what to get mom this year using bitcoins.

Crash or rocket to the moon already!

Entertain me speculators!

Blitz: shortened title