Are you near a major city? I would just go through Local Bitcoins (localbitcoins.com), as for such an amount, I would not want to deal with any verification processes, or delays wiring money. I prefer cash/in-person deals to get my money into BTC.

Sure, but there are drawbacks to that. For one thing, personally, I play volatility spikes. I want my orders on the book to scalp those overbought moves and quickly rebuy. Vice versa. And in general, waiting for 3-6 confirmations during volatile times can be very frustrating. Beyond that, when hedging by holding fiat, there is nowhere to hold it but an exchange (unless you want to remove it from the BTC economy for an extended period of time -- again, missing out on big moves).

And hot wallets carry their own risks as well. If your coins are not cold, consider them vulnerable.

Do you send fiat there? I love BTCE as an exchange -- best trading platform and engine, IMO. But I have heard of people running into headaches wiring money there, not having it properly credited, and the situation being delayed by language issues from their customer service. I've never had issues, but I only send coins in and out.

Yes, I highly recommend doing thorough research and running the numbers against difficulty trend, since my impression is that cloud mining is by and large unprofitable. Unless you think difficulty is going to plummet or something....

I wasn't really suggesting anything. Just pointing out that it's done and that it's frowned upon. But it is allowed. It does take a certain level of trust in the account seller since, yes, they can recover the account by signing a transaction from an address linked to the account. But they won't get very far selling accounts that way.

Indeed, it isn't necessary to have positive trust in order to complete trades in the marketplace. People use trusted escrows for a reason, and even if you are dealing with known people, it is good to use escrow whenever possible, especially on larger deals.

Definitely. I never keep all my eggs in one basket. For the coins I keep out of cold storage, I spread them out between BTCE, Bitfinex, and Bitstamp. I don't feel great about any of them, but there's no other way to trade.

Despite what you may have read in this thread, some traders do consistently beat the market. How else could there be so many losers? I've made a lot of coins in profit on big 1-2 month swing trades mostly. Shorter term is tough. And I hate losing coins.

Not sure about this year, but it's hard to imagine that it would take more than a few years, maybe 3-4. Either that, or BTC will likely have not achieved adoption, and will wane in value considerably.

Yeah, faucets won't get you too far. As far as signature ads, there are accounts being bought/sold in the digital goods subforum. It's sort of frowned upon, but I get the feeling that more than a few newbies have gone that route.

No, that's not necessarily true. To be specific, that would be "intra-day" trading. Day trading positions can take place over the course of days (plural) to be sure. I rarely make more than one trade in a day (scalping), but I do trade on the 1hr/4hr charts, so, days.

Well, it's a bit different, I think. Porn is just a video. Cam girls are real people, and it's an interactive experience. Is it worth the money? I don't know. But I could see some potential...haha.

To be honest, it's not that difficult to make $$ trading BTC, considering its history. Buy low, sell high. Buy high, sell higher. Not realizing the loss when the market moves against you has historically always worked out -- but we'll see how the $1100+ crowd fares.

Now, that's making $$. Making both $$ on BTC profits is a lot more difficult. You may find even though you are making more $$, over time, you may be losing coins.

Why? It's divisible. If you're only using .00001s or .0000001s, BTC is still useful -- I imagine at that point, transaction fees will be much lower. I don't see why BTC can't be accessible still.

Hmmm, not sure. I keep some lowball bids in now after seeing that $2 spike the other day. But I think LTC might have a slow slide down to retest that level, or at least much lower than here. Good luck....

This action from ~660 level top just looks like a bullish consolidation to me. I think we are close to local bottom here, then take a crack at that resistance level. Then maybe 680, 720, we'll see. We could hit these targets and still be in a longer term bear market, though.

Pretty sure Coinbase is US only. For US residents, it's a good/easy way to get money from your bank account into BTC. But it's certainly not good for trading, and I don't particularly trust their pricing mechanisms.

Sure, but similar issues exist for desktop wallets. There are now many forms of malware that target bitcoin wallets, so part of the issue here is not 3rd party (exchange) vs. desktop wallet, but also general security precautions and cold storage.

I'm sure that's possible, but seems rare and unlikely. Meet in a public place, and preferably deal with people with some level of positive feedback. But mostly, just meet in a public place. Starbucks has cameras -- that's sort of a deterrent...

This is true to some extent, but for bitcoin to reach 7 figures, it would have to be pretty well entrenched in society/commerce. I think there is a good chance we get there, but it's hard to say when the pendulum will swing back, and when we'll have topped out for good.