*bump*

If you desire to transfer your BTC holdings into fiat without having to

• worry about multiple buyers
• juggling all those communication lines
• being concerned that a bank may freeze your assets

I am your guy.

I am new to doing this under my name, but am not new to these types of transactions. I have participated in numerous group buys, piggybacking on opportunities presented to others who needed additional funds. Now I am exploring this for myself.

I am looking for environments to meet and greet, be introduced, and interact with, large BTC holders who are seeking large individual buyers. I am most easily able to secure USD as payment, but am willing to consider requests for other types of value stores. Current investment ranges I am most immediately interested in pursuing are in the $8,000 to $20,000 range. I have maintained my relationships with other buyers and will also consider investment opportunities for larger amounts, but there will be a delay in time to accommodate coordination.

In the past, these transactions have occurred in a few different ways. For example, most were meetings at a coffeehouse where BTC was transferred and then an envelope of fiat given. Another time the exchange occurred in a meeting room at a bank that was nice enough to provide such a service for meetings held by customers (the BTC seller was a preferred customer there). Yet another transaction occurred in a hotel conference room secured for this purpose.

All transactions occur in a discrete public setting. The goal is to ensure as much participant anonymity as possible while still allowing for some protections against fraudsters. All locations had security cameras. The seller would have a communication history and a BTC transaction record. For this, our expectation was that the seller transfer the BTC before being given control of the fiat. I understand that all of this may seem a bit unbelievable to some and it is safe to say that you are not the type of person who fits my needs. For those who have thousands of BTC or more, they understand this is really the only way to conduct these types of transactions.

Transactions occur most immediately in the following areas: (in order of my ease of travel)

California 1) Los Angeles, CA 2) Bakersfield, CA 3) Las Vegas, NV 4) San Francisco, CA 5) Sacramento, CA 6) San Diego, CA

Upper Midwest 1) Davenport, IA 2) Des Moines, IA 3) Peoria, IL 4) Chicago, IL 5) Milwaukee, WI 6) Minneapolis, MN 7) Omaha, NE 8) Sioux City, IA

I am willing to travel to other areas within the continental United States. The terms must be agreed to (market & discount, not rate, which is always spot at time of transaction) and travel expenses prepaid by the seller. International travel is not currently available.


PM me with your preferred way to communicate and we can continue the conversation in that fashion.

I agree with this. Unfortunately it would be prohibitive to get people to take a longer, more in-depth survey without some sort of compensation. And I would imagine that the Bitcoin community is not large enough to trust any online survey too much and very few of us would participate in in-person surveys where they can ensure that each person gives only one set of responses.

As to her academic uses of this, who knows. Online anything/social media are very new fields and I imagine the grades and research expectations are curved to accommodate that.

What is important is that there is more work in the public sphere that makes Bitcoin more normal in the eyes of the uninitiated. This is just one step in that direction. Maybe the results get published and hit Google. Maybe 6 months later some writer trying to find a story to sell reads the survey results, then contacts Ms. Lustig. And we get an opinion being considered that is more informed than so many of the morons currently opining on Bitcoin (...how many articles did you read about a BTC crash after S.R. was taken down?). This is still the beginning. The potential of Bitcoin will only be realized when there is sufficient awareness, knowledge, and accessibility.



P.S. To goxed: Lame dude. No one cares what anyone looks like. When you do stuff like that you seem childish. Of all the things online about her, you decided her picture was the most interesting to share, not her past research, not something that you think explains her intent here, not anything that matters at all.

4. Do you mine bitcoins?
No, but I used to.

5. Below are some reasons that people might use bitcoin. Please rate them according to how accurately these reasons describe your motivations for using bitcoin.
Bitcoin fits my economic or political values. [Agree]
Bitcoin allows me to increase my business. [N/A]
Purchasing bitcoins is a good investment for me. [Strongly agree]
I want to make money through mining. [Strongly agree]
Bitcoin is appealing to me because I want to make anonymous transactions. [Neutral]

6. What are other reasons that you like to use bitcoin?
I control my assets. With banks your assets can be manipulated, withheld, or seized, all without legitimacy and in circumstances that often leave the individual with little or no recourse. Bitcoin solves this similar to cash, but in a digital form.

7. How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
I like that bitcoin functions similarly to the gold standard. [Strongly agree]
I like that bitcoin is not a government-issued currency. [Strongly agree]
I like that bitcoin is democratic. [N/A]
I like that bitcoin is decentralized and part of the open source software movement. [Strongly agree]

8. Do you use bitcoin for anonymous purposes?
No

9. Do you think bitcoin helps maintain your anonymity?
No

10. Why or why not?
Participating in most Bitcoin market activities create circumstances where true anonymity takes significant effort. Those who believe Bitcoin is anonymous are also likely to make the mistake of thinking there cash purchases are not traceable, when in fact the means of tracking an individual are sophisticated enough (e.g. I make a cash purchase at the grocery store. My cell phone has recorded my movements. The camera in store has recorded my face. And the sales database has recorded my purchase. All of these will have time stamps that make correlation easy.) that one is not truly anonymous when scrutinized. At best Bitcoin is anonymous to large corporations because they do not yet have their hooks into the dominant transaction services.

11. Which websites or resources do you use to learn about bitcoin news?
bitcoin.org
bitcoincharts.com
bitcointalk.org

12. How do you communicate with others about bitcoin?
BitcoinTalk (Bitcoin Forum)
In person conversations

13. Why do you talk to other people about bitcoin?
Economies are as strong as their number of active participants.

14. Have you ever written a blog post, essay, or article about bitcoin?
No, never.

15. Have you ever made changes to the bitcoin code?
No, and I have no interest in doing so.

16. Have you ever been involved with a bitcoin improvement proposal? If you are comfortable doing so, please explain your involvement.
N/A

17. What are your feelings on the Bitcoin Foundation and other major bitcoin organizations?
I respect the effort they put into lowering the barrier to entry for new adopters. They are acting out of market interest, tinted with desire to level the playing field against entrenched financial interests.

18. What do you like about bitcoin?
Due to the nature of the technological foundation of Bitcoin, neither the currency nor the market can be manipulated by a central authority whose legitimacy may be questionable.

19. What do you dislike about bitcoin?
About Bitcoin itself, nothing. Many people will answer this question in reference to the circumstances surrounding Bitcoin, such as the technical hurdles, difficulty to buy in, and lack of goods and services available.

20. What do you think the future holds for bitcoin?
Bitcoin will always exist as a value store, like gold. Since the average person is incapable of comprehending fractions (e.g. no one pays for goods in 1/10 ounce of gold) and the entrenched powers will want to control the flow of commodities with a finite amount (e.g. gold, land) we will not see popular adoption of Bitcoin.

21. Which political outlooks best describe you? Please select one or more.
Left-wing
Libertarian
Moderate
Right-wing

22. Please describe your political views in a short sentence.
Measured against the times, people, and environment.

23. What is your view on government regulation of bitcoin? (This question is not referring to any specific government.)
Regulation is a form of control. Given that Bitcoin has the potential to shift control from entrenched, centralized interests, it is natural that government will be prompted by those interests to control Bitcoin.

30. What is the highest level of school you have completed or the highest degree you have received?
Bachelor degree

31. What country do you live in?
United States

32. In what state or U.S. territory do you live?
[No answer]

33. Please share any additional comments or questions you have in the box below.
Bitcoin is less of a big deal than it is being made out to be. The thing that replaces Bitcoin, whatever that may be (assuming it can overcome the inherent advantage of large miners), will be a force to be reckoned with.

I am interested in seeing other peoples responses to Caitie Lustig's survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bitcoinsurvey). She is a graduate student researching the Bitcoin community, not market (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=308727.msg3311237#msg3311237). Her request appears genuine. Like most academic research this will probably go nowhere, but I do think it is a good summary of other questions asked here occasionally. So if you are inclined, copy all or some of the questions and answers, and share them here. Thanks.

Ms. Lustig,
I hope you share the results of your survey and a link to the full paper produced.

Yes, aside from electricity cost, you can generate Bitcoin.

The next concern would be the cost of the equipment that is capable of calculating the coin in a reasonable amount of time. For example, let's say that it would take you $5,000 in hardware to produce BTC4/month, this would take almost a year to break even. You could say that in that time BTC/USD value will rise, but with that rise you will see an increase in mining activity and a coresponding increase in mining difficulty. There is math out there that you can do. I found this site to be a useful start: http://tpbitcalc.appspot.com/faq. I have just gotten started myself, so this is only the most basic of explanations. My guess is there is a wealth of good information on the forums here.

Good luck.

+1

When this all began, I was too young to fathom the real potential of Bitcoin. I am just starting to take it seriously, and in such a short time I have already learned more about the U.S. Dollar, which I have been using my entire life, than I would have ever guessed I didn't know. Socially, the extent to which decentralized control over currency removes dependency upon entrenched interests and resolves the barrier created by lack of trust between actors, is simple and fantastic. Bitcoin (and possibly other cryptocoins) are leveraging technology in a way to make all this accessible to the masses, and this is very exciting. What the internet has done to knowledge, I see Bitcoin doing to currency. But the best part of all of this is that the community is mostly transparently. I can jump in and participate. I am free to fail or succeed based on information we can all access and I know the system itself is not slanted against me even though market forces are not in my favor.