For a higher amount (and if you were willing to pay a very hefty fee), I would say Virwox. For this amount, I would go to the Marketplace/Currency Exchange forum and find a very reputable trader who will do this for you. I never deal with Paypal due to the possibility of reversal of payments, so I stress finding a reputable trader who is leveraging his reputation against this risk.

I'll throw that right back at ya.

Why not take a "wait and see" approach to capacity, incrementally increasing capacity as needed? Rather than making arbitrary assumptions about capacity that we may or may not need far into the future?

Implementing a hard fork on the basis of consensus shouldn't be easy, as it puts all users at risk.

That may be true at some point. However, it is dangerous to make grand assumptions about how adoption, transaction growth and miners' incentives will look 5, 10, 20 years into the future. We simply cannot know, and heretofore unconsidered incentives and/or centralizing trends may occur in the future. Thus, the most responsible way to deal with capacity is incrementally, with consideration for maintaining incentives that favor security.

P2P of course. How will bitcoin come to replace Paypal for Puerto Ricans, then, you ask? Well I would say, that's a damn good question.

I imagine there is nothing stopping Puerto Ricans from buying bitcoins on Circle or Coinbase, withdrawing them, and then transacting without this extra external fee. But this won't happen overnight, on the whole, by any means. The extent to which it will happen at all is a big question mark.

Are you sure about this -- do you have a source? The only things I recall seeing were a a) Coindesk article that said some fees were in excess of 0.0001, and b) the Github.io page (escapes me now) where fees at the very height of the stress test (very short term) required 0.0004-0.0005 fee to be included in the next block.

When there is a backlog in the mempool, it doesn't necessarily follow that you need to pay more than the highest fees that Coinwallet paid.

Funny, the fees paid at the very height of the stress test were the standard fee (or less) a couple years ago.

To an extent, I can agree with this. However, I am absolutely not concerned that people be able to transact in amounts in the cents or fractions of a cent. I don't think our focus should be on how to include ever-smaller amounts of value on the blockchain. I don't know the details - has anyone ever done an analysis of what % of total transactions are below a given amount (say, < 0.0001 output)? If capacity is an issue, this is one approach to take.

Maybe. Or maybe not.

Anyone can go ahead and fork the code, lowering the consensus threshold however much they want, perhaps even below a simple majority. I would hope that miners do not support such nonsense.

So? A hard fork should not be easy to implement. Whether or not the community has diametrical views -- and I assure you, it did on the subject of block size limit 5 years ago -- is just not relevant. 95% has proven to work in the past and is well outside the realm of a simple majority + a lucky streak. 75% is considerably lower than past hard forks, and surely risks breaking consensus. Lower consensus thresholds may make it easier to implement hard forks, but it considerably increases the risk of permanently breaking consensus. This comes down to game theory -- it is not a simple fact that "best behavior" prevails always. I think that those who believe that a 70-30 or 60-40 split, for instance, can only result in the minority being forced into the majority and consensus will prevail, are making a very bold claim.

I said hashing power is relevant. This is a proof-of-work system. The top priority of miners is to secure the network (incentives provided). Bitpay's agenda may or may not match this priority, and whether or not it does is irrelevant. In fact, the very suggestion that we should grant Bitpay some sort of authority absent any hash power to support it is problematic. They can push their objectives all they want -- see their support of BIP101 as an example. But the rest of the community is here to make clear that their interests (limitless scaling with no forethought to network security) do not align with ours.

Agree re: hashing power; investors and large bitcoin entities like BitPay are irrelevant.

Why? BIP66 achieved 95% consensus before forking. I see no reason why this can't be achieved again. If not, it would appear the supermajority prefers the status quo to a controversial hard fork.

The very point is that not all BIPs are perfectly valid options.....

A large amount of noobs coming here complaining..... that they don't know how to use bitcoin, or how the technology works -- this seems like a common problem around here. I certainly would not be losing any sleep over it.

I don't really view bitcoin as a democracy, and I think this sort of process would only make consensus much more difficult to achieve. I'm fine with everyone voicing their opinion in any way possible, but that should in no way impinge on the the development process (which need not be decentralized -- the dev process is kept in check by consensus) or the consensus process.

Consensus means that the supermajority (and I take that to mean 90-95%) supports a proposal; as it stands, the supermajority supports the status quo. I think we need to set aside political/democratic ideals and recognize that without an emphasis on consensus, we run the risk of breaking blockchain consensus (i.e. multiple chains) along these political ideals.

If 90-95% (really 95%) do not support a protocol change, the status quo ought to prevail. We ought to defer to the protocol that has consensus. And I think we really need to push back against this idea that we can simply lower accepted consensus thresholds in favor of "forcing" a substantial minority into the economic majority.

I didn't really pay attention the last time. I don't think I made any transactions during the height of the stress test, but I did make dozens of transactions when there was a considerable backlog in the mempool. 0.0002 fee seemed to do the trick. Didn't lose any sleep over it. Not really worried about the next one.

If I had to guess, the loudest proponents from each side (XT/BIP101 vs. everyone else) have put their opponents on "ignore", hence the lack of vitriolic discussion over the past several days. Have we achieved any sort of consensus? Invariably, no.

But the way that bitcoin works -- if there is no consensus on a new protocol change, the status quo prevails. ^^

Mike Hearn commented on the workshops and has already indicated that he believes they are a dead end and that nothing will come of them. Wladimir stated that Hearn was toxic to the development process... I have my doubts that there will be much future collaboration between these parties.

I think the reaction to BIP 100 made it pretty obvious that BIP 101 (and XT) never had much support in the first place. As soon as miners could show support for something else, they did. I'm just glad the hysteria phase is over. This community had me worried for a bit....

I suppose that depends on the level of risk that you take. The problem, of course, is the "central point of failure" issue. Remember, many, many people were using MT Gox in a similar manner as you -- as their primary wallet. Some stored hundreds and hundreds of bitcoins there on a permanent basis (and I'm not talking about traders, some of whom had thousands of coins on there).

IMO, if you're gonna keep your coins with a 3rd party, at least spread your risk around a bit. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket, and all.

I think of it as some kind of commodity / store of value. It is, of course, much more than that; it is portable, digital, a payment protocol. But I view its payment capabilities less as a way to do "supermarket shopping" and more so a way transfer that store of value. In other words, I don't see it as a currency, a medium of exchange; I view it as commodity that is magnificently easy to divide and transfer. Generally, I am less concerned about micropayments and more concerned about keeping bitcoin decentralized and free of external controls.

I think a big segment of their target audience are people who a) were going to shop at those places anyway and b) get cash back incentives via credit cards on top of Gyft points.

I use bitcoin on Gyft regularly, but if I were particularly concerned about saving a few more % on every purchase, it's more sensible to use my cash-back credit cards.

Ditto....my eyes are bleeding from reading the drivel in this thread. What was that you said about engaging people who are happy to present willfully dishonest arguments? I think I've lost the energy to fight the good fight....