Exactly. Most countries these days do. Doesn't mean wars are impossible, of course, but there are huge economic incentives working against it that are much bigger than they were 50-100 years ago. That's why we had two world wars within 30 years but then not any more in the last 70+.

People tend to overestimate the importance of daily news reports about conflicts. The Japan-China dispute was making headlines earlier this year and people thought war was imminent and then it faded completely from most people's memories until it came back just now. Doesn't mean war is impossible, just a lot less likely than a lot of people tend to think.

So far.

I've read that Mt.Gox can take weeks or even months but they just got approved to double their daily withdrawals from their bank so things should be getting better for them. I don't know about others like Coinbase or Bitstamp.

Thanks everyone. My coinbase verification deposits finally went through, just in time for a fee-less black friday purchase! Of course I have to wait til next Thursday to actually see them, but, hey, hopefully that will actually go through, heh.

Thx. I think I will try that site some more. What payment method(s) have you been using?

So I first heard about bitcoin a couple years ago... briefly investigated how mining worked, read that the current value generally wasn't worth the electricity, didn't expect that value to increase x1000 within a couple years, so I ignored it, but I kept reading about it and trying to learn about it when I saw posts about it online.

Decided to try to get into it this week cuz it's rising so much and even though I still expect it to correct I've been expecting that for days, so hey might as well put like $25 in it for now just to get my feet wet and see what happens, right? Then maybe try to add a little more every month or something. Plus I kept becoming more of a "believer" in the foundational structure behind it, and it seemed like the US government was almost actually favorable to the idea, reducing the chance that they would try to shut it all down. I think the tipping point was when I saw redditors instantly anonymously tipping each other micro-transactions and realizing that real value was being moved online in a way that was never possible before. And then I read the Satoshi paper.

So I actually started to look into how to trade some USD for some BTC. I passed over Mt.Gox cuz I'd seen too many people complaining about funds not settling for weeks at a time when they tried to sell back to USD. Coinbase seemed to have a good reputation, so I signed up with them over last weekend, but I still haven't received the verification deposits. My bank is kinda small and local so maybe there's some issues there, or they're just having delays from the huge increase in demand. OK, let's try Bitstamp, the other one that seems to be well-liked... I have to submit my driver's license and a utility bill? Makes sense, I guess, but I didn't have a good camera on me... plus it just kinda seemed ironic to me that I even needed to go to that much trouble to partake in a currency that is supposed to be all "instant" and "anonymous"...

I started to wonder why I couldn't just buy some via credit card or Paypal like everything else online... I googled about that... ok because of chargebacks... Makes sense I guess. Found one site that was offering via credit card but at like $200 above the other prices, and I didn't want it that bad... Found out about localbitcoins and signed up but there wasn't anything in my area besides making deposits into other banks, which wouldn't even work on a holiday and again just seemed like a lot of trouble to get into something that's supposed to be circumventing that very annoying bank-y stuff that I was having to do just to get started.

Next I found some of those "faucet" sites but you basically have to click on their silly little ad-heavy pages a few dozen times at their set paces before you get to levels that actually "pay out," which again makes sense but of course will take days or weeks.

So here I am signing up for this forum, still with 0 BTC, to try to keep learning more and hopefully eventually figure out a safe and easy way to trade for some. I'm sure some of you will say there are things I did wrong above or that I'm just being too picky about how I want to get into it for so little investment, which is probably true, and I'm definitely still very noob about it all, but I have to post in this forum anyway so I just thought I'd share my experience so far, maybe somebody can relate a little.

I think a five-fold rise in less than a month is way too fast and has to indicate a lot of speculation. I think the correction will bottom out above the April peak but I still think it will drop quite a bit before the end of the year.