Oh man big regret is not believing in it and selling as I was mining like 6 months ago...not getting much price appreciation.

Yes I always thought part of the allure of BTC was how many many people would mine and make sure there was never a 51% attack/collusion to maintain fairness.  I suppose pool members could switch to a different pool if the pool gets too big and the owner abuses their power, assuming those miners care about BTC as a whole.

Totally agree with OP.  What is it about BTC that brings out all the shady operations?  Is it because it's tough to follow all the regulations if they want to deal with fiat so they all just hide their identities so they can make a break for it if things go bad?

My auto withdrawal yesterday worked fine, I received today.  Has anyone won the 10,000 max BTC roll?  I know people have cashed ou tbut has anyone won the max amount int he rolling/free BTC game?  Seems like someone should have won by now...

We seem to be hovering here with a slight upward bias, so a crash would be quite a surprise!

When you look at the numbers and the pure math, it does seem likely there is another advanced form of life out there.  I just hope we don't meet until both civilizations have formed a utopian peaceful society

I dig what the OP is saying, that if the price is lower maybe more "normal" people will get involved with BTC.  I don't think it's what the actual price is, I think it's the volatility that hurts BTC's acceptance.

It used to be like a hundred BTC but now if you even have 1 BTC, because the value is so high, I think it's something to be proud of.

What I see most people complaining about is no or really bad customer service.  This could be hard for a new service but to have customer service that responds when things go awry, a they will at some point, is key.  

Yes I had the same problem.  They say they do money orders Tuesday and Friday at 2 PM.  Why would they say that when they haven't done money orders in weeks?  Where is all their cash that they can't do ANY money orders?

I haven't had any major problems at cryptsy. Yes it's very slow and you could argue that cost me money but everything always shows up. I think they have too many customers or have a bad software package. They don't trade to money so I doubt they would be shut down.

Right. They can still buy and sell. I think the btc will be under pressure for a couple months though because no new cash can get into china accounts. I bet the Chinese will come up with another way to get btc and it will spread like wildfire over there.

I signed up at campbx because they claim to allow short sales. But turns out I don't think they do. In any case I'd recommend not going there because they are full of excuses and delays.

Maybe I'm a romantic but I thought part of the allure of btc was that anyone could do it, and it makes so no one has a disproportionately large amount of hashing power. Now everyone is just greedy because t he price went up so there are farms of rigs. What about putting a max limit on the amount of hash that can come from any one ip address?

I'd think you'd definitely want to mine some of the alt coins, like ltc, instead of btc. Sure you could make some money but it's really arguable whether you'd cover the cost of electricity.

There was a guy who wrote on here recently about an email exchange they has withthe IRS. Unfortunately I think it was a little vague. But I'd look for that thread. Within the last 30 days.

What I thought was ridiculous about the whole obamacare debate is that I bet like 3-1 people wanted lower healthcare costs versus making sure everyone is covered. And then the only thin we got is free healthcare for poor people and the costs keep going up and up. It's insane.

Sure he committed a crime. As does the government everyday with this NSA stuff.

Can you explain a little more what you're talking about?  I'm def interested in gambling bonuses but what reputable btc site offers them?

Bummer. I was hoping for the faucet this weekend too just for fun. What about some type of loyalty program?  I used to bet so much on cash sites they would offer free plays for substantially amounts of money. I mean we are going to bet it anyway