It is ironic that someone is campaigning to stop lobbying for regulation when bitcoin has a mind of its own & isn't controlled by any particular group or association.  But I agree 100%.  The cat is out of the bag.  No one can stop the effects of crypto-currencies. 

But is any publicity good publicity?  Will lobbying the government, give people more time to learn about & transfer their wealth into bitcoin?  Or will it cause them to cut it off quickly because they realize how uprooting it is?  I personally think they are probably too arrogant to take quick action to slow bitcoin's inevitable dominance.

Even if it mattered what countries had foundations, I'm not sure there are many more free.  Most countries higher than the US on economic freedom still have huge controlling/regulating governments - just maybe a tad less controlling & regulating.

Bump

Can trade with Dwolla, bitcoin, and paypal.

I noticed a few websites out there that will allow you to purchase paysafecards but not sure how reliable they are.

Highly disagree.  The only thing that makes bitcoin worth anything right now is how easy it can be converted to fiat.  I would definitely not be involved if the exchange system wasn't so relatively easy.  The better it gets, the more valuable bitcoin becomes. 

The day when bitcoin isn't valued in USD will come eventually, but now isn't the time.

Krugman's babysitting analogy is a joke.  If those babysitting bills were more divisible & their value was able to fluctuate...there wouldn't have been an issue.  The proof that deflation is bad is ridiculous.

Isn't this already done in bitcoin-qt?  I'm pretty sure there are at least a couple block checkpoints hardcoded.  Not sure why it still requires you to download blocks prior to that checkpoint.  But to be honest, blockchain activity lately probably doubles every 90 days, so at most even if you did this every 90 days, you'd probably only save half the space.

I guess I'll take any publicity we can get, but really?

Is this a generational thing?  Will I attempt to blame some new technology in the future for eroding common sense?  I really don't get it.  It's the whole violent video games link to physical violence debate all over again.  How many times does it have to be proven wrong that technology doesn't make people dumb - those people are dumb to start with.  I love auto correct.  Does it make me spell worse because I rely on it or better because I can see my mistake?  I'm inclined to agree with the latter.

I'm not sure creating the ability for more dust will somehow stop dust, but it would certain future proof bitcoin some more.  Unfortunately, this probably will occur over & over as computers can only handle numbers so large at any given time and the need for bitcoin continues to increase. 

Regardless, I don't believe handling dust is that big of a deal.  It has been 4 years and the block chain is less than 15GB.  I'm sure well find ways to compress it better, and even if we don't, you can purchase 2TB hard drives for $100. 

Not to mention, transaction fees were specifically created to help miners cover costs to keep the network alive.  When/if dust starts becoming a problem, transaction fees will increase for that dust making it prohibitively expensive - kinda like it does now except the block reward acts as a transaction fee subsidy so miners are allowing all kinds of dust for free/cheap because the amount they are receiving for maintaining the network is well above the electricity/storage necessary to process transactions.

Sendtomany?  Like send amounts to 2 different people from the same private key?  If you use the + button next to the destination address, you can add multiple destination addresses.  That's why I was saying you should probably specify what change address to use by adding it as another destination address.

You don't have to send the 2nd transaction at the same time, but the longer you wait, the least likely it will succeed because the original transaction will probably have more traction. 

Trying to double spend after 1 conf would be pretty difficult.  You can query blockchain.info & see how often orphans blocks happen.  I think last time I looked at it, it happened like once or twice a day.  So basically that means you'd have to be double spending right around that off chance that an orphan gets generated - which you won't know until the next block (another 10min). 

Then you have situations like the 0.7 vs 0.8 fork that allowed for 100+ conf double spends depending on which version you were using vs the person you were double spending against. 

Save http://brainwallet.org source to an html file on your flash drive w/ some linux live boot distro.  While still online go to the "transactions" section, enter your source address to get your previous transaction history (click "edit inputs" and save to txt file on flash drive). 

Boot live distro on your cold storage machine.  Open brainwallet html in firefox & go to the "transaction section".  Copy in transaction history from your txt file.  Copy in your private key (use bitcoind to get key from wallet.dat if necessary).  Copy destination address and the amount.  I'd recommend specifying a destination address for the remainder (to avoid accidentally giving some miner a huge fee).  I believe you can use the same address for the remainder as the source if you want.  Brainwallet may default to this, but I'm not 100% sure.  Hit re-sign if necessary to produce a raw transaction.  Save that raw transaction back to your txt file.

Now you can copy that raw transaction into http://blockchain.info/pushtx or bitcoind to send the transaction without the online computer ever seeing your private key.

PLEASE TRY THIS WITH A SMALL AMOUNT FIRST.  VERY EASY TO ACCIDENTALLY SEND A LOT OF MONEY TO THE WRONG PERSON - LIKE A MINER.  GOOD LUCK.

If you can read C++, then you can probably just look at the bitcoin-qt source code...https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

Otherwise the wiki may give you a better summary of how the block is parsed...https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Blocks

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoind#Theory_of_Operation

Also the "change passphrase" option can be used to check your passphrase which is a menu option in bitcoin-qt.

I imagine that would result in a quick audit if you didn't report that as income.  Hints why companies that accept bitcoin or will buy something for you (bitspend) are becoming a lot more popular now that there's a lot of people that have suddenly made a good amount of money with bitcoin but would prefer to avoid paying taxes on it.

I guess it depends on what country you live in, but in the US, businesses don't pay sales tax.  Sales tax is only paid by individuals.  Your argument about vertical integration is probably the reason it is done this way.  Of course all levels of taxation/regulation have artificial impacts.  So a similar argument could probably be made about progressive corporate income tax being a catalyst to integrate supplies with low margins to stay in smaller brackets.

If gains are taxed, how about losses?  I have a feeling a lot of people can suddenly prove losses if they are tax deductible.

From http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc419.html

Despite how much research these people do, they still always get one thing wrong - bitcoin can't be regulated.  And maybe that isn't a bad thing for now.  The longer before exchanges are shutdown, the shorter time until bitcoin can succeed.

I was basically saying the 2 communities would be separate and mutually exclusive.  Therefore you wouldn't be paying for the people that want to live alone & they wouldn't be able to use your services.  Kinda of like France vs Somalia.  Regardless, good luck supporting this alt chain.  I think very few people would choose an alt chain where random people take money out of their accounts, but to each their own.