Considering the man has been in the tech industry rather than government or banking for a while, I'm cautiously hopeful that he might actually be able and willing to enhance Coinbase security.

But as he has actually worked for the Fed, it's nowhere close to the almost-certainly positive event that I had thought at first. His background leaves serious room for doubt (it's not at all uncommon for key folks to leave banking, enter other domains and continue to represent the interests of the banking industry, if not their specific former employer. To not consider this a possibility, especially when it comes to Bitcoin, is to ignore that trend.)

Gas taxes



Health care is a privately, individually administered life expense. Pay it yourself, or should we go ahead and put food and water on this list too?

(Hint: if your food costs had ballooned like medical costs have over the last 4 decades, you'd probably be curious as to what the problem was, wouldn't you?)



Local property taxes



Corporate taxes



Local property taxes



Yeah, exactly. Nothing close to a solid argument to justify an income tax yet.

Some would say that the economic history of the U.S. has been a repeated series of efforts to kick the can down the road ever since Nixon closed the gold window in, what, the early 1970's?

If so, the fact that they've stretched things this far, to 2014, is frightening. I really have a hard time seeing it lasting another 10 years, but who knows... maybe some new energy tech will miraculously appear and stave it off for another decade or two (again, yes, making the inevitable crash that much worse.)

Sure there is: the simple mathematical fact that an ever-increasing expansion of debt (which the current system is based on) is unsustainable.

It has to end, either voluntarily or involuntarily. And since TPTB don't seem too keen on letting the system end voluntarily....

Or rather, harsh as it may come across... learn a little about the technology you're dropping your money into!

I suspect the poll  was really asking about "collapse" or even "restructuring" as opposed to "revolution."

With that in mind, I voted 3-5 years; things are still way too comfortable for too many people for any significant portion of U.S. citizens to actually generate enough pressure to initiate change.

+1

I believe Blockchain lets you create a local backup. I would strongly recommend it, even a paper backup if they allow it.

Well THAT sure crushed my initial enthusiasm about this news.

1 finney = 0.0001 bitcoin = 10000 satoshis

I think I can finally admit that I really liked that name.

I have no problem with a base fee of 0.0001 BTC

Even at $1000/btc, that's only 10 cents (U.S.) per transaction. At current prices, closer to 6 cents. Still cheaper than a bank wire, and worth it for anyone not trying to make micropayments (which Bitcoin really wasn't designed for anyway.)

While saving coins is always a plus, don't feel rushed to lower the fee anytime soon.

Taking a detour in your presentation to try to bridge the divide between bitcoiners and goldbugs/silverbugs might be a good idea. Specifically, describing how bitcoiners can present Bitcoin to metalbugs positively, since a lot of the hostility seems to come from them (even though for most of their needs, bitcoin fits very well.) Maybe detailing how you became convinced that Bitcoin was worth getting involved in?

And BTW, I really enjoy the service you guys offer. I just recently pointed out to a group of silverbugs that you're one of the few solid bullion dealers who accepts bitcoins, and a couple of other cryptocurrencies as well. Kudos!

The point is, plenty of people already DO believe that about Bitcoin.

Similarly, the popular conception of feminists and environmentalists is highly negative. Doesn't matter how true the conception is; the IMAGE is itself the problem hindering their goals.

This isn't a thread about trying to prove that those movements are viewed badly. The facts are already in, we already KNOW what society thinks of feminists and environmentalists. This thread is about showing WHY the image is so bad, because apparently lots of people who claim those labels for themselves don't get it. (Or just refuse to believe it.)

HINT: if you're attacking the messengers rather than acknowledging that these sorts of articles all illustrate the kind of people who cause the image problem, and either offer suggestions or counter-examples, you're probably not going to get anywhere.

EXTRA HINT: I don't recall once in this thread where someone who was defending either feminists or environmentalists has said, "yeah, the movement goes too far here, and here, and I and others in the movement are working to restore sanity in that area by getting legislation *repealed*." Now, if you're defending these movements, but the idea of ever making the above statement seems worrisome or somehow wrong to you... YOUR MINDSET DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTES TO THE PROBLEM.

Well, you might want to take that up with Salon, which wrote the article that has that title.

Although in their defense (and this is an important point) the studies in the article focused primarily on "activists."

(It's been a long day. I'll try to contain my annoyance at Wales.)


Really?

Here's a simple solution: drop some of the crappier options (I nominate stock donations and "Matching Gifts",) and replace them with Bitcoin.



....



As much as they've been begging for donations recently, you'd think they'd be less concerned about Wikipedia's public mindshare in relation to Bitcoin and more about just getting some funding. It's not like anyone's going to care about the Wikimedia Foundation once it goes under.



And what in the world does that have to do with just putting up a QR code and letting those who ALREADY KNOW HOW TO USE IT make donations?

Lame, lame, lame excuses. Oh well. Might as well just wait another year (or two) and see if they're still putting it off then, folks.

For better or worse, I'd say the article in the OP is a more accurate reflection of mainstream opinion of anyone labeling themselves a "feminist" than the image that you're trying to reclaim.

Frankly, considering how far such nonsense has already gone, I totally understand why people uninterested in differentiating would rely on the former over the latter to form their mental image of what "feminist" means.

And again it comes down to... what are actual, self-identified "feminists" going to do to change that image?

Nothing to get worked up over. If it smooths Bitcoin's integration with others' labeling systems, it's no big deal; use what you like anyways. There's plenty of room for both (most people don't refer to gold as XAU in casual conversation.)

My recommendation: get a different, personal wallet that gives you more control, create a backup, test the new wallet with a small amount, and then move all of your coins there.

Now, for the sake of newbs thinking that using Armory, running USB sticks back and forth, etc. is a lot of trouble for a few bits, it might help if if you differentiate between hot and cold wallets.

A hot wallet is one you do your spending from, keep up-to-date, and have ready-to-use. It could be the Bitcoin-Qt client (or Multibit, Electrum, etc.,) or an Android app like Mycelium. (Using an online wallet for your hot wallet is a REALLY BAD IDEA.) You should only ever keep a small portion of your bitcoins in your hot wallet.

A cold wallet is one that rarely (ideally, never) touches the internet, and stores the bulk of your bitcoins. You use it to transfer small amounts to your hot wallet as needed, to receive funds from your hot wallet when its value starts getting too high, and to store your savings. It may be something like Armory, or an instance of Bitcoin-Qt running on a clean, spare Linux system that is normally kept turned off, or even a paper wallet with several keys (created offline, of course.) Different cold wallets have different levels of security; choose accordingly.

If you have a hot wallet and one or more cold wallets set up, you'll have the convenience of ready access to spending funds, plus you'll have extra security for the bulk of your bitcoins. Granted, if you only have a small amount of bitcoin (and plan to use them regularly) it's probably not worth the hassle to create and use a cold wallet, but 3 bitcoins (~$1800) is probably beyond the point at which one should have done so.

And since it apparently can't be said often enough: DO NOT USE AN ONLINE WALLET TO STORE BITCOINS. If you have an account on an exchange, only keep enough bitcoins there to make your next sale, and make your sale ASAP. Keep everything else in your personal hot and cold wallets; there is NO NEED to have anyone else "securely" store your bitcoins for you.

Succinctly:

Each private key in your wallet is a 256-bit number. ECC (yes, it is complicated) is used to create a corresponding public key for each private key.

Both SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160 hashing are used together to derive the corresponding bitcoin address from each public key.

Public-key signing (making use of the ECC-generated public and private keys) is used to sign and verify each transaction sending bitcoins from an address.

SHA-256 hashing is also used to bundle up transactions broadcast on the network into blocks that are verified as legit, and with each block containing a reference to the previous block for added security. Creating these blocks is called "mining".

At it's root, because theft is immoral.

But beyond that, because even as a form of taxation, it's among the most intrusive, destructive forms, granting governments far too much direct influence over their citizen's lives.