Your estimated transactions does make an attempt to guess what the change transactions are and remove those from the transaction volume, but if I send coins back and forth all day between two wallets I could inflate your estimated transactions counts fairly easily.

BitcoinDays Destroyed would instead know that those transfers back and forth were from recent coins, and thus those transfers would have little impact on the BDD metric, following the initial spend.   So what BDD describes is how much spending is from older coins.  Well, more specifically, hopefully BDD trends will help to determine if there is hoarding (holding wallet balances steady or adding to them) or spending/liquidating (lowering of wallet balances).

This BDD metric too can yield garbage results -- each time Mt. Gox spends from their wallet, for example, BDD will spike but that doens't mean there is any real economic transaction as a result.  And it can be abused.  Some parties from the Bitcoin Rich List with old coins can try to fake out those speculating on BDD by simply churning their old coins.

That's just one property of bitcoin -- we just don't know for certain from the data what is actually happening.  Depending on your perspective, the difficulty in measuring Bitcoin activity is either a benefit or a hindrance.  BDD is just another metric that might help give a little more insight into Bitcoin.

So you believe that if I were to simply use this mixing service by sending some of my coins to it and receiving those back that I would be committing a crime?

After an order is placed, how long are normal wait times for the order to get processed?   Is this service 24x7?

Depending on the risk tolerance, these will vary from air gap-only dedicated systems to hybrid ewallet services like BitcoinJS / Webcoin.

A bootable USB configuration with any old PC seems to be a decent solution at this point.
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36663.0

There are older versions of the client (v0.3.20, for instance) which didn't do fee checking but your transaction could end up in the queue for a while (hours to a day or two, depending on the queue).
 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#How_much_will_the_transaction_fee_be.3F

I hadn't participated in many other stackexchange sites, so wasn't aware of the restrictions those sites have.

Some decent questions are getting closed as a result and now display the message:

Opinion?  Debate?  Extended discussion?  Oh the horror!

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ#I_sent_some_bitcoins_and_they_haven.27t_arrived_yet.21_Where_are_they.3F

To solicit a tip in bitcoin, one merely needs to provide a Bitcoin address for the sender to use. Because it is a direct transaction, there is no intermediary sucking fees from the transaction (except for the bitcoin transaction fees, which cost about penny at current levels).

Here is just a subset of those doing exactly this: - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects

However, if the recipient doesn't already know of Bitcoin or doesn't accept bitcoins currently, two services can be used to give an amount that is held in escrow by the intermediary and the recipient then can claim the funds using the intermediary's web site. This is something Flattr just recently added as well -- they refer to it as "unclaimed things": http://flattr.com/support/unclaimed

These two services that do this with bitcoins are: http://www.YouTipIt.org and http://www.PayBitBack.com YouTipIt lets you send a tip to any TipIt already registered on their site but also they offer the ability to send a tip to any Facebook user. If the user is not already registered with YouTipIt, the funds will be held in escrow until they are claimed by the Facebook user.

PayBitBack follows the same concept except theirs is a Twitter based escrow system.

This is still the only Twitter tip jar system where tips can be sent without the recipient even knowing about bitcoin prior to the tip being made.

How soon after a tip is started (e.g., adding @PayBitBack to a tweet to the person I wish to tip) before I can expect to see the @ mention with the bitcoin address where I would send the tip?

In the U.S., one reason might be Federal Reserve regulation T, specifically the part regarding margin trading.

A credit card company extending you credit that is used to buy stocks would effectively be giving you a margin account and that has certain regulations including Regulation T.  So no credit card company will allow merchants to process charge transactions for funding brokerage accounts or to purchase equities.

Site is apparently offline now?

Participants are reporting that they've lost money: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40731.0

Wolfram Alpha now has a raw QR code generator:
  http://www.wolframalpha.com
 simply search for the bitcoin address and append the words "qr code"
e.g.,
 1Kh1nWAs2pULBFLXyZnyUJVkpYTZMMtASY qr code

Sure would -- good luck funding such a deal though.

The best deal on that would likely be if you have trust established through the #bitcoin-otc marketplace's OTC Web of Trust (WoT).  Even with all the problems people have with chargebacks and such, PayPal still works when both parties are trustworthy and can glide under PayPal's radar so that PayPal doesn't freeze the accounts.  Fairly regularly sellers on the OTC are willing to trade their Bitcoins or MTGUSD for PayPal funds.  Sometimes that is at market rate for BTC or 1:1 for MTGUSD and other times, the rates aren't as good as that.

With MTGUSD, you can then trade for LR using AurumXChange at a 2% fee (well, AurumXChange's fee is 1% and LR's trx fee is 1%, so your $1 MTGUSD to AurumXChange gets you $0.98 of LR USD, so that's 2% total).

- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/AurumXChange_Company
- http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin-otc

We'll see soon enough!  "Powered by Mt. Gox"
 - http://bitcoins.com

Hmm ... are you saying you are trying to send bitcoins from your WalletBit account to the email address of another person?    What do you mean "it keeps coming back"?  Have you sent an e-mail to that address and confirmed that it is correct?

WalletBit probably does not even know or record the location so if you are having trouble sending funds to another WalletBit user, I would wager that it wouldn't have anything to do with where they are located.

Incidentally, there now are multiple rupee markets (BTC/INR) where bitcoins received can be exchange to the rupee and withdrawn to a local bank.  TradeHill is on, and Bitcoin-Central.net is another, though they just launched so an efficient market for them has not yet formed.

Bitcoin mining was a method that at one time (Spring 2011) allowed a person with basic technical skills and standard equipment to invest a minimal amount of time (and money for a good graphics card) and as a result earn a little extra money -- fifty bucks a month to several hundred dollars a month from a single rig even.

The continued earnings from mining have returned to being modest and now lag for the most part the earnings that the individual with a few skills can earn elsewhere.  So mining will not likely continue giving Bitcoin a boost in participation.

If there were another development that used bitcoin and offered an earning opportunity -- something that scaled and provided a little income to thousands and thousands of participants like what mining was doing, Bitcoin would see a further rise in adoption.

I don't know where this next development will come from.  Maybe it will be some compensation method used for awards by a startup that relies on crowd-sourced content, for example.  Or perhaps it will be something like a KickStarter except where the investor keeps equity in the project.  That actually might already be underway to a tiny degree with GLBSE's market system.

Either way, funds provided in exchange for participation is not a new concept and Bitcoin has advantages as a payment network over the alternatives -- especially when those funds are for smaller amounts or when the distribution is global where Bitcoin allows the payments to be made without having to deal with the hassles of different countries, currencies, etc. 
 
When or in what form this happens is the big question, but I won't be surprised when it does arrive.

Ya, the channel keeps getting pulled more towards OTC "off topic chat" than OTC "over the counter" trading.  The #bitcoin-pit is a no-chit chat channel where maybe your experience would be better. 

If you have trust and are looking to purchase, perhaps announcing that trust status along with your offer will get you a little more trading partners. 

using PayPal for bitcoin transactions is becoming more and more like russian roulette.  It seems to work for a while and then boom, you're dead.

Just a correction, I presume -- you sent a money order to MtGox's "official exchanger" for cash and money orders, Bitcoin Morpheus?
http://bitcoinmorpheus.tumblr.com/how_to_buy_mt_gox_usd


That exchange has been around for a long time and is generally known to provide good service, though I've not used that service myself.  There were a couple of exceptions, but they were related to one-time incidents if I remember correctly (e..g, when PayPal cut them off, when panic buyers were panicking as the price was shooting up as they sat waiting for the post office, etc.)

The operator of that exchange, Morpheus, does have an account here on this forum.

Should you need to deposit cash again, you might want to consider the "deposit cash at any Wells Fargo or Chase" method offered by ExchB.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Buying_bitcoins

That will be an interesting topic.  I suppose to do so would require collecting identifying information for every contributor donating more than $50 worth if the donations could be accepted at all.  See:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=40137.msg490357#msg490357

I know political parties aren't charities but there are some similarities.

A previous thread had described how Bitcoins couldn't be used in the U.S. for donations to a political party because anonymous donations (over $50 USD) aren't allowed due to federal regulations.  Corporations are a "restricted" class and they are prohibited from making donations directly to candidates thus with anonymous donations there is no way to know the funds weren't a corporate donation.

http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5280.msg77304#msg77304

Each state makes their own rules for state and local elections so there could be some areas where anonymous donations are allowed:
 - http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60594.html

I wonder if there would be some method though where bitcoins could be accepted through Bit-Pay and then donated in whatever manner is allowed.