While the files are being downloaded, the BitTorrent client may append .!ut to them to indicate that they are not yet completely downloaded. µTorrent, for example, does that.

So, if you want to download the files and see that they still have the .!ut ending, do not download them yet. Wait until the .!ut extension is removed and disappears, then download the complete file.

Do not believe the indicated lengths of the files either. Many BitTorrent clients pre-allocate the files with their full length, but fill the content with garbage or zero bytes at first, before beginning to write the final content into the files piecemeal. The BitTorrent client used by BitCoinTorrentz uses this method also, so the files, while still being downloaded, always show their full, final size.

Just happened to me, so not yet fixed. Luckily I know the meaning of !ut, otherwise I might have downloaded a couple of Gigabytes of garbage.

The most effective way to stabilize BTC price is speculation. A speculator, if he wants to be successful, has to buy low and sell high, which means exactly that he stabilizes the price. And he makes money on the side as well.

Another interesting aspect is that poor speculators, who destabilize the price, quickly go bankrupt and remove themselves from the market, so it is the good speculators who stay and stabilize.

We are already observing that. The first speculative price bubble, the one that took the price over $30, is past us and has removed a lot of bad, destabilizing speculators from the bitcoin market. The better ones who remain will make sure that it does not happen again.

Of course there are new speculators pushing in. Those may perhaps cause a second speculative bubble, but if that happens, I will laugh all the way to the bank.

The nice thing is that ultimately bitcoin stabilizes itself that way. The remaining price movements will only reflect changes in actual and expected bitcoin use and will thus be justified.

BitcoinSpinner now has a transaction log. Great addition to an already good program.

I think, BitcoinSpinner is a milestone for bitcoin—the first reliable bitcoin wallet for smartphones.

By the way, I see no fundamental obstacle in doing a very similar bitcoin wallet in HTML5, which would run on all smartphones including those from Apple.

There are a few residual problems, like the higher risk of losing your wallet due to some bad browser update or uninstalling the browser, but this could be counteracted by putting extra emphasis on backups and making them very easy.

I must admit that I haven't even looked whether such an animal has already evolved. 

That is precisely true. However, there is an important detail to be aware of. With ordinary currencies you are almost always dealing with fractional reserve banking (often with only around 5% bank backup capital), because cash is so difficult to handle.

With bitcoins this is remarkably different. They have most or all qualities of cash, but in addition they also have some qualities that otherwise only fiat money has, namely that you can transmit them worldwide within minutes.

This means that you can easily avoid the risks associated with other currencies by using pure, direct bitcoins. The only remaining attraction of doubly virtual bitcoins, i.e. borrowed bitcoins or fiat money based on bitcoin, is that you can ask interest when you lend and that you can borrow by paying interest.

People who do that should be keenly aware that they are giving up the security of cash and incur the risk of somebody's bankruptcy and other ways to lose their money. Only a real bitcoin has all the qualities of bitcoins. And, as things stand, if their borrower defaults, nobody will bail them out like the Europeans try to do with their governments and banks.

So  I will not care if people do fractional reserve banking with bitcoins. But I will always be aware of the difference between a borrowed (doubly virtual, unsafe) bitcoin and a real one.

As to governments trying to torpedo bitcoin, my hope here is that they are too stupid and too slow to notice in time what hits them. Once bitcoin grows large enough for them to notice, too many votes are at stake.

Tested and found very good.

BitcoinSpinner heralds a new era for bitcoin---ubiquity on smartphones. I consider this extremely important, because it has the potential to bite pieces out of more expensive payment systems, such as M-Pesa in Kenya or mpass in Germany. Particularly in developing countries like Kenya where many people have no bank account and only use their smartphones to keep and transfer money, bitcoin could be a relief for many.

It used to be like that, but already three of the hawks at the helm of the ECB have thrown in the towel, because they rejected political pressure to abuse the ECB to pay for other people's profligacy. Last I heard, euro inflation stood at 2.5%, clearly outside the prescribed 1% to 2% band.

Apart from this, I believe all you wrote is precisely correct.

Bitcoin will have a disruptive effect on these political tricks, provided it does not die first of other causes, which looks less likely every day.

Maybe not billions of dollars a day, but as far as my limited information goes, credit card fraud is widespread. The credit card companies just accept it and pay for it out of their lucrative profit, which they take from their customers who accept credit card payments. 5% are not unheard of.

Problems are there to be solved. Every problem is an opportunity. Let's look at the two problems.

Computer security, or the lack of it, is also my biggest worry. But we can work on that. Look at the credit card companies. They are running a highly insecure system, but it still somehow works. And there is bitcoin banking, as already mentioned.

Now to the other problem, the one of paying for some good, then not receiving it.

One solution to this is that the money goes to a trusted third party. Once the buyer has received his goods, he signals to the trusted third party that the money can now be released to the seller.

Of course this system needs some further refinement, but I think it can be made to work.

Week after week we have seen bitcoin going down after the bubble burst at $30+. At its recent, lowest spot the exchange rate to the dollar went down to about $2. How far further down can it go?

To tell the truth, it can go down to zero or thereabouts. That can happen after a technical failure, like somebody cracking the encryption, or perhaps after a concerted effort of governments trying to destroy bitcoin. But even the latter seems quite unlikely today.

So the question is, how far down will it go if none of these catastrophic events happen? In my personal view, not far. If you compare the bitcoin price curve with similar bubbles and crashes, like the stock exchange crash in 1929, you can see some amazing similarities. The main difference is that everything goes much faster with bitcoin. What normally happens over years takes only weeks with bitcoins.

The recommendation of one famed banker, asked when to start buying again, was, "When the blood flows in the streets."

The value of a bitcoin today is not determined much by what you can actually do with it (buy Alpaca socks), but by what you will be able to do with it in a couple of years. In other words, we are speculating on the bases of bitcoin's potential, not any actual functional value.

Therefore it is not out of the question that bitcoin experiences another bout of price decay, but I personally have a hard time imagining it going down to $1 again. Why? Because every estimate I can do of a functioning bitcoin sub-economy requires a very much higher value, more like $100 per bitcoin at the least.

Trying to be a chartist, I sense that the volume on Mt. Gox has increased markedly during the last few weeks. Now take it that every time a bitcoin changes "hands", it goes from a bitcoin pessimist to a bitcoin optimist. Get the idea?

Anyway I wish for a stable, slow-moving dollar/bitcoin exchange rate, and with the rise and fall of the speculators this is also going to happen gradually. A successful speculator has to buy low and sell high, which means that he stabilizes the exchange rate. The clueless speculators who did just the opposite and destabilized bitcoin are being thrown out by getting bankrupt. Things can only get better.

So what is my outlook for the near future? I don't think that bitcoin will soon fall below $2, but even if it did, that would only be an excellent opportunity to buy more, because they will not stay below $3 for long. Remember, you have read it here first!

Great! Thanks. Even faster than I hoped.

Meanwhile I have tested the new version. Everything works perfectly, except that the server connection could sometimes be just a tad faster. But it is still many times faster than updating the block chain would be.

Of course, there are always wishes for more functionality, like a transaction history and an address book, but the decisive point is that the bitcoin community now for the first time has a fully reliable and secure wallet on smartphones. This is great and a milestone for bitcoin. (Should raise the bitcoin exchange rate by 10%. :-)

I keep hearing about new disruptive technologies lately. These are technologies that suddenly and unexpectedly solve a problem that was hitherto solved in different, poorer ways.

But some businesses are dwelling on those poorer ways and make a living out of them. They are the ones that get disrupted when the new technology comes along.

So how about bitcoin? I think it will turn out to be a fairly heavily disrupting technology, once it becomes more established than it is today.

The list of businesses that may get disrupted could be long. The most obvious ones are the money changers and money forwarders. Next in line could be the banks. Then follow governments, particularly their taxation systems. And there are probably more to come.

Of course none of these gets disrupted and destroyed. Some will adapt and embrace bitcoin as an alternative piece of business. Let's wait for the first bank to accept and carry out bitcoin payments. Of course the banks must hate bitcoin, because it takes a significant portion of their business away. But if you cannot win a fight, you might as well make friends with the enemy and take whatever you can get.

Governments are a difficult matter, but as far as I can see, the impending changes are all for the better of us, the citizens. Governments like to destroy currencies to wash away their debts through inflation. Tell me when a government has honestly and completely repaid its debt. That is a rare occasion. Watch the euro going down if you need a real-life example. If you still have euros, change them into bitcoins before your euros melt like butter in the sun.

Now with bitcoins they will face a much harder task. When they default, everybody can see it. There is no trick by which they can walk away from their debts any more. I can hardly wait.

I just installed and tested BitcoinSpinner on my Android smartphone. In short, apart from one crippling bug I think the program is very promising. My recommendation is to wait until this bug is fixed, then get that fixed version.

Details

The bug first. On many phone types or Android versions a keyboard defect appears that causes every digit to be entered twice. You can send 11.55 (the dot is OK) or 2200 or 0.33 bitcoins, but not most other amounts.

Of course this renders the whole program useless, but you could try it on your phone first. Perhaps yours is not affected. Since the bug is so obvious and severe, I expect it to be fixed very soon.

The program follows a very interesting concept. It is a client-server application. The server handles the power- space- and bandwidth-intensive blockchain, but it does not know your private key. I think this is a most ingenious way to handle this, because currently the blockchain handling is a severe obstacle on a mobile phone.

The Alternative, "Bitcoin Wallet", is a program that I have never seen working flawlessly on any phone. I do use it, but it is slow and unreliable. On many phones it simply crashes from time to time or every time when it is started.

So at this time, or in a few weeks, it seems that BitcoinSpinner is the way to go.

Please reply if you have tried it. Did you get the keyboard error?

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I believe that bitcoins are worthless, because they are not widely used, because they are hated by governments and competitors, and because they have a few little intrinsic problems.

But on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays I believe that bitcoin is actually the best currency in the world, better than all fiat currencies, precious metals, t-bonds, IShares, because they are non-inflationary and easy to move worldwide.

The question is, which view will prevail? Will enough people recognize quickly enough how useful bitcoins can or will soon be? Why?

Of course nobody can know right now, but perhaps you can post your strong opinion.