I'm not concerned.  My partners and I are developing a service we hope will trust us with lots of bitcoins, and I won't be holding them in a single wallet.  Based on calculations of who will be paid how much and when, I would move the excess bitcoins into separate wallets and store those offline.  To keep all your eggs in one basket is inviting disaster.

What is the bitcoin to egg exchange rate anyway?

I have never used Magic the Gathering Online Exchange, but I feel the same as you.

I have an idea to start an exchange, find a person with a lot of bitcoins, then write a simple program to save his password in clear text.
Access his account, sell all the coins to crash the market and then freeze/rollback the market exactly the way it I want it.
I would keep the coins of every single person that cannot prove they own their account, or if I simply don't like them.
I would make up any story I want.  If parts are shown to be questionable, who cares?  I would give most people their coins back, and they will still support me.

I would never do it of course, but I feel it has already been done.

Interesting - so you exchange currency for one of these cards, which at the time of purchase has approximately the same amount of silver that any exchange would take for the equal amount of currency spent.  It is value based on the precious mineral and not any currency.  Same as purchasing a bitcoin.

However, I guess more merchants would be willing to accept a slice of silver over a bitcoin, simply because it is easier for the merchant to understand and figure out how much that silver is worth.  However, it cannot be widely accepted as currency, since most merchants will not carry a scale capable of verifying the card's claim of 1/10 of a gram.

Thanks error, I did not know such a service existed!   

You're paying for these tokens of silver and gold with US or other currency, are you not?  You don't mail in a sliver of gold that you estimate is worth about the same as a product you want to buy.  You are still converting your silver to a local currency to make a purchase - the silver itself is not the currency.

Ok, so they give you credit based on the amount of precious metals you have deposited at a third party?  That's not spending silver/gold on a purchase any more than using a debit card is spending cash on a purchase.

When I say currency I mean something I can give to anyone that is accepted and can be reused by that same person anywhere.   In the old days you could give a gold coin to someone for a cow, and they in turn could give that same coin to someone else.   Today it's not likely you carry an ounce of gold and trade it to any merchant for goods or services, because said merchant would need a way to verify the quantity and quality of the gold, and know someone else they want to do business with who could also do the same verification.

Explain what you mean.  You actually took a sliver of gold or silver and gave it to someone in exchange for goods or services?   Do you have to carry around a scale and a machine to scrape from the gold mass?  I'd like to define what you mean - you don't go into Safeway and get your total, then shave off gold slices until you've reached your balance...

When is the last time you, or anyone you know, used gold to buy or sell anything?

You need to state a timeframe for that, because one day it will be worthless... all currencies will.

MLM is one of the most effective ways to sell something, and it is all around us.

The nightclub that gives you a free limo if you bring 10 friends is using a MLM scheme.
Your house is marketed and sold under MLM.
The millions of retail jobs in North America pay commission to the seller, the store that owned the merchandise, and the distributor that sent it to them.  MLM

MLMs were looped in with "pyramid schemes for some reason, and that gave them a bad name.  The biggest difference in a true pyramid scheme is that you can never make more money than a person above you.  People on the bottom of the pyramid schemes make the least money.   All Pyramids are MLM.  Not all MLM's are pyramids.

Bitcoin is neither a MLM or it's subset Pyramid Scheme.  It has the same value to the buyer and seller regardless of how each was introduced.

I found this funny.   

Very true!  I sit corrected!

I understand the value of goods and services that are created, but at the end of the day, there is still not enough of the legal currency ($1.10) to pay back what is owed to the treasury.  ($1.21).  

The economy is very complicated and I still don't understand what you guys mean (artifact of the books?), but I don't want to risk alienating people by continuing the discussion further.  I'm honestly not trying to be thick headed or closed minded. Thanks all for trying to explain it to me.  

Right now the danger exists because pools are a relatively new idea and all the early adopters have chosen their favorite.  As the number of pools grow, I think the chances of one pool getting >50% goes down...

Pools are not like Walmart where they can just throw money and "sell at a loss" until their competition dies out.  New pools form daily with different features.  If one pool becomes very popular and starts attracting lots of members, there is nothing to stop other pools from using the same features and improving on them.  New people are starting to mine every day, and they are not all going to flock to one pool like they did in the days where there were only a couple.  In other terms, to get over 50%, a pool would have to attract more than one out of every two new users, which won't happen anymore with the current selection.

Jancsika, this is a neat general idea, although the king and castle and armies theme might limit its attractiveness...   I don't think this particular cause will raise what you hope, but others may.  You should consider creating a website for bitcoin donations based on something like this!  

You gave someone bitcoins, but the ticket wasn't purchased with those bitcoins.  The conversion to local currency has to come after the purchase in order for the honor (First airline ticket bought with bitcoin) to be relevant, imho.   

OK, so $10 are spent, but there is still only that $1 in existence. How are you going to pay the $1.10 the treasury wants back if you only have that dollar - a shortage of $0.10?  It can't be from income tax.  If the second  person had to pay $0.10 tax when he made that $1.00, then he would only have $0.90 to spend on the third person.  There still is only the $1 in existence.

So the second person has $0.90 and he wants to buy something for $1.00 off the third person.  This is impossible unless the treasury releases another $0.10.  Now there is $1.10 in existence but the treasury wants $1.21 back - a shortage of $0.11.

Like Tiago, I wish you good luck.  However the odds are you will lose money in Las Vegas - if the odds were anything else, that city would not exist.   

Not really, I'm very open minded.  I've presented my simple argument and no one has yet presented a counter argument to show where I could be wrong.      (BTW I don't consider "you're wrong!" to be a convincing argument)  

You said it best - "Are you imagining dollars as debt that has to "paid back", and an expanding economy as a disruption of the balance sheet between dollars created and dollars owed?".  That is how I see it... is that wrong?  

Doesn't have to be a scam at all!

Let's say you complete an offer that nets the site $1.00.  They give you $0.50 worth of bitcoins and $0.10 (20%) worth of bitcoins to the person that referred you.  The site keeps $0.40.

There are thousands of offers like this:  http://www.cj.com/

Sorry about that.

 $100 <-- USD in existence
-$110 <-- USD owed to treasury
 ------
 ($10) <-- Debt that cannot be paid off.