If Satoshi had designed bitcoins to stop at 21 billion, instead of 21 million, bitcoins would be worth 1000x less. If that's what you are saying about whether this is possible with cheaper bitcoins, then I agree with that part.

The equation I use is two parts:

1) How many USD are going to try to go into bitcoins?
2) What percentage of bitcoins are not for sale at any price (in the near term)?

The facts that I see driving stock traders towards bitcoins are as follows:
1) Cost per trade could theoretically be pennies instead of dollars (order 100x cheaper per trade)
2) Possibility to trade in ways that don't currently exist (like betting against stocks that have no shares available for short-borrowing, and have no options or futures contracts being traded - there are a huge number of little stocks that fit this description)
3) Possibility to trade anonymously (can you explain why you believe bitcoin is not anonymous enough for this?)
4) If designed correctly, there would be no central server which can be shut down to stop the trading activity
5) Ability to design and publish my own bet, on any security I want, and wait for somebody to take me up on it

Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough, but I haven't been able to find anyplace in the U.S. or outside the U.S. which offers even one of these advantages.

No matter what assumptions I make, the number of USD going into bitcoins always works out to be "at least a few billion USD". I doubt if half of the bitcoins in the world could be bought up, no matter how high the price goes, at least not in the near term.

It may be a long time before somebody becomes a trillionaire because of their bitcoin holdings, but I believe that bitcoins are more likely to bring about the world's first trillionaire than any other economic force I can think of.

This is a common misconception - that bitcoin must achieve widespread usage in order to be obscenely valuable.

As an average consumer, bitcoin doesn't offer me much that I don't already have. If bitcoin must be used for groceries to be successful, I'm selling all of mine today.

As a stock trader, the potential to trade ANY type of contract on ANY security at 100x cheaper price per trade completely anonymously changes everything. I probably won't actually do it myself (at least not at first - I'm too scared of the law man), but other people will do it in hordes.

People in Nigerian internet cafes will be able to bet a few pennies on any stock for any country in the world. Huge hedge funds will be able to place gigantic bets without anyone knowing where the bet came from.

It will be epic, and they will buy a couple of those bitcoins from me.

I 100% agree with the logic in post #1. In fact, I recently said something similar myself (see my signature).

I'm now officially paying $1USD for every three ads posted (33.3 cents per post). This is retroactive for all posts you guys have done already.

I'm having trouble accessing bitcoin.org right now, so I apologize if I am slow to respond to PMs.

Everyone who has posted offers above is either posting ads for me, or is getting started on it.

You are quite right. All transactions should be denominated in USD, and the proper number of BTC should be sent when it is time to pay.

Bitcoin price fluctuations are NOT ideal for everyday transactions. That's why I suggested we need to create contracts that allow for the "StableCoin" via bitcoin derivative contracts. Read about it here.

Canada should be fine. I'll send you a PM shortly.

I'm just trying to warn that Nigerian IP addresses and the like probably won't work for this

I'm already getting people started on this. I'm guessing people will update their prices once they get a feeling for how easy/hard this is.

I'm going to do a few and see how this goes. I have posted hundreds in the past, and may do so again.

Please post prices in USD, so this thread will still have meaningful prices a month from now.

It's not nearly as profitable as you might think. It's surprisingly hard to get people to install software from a random stranger they found on a craigslist ad

Still, ever the optimist, I'm willing to spend a few BTC to keep trying.

If anybody wants to discuss particular craigslist ads, mine or otherwise, please start a new thread. I would like this thread to be mostly bids so that people wanting this service can find workers quickly.

This gig is now closed. Original posting is below.

It is my personal opinion that the rally is just getting started (see my sig).

There WILL be a peak, followed by panic selling, followed by wild price swings, possibly followed by higher peaks (or not), and then hopefully the market will reach some level of stability at some price. The final stabilized price is anybody's guess.

Hopefully before the peak, somebody will create a way to short bitcoin, so that people who call the peak can profit from the drop too

I too have considered posting comments questioning the viability of bitcoin, just so that prices would fall and I could buy some more.

Instead, I started this thread so I could sit back and watch the early adopters get filthy rich. Maybe one of them will send me a tip someday

I am completely certain it is a bubble, which sucks if you want to buy some bitcoins on the cheap.

HOWEVER, it is my personal opinion that the bubble is just getting started (see my sig).

There WILL be a peak, followed by panic selling, followed by wild price swings, possibly followed by higher peaks (or not), and then hopefully the market will reach some level of stability at some price. The final stabilized price is anybody's guess.

1) ATI cards everywhere are going out of stock, or are selling for huge markups.
2) It takes awhile for that ATI card you bought to get to you

You could almost meta-speculate on bitcoins by buying and selling ATI cards

Prediction: Within a couple years we will see hardware designed specifically for bitcoins.

Bitcoin price fluctuations are NOT ideal for everyday transactions. That's why I suggested we need to create contracts that allow for the "StableCoin". Read about it here.

If you want to make a complementary currency, here's one for you: StableCoin.

Bitcoin is awesome if you want to speculate on the future of bitcoin, but that volatility makes the currency less useful for the everyday transactions it was designed for.

Stablecoin could be pegged to the USD, but backed by bitcoin and bitcoin speculation. For instance, I want to buy and sell S&P 500 futures using digital currency, but my profits and losses are obliterated by the wild bitcoin fluctuations. So I buy some stablecoins, which I do my business in, then cash out with my 2% winnings without worrying about what bitcoin values might do in the meantime.

A Stablecoin would just be an enforceable contract between me and a bitcoin speculator. The contract would be an agreement for me to sell bitcoins to the speculator at a set price in the future. I owe the bitcoins, and the speculator owes USD. I get protection from price swings, the speculator gets to profit from bitcoin price increases.

This contract could be settled entirely in bitcoins. For instance, the contract could be that I give the speculator 1 bitcoin on July 1st. The speculator agrees to give me $100 worth of bitcoins on July 1st. I now have a bitcoin which is worth $100, no matter what bitcoin prices do in the future. If the price on July 1st is $50, the speculator owes me 2 BTC. If the price is $1000, the speculator only owes me 0.1 BTC.

I really don't have any idea what protocol would be required to do this, enforce the contracts, etc, but I believe there will be a lot of demand for something like this in the future.

This is an important question, and will be come increasingly important as more people start getting significant bitcoin income.

I plan to talk to a tax accountant, but I believe I will be able to treat my bitcoins as if they were any other collectable coin. That is, if I make money selling them someday, I'll be treated as if I sold any other appreciating asset. Same thing as if I had bought some confederate dollars at a flea market that appreciated wildly for some reason.

In the meantime, I'm careful that my USD inflows (selling bitcoins) match my outflows (investing in mining and bitcoin projects), which I am hoping will make tax time simpler.

You are quite right about usability, but usability will get better really fast as more developers get interested.

As for the protocol, if there is a weak point there we are all doomed, but I personally think that anything like that would have been exploited by now.

I know why the price is going up so much. It's in the new signature I just made:

The greasemonkey script also has an option to color-code by how recently a worker has sent in data. Look at the first post in this thread for a link to the script.

And any time anybody mentions my script, I always put out the hat for some shameless begging. If the script makes your life easier, please donate: 19hMEAaRMbEhfSkeU4GT8mgSuyR4t4M6TH

Overhead costs described earlier in this thread (ebay, paypal, shipping)