I think the thing that is putting most people off depositing any coins is the "pin number" method you have for depositing coins. You need to integrate the Bitcoin balance a little more tightly with the user's account / chip count before this really takes off.

I don't understand why when people talk about the future of Bitcoin they either think about next week:

"OMG THE PRICE IS GOING UP / DOWN"

or 20-30 years time

"OMG WHAT ABOUT WHEN 1BTC IS WORTH $1M HOW WILL YOU SHOW IT ON A PRICE TAG IN A STORE"

The problem is we have a whole big chunk in the middle missing. If we want to run this thing like a business, we need to start thinking about the next 1-2 years.

At the moment we are still in embryo stage, sure it's a pretty huge embryo worth millions of dollars, but it's still pretty fragile and niche. If Mt Gox had their bank accounts frozen this could all be over in an instant. We need to get the law on our side, we need mass-market adoption and approval, and we need to start to diversify the currency exchanges.

Here's what I see as the 3 top medium term priorities for the success of BTC:

1: More places to spend BTC
More people than ever want to buy stuff with their Bitcoins. I'd love it if someone would start an eBay type site that deals only in BTC (in legal goods only), or more shops which sell items online in BTC as well as / instead of $. How about a storefront like Amazon but with a Bitcoin powered checkout, so that any seller can come along and add inventory to the site and gain rep, for a small fee?

2: Public knowledge and acceptance of the benefits of BTC as a currency, not an investment
If you want to try and drive the price up long-term, investment isn't the way. Get out there and spread the word, but focus on Bitcoin's use as a currency transfer system that can replace expensive and corrupt corporate alternatives like Paypal rather than an extreme risk investment opportunity... For example, many people would like to donate to Wikileaks, but can't because the banks block them. Explain to anyone in this position why using Bitcoin to donate is the best method and how to go about it?

3: More exchanges, legal ones.
There are many exchanges out there already but all of them are subject to the whims of the financial organisations they're working with. More is better. If you want to try to safegaurd Bitcoin's immediate future, set up a currency exchange and get solid agreements in place with the banks you work with.

The change in value over time is the basis of almost every investment ever.

For example buying shares on the stock market. If I'm smart, I buy shares in a company which I think will increase in value over the medium to long term, paying out high dividends and attracting more investors. If it does well, I get more in dividends. if it does very well, it attracts more investors, the price goes up and I can sell at a profit. The price I pay today reflects what I expect to gain over the course of my ownership, not what I think the company is worth.

Troll maths is fail.

Almost as funny as Troll Physics.

This is the stupidest thread I read all day. Congrats.

How many coins are being mined every day is totally irrelevant, it's about how many are being bought and sold on the exchanges.

Great decision, Paypal will not be missed!

One of the reasons Bitcoin even exists in the first place is because Paypal is so bad.

Seriously. Steer well clear of Paypal when u deal in Bitcoins. Stick to bank wire transfer only.

Either suck it up and pay the fees on Mt. Gox, or use one of these exchanges that have zero fees:

http://intersango.us - USD
http://britcoin.co.uk - GBP
http://intersango.com - EUR / Any

I hope it stays at 0.01 for a long time to come...

I hope it keeps going.

A lot of miners are selling their gear and moving to trading instead of mining. I plan to carry on doing both!

Makes sense really, you can make more in a good day of trading than a month of mining.

You think? the 5% decrease seems to have gotten all the miners flooding back. Next difficulty increase is currently projected at 10% or more...

Maybe there's something to this "chain hopping" thing... All miners should move to the chain that recently had the biggest difficulty decrease, so next month it's namecoin, then ixcoin, next back to Bitcoin again...

You could start a whole website tracking all the crypto currencies that aren't bitcoin.

Call it "Shitcoin.com"

20% gains in an afternoon is pretty fuckin sexy in my book.

I feel a little bit sick when I think of all the people that must have done this. Deleting a fortune in the blink of an eye

To be fair to him he's been perfectly transparent about all of this and I really don't think that he's "walking away" with much of anything at all other than some valuable life experience.

I should imagine simply dealing with the emails and phone calls is a 24/7 occupation right now, you have to respect the guy for at least trying to make things right for his customers.

No BTC accepting businesses at all in the UK yet afaik.

I am prepared to be proven wrong of course

Personally I have been burned too many times from people using gmx.de email addresses for me to ever trust them...

Is it possible for a Mod to remove all these argument posts from this thread and start a new one called "Are bitcoin stock exchange businesses legal" or something?

I am so sorry for contributing to this stupid argument. 

Well of course you can think about these things if you wish, but please realise that there is very little you can achieve by concerning yourself with something which is not due to happen for the next 2 decades.

20 years is a ridiculously long time in computer years, think about the computer you used in 1991 compared to what you have now, if you were even born then

Who knows what new technology and computational power will become available, maybe in 10 years finding one Bitcoin block will take an entire moon of silicon, or a single quantum singularity processor. Maybe in 15 years the internet as we know it today won't exist, and the whole concept of Bitcon will have had to be redesigned. You can't predict how, but rest assured things will change drastically between now and then.

There's no point worrying about it now, because any solution you invent now will be obsolete by next year, next month, even next week. So live your life, try to hang on for the ride and stay sane

You raise a very interesting point.

If and when the banks come to realise that Bitcoin is a competitor to their whole way of existence, how long before they refuse to to business with anyone buying and selling Bitcoins?

What value will an alternative currency be that you can't exchange for dollars?

I think a lot of the "chargebacks" on BTC transactions are from Paypal themselves.

They see Bitcoin as a *significant* threat and will do anything they can to destabilise / discredit it.