Guess it is time to announce a winner.

The goal was something that you can buy for 1 or 2 BTC in total, including shipping costs if any, from anywhere in the world. Obviously this puts a big limitation of physical stuff, and maybe I was not clear about that in the OP.

This basically reduces the list to two proposals:

p4man suggested poker chips at https://sealswithclubs.org/
It works immediately and the only downside is that you have to register (you don't have to supply an email address though), and you have to manually convert the Bitcoin address to a QR code (please go fix that)

Tril suggested btc2diablo at: http://www.btc2diablo.com/
You have to submit a form and wait for them to send you an in-person email. To me this is a no-go, as I want to show how easy and swift Bitcoin purchases are.

The winner is.... p4man, *the crowd cheers*
Please send me your Bitcoin address.

However, I must admit that I am surprised that there are no more sites that accept Bitcoin (in the 1-2 BTC range) for online/digital purchases. We need more of those.

plans:
1Au* will be gold coins
1Ag* will be silver coins
1G* will typically be gold plated coins or bars
1C* will be 1 BTC coins

http://firstbits.com/api/?a=19keo3

NO_MATCH

however looking it up on the front page returns an address.

why the difference?

Long ago when mining only meant a higher score and Spongebob stickers.

Overpriced. I want to make it far cheaper, if possible. It also has convoluted server requirements that work with email. I want none of that.

I want to make it to where somebody could upload an entire book into the blockchain for no more than the market fee rates.

The best, most guaranteed, and oldest professions are still XXX related. I can totally see one of these being an xxx themed cleverbot that charges for conversations, or a bot that collects, aggregates, and sorts porn for you and provides it as a service (a netflix of porn).

The solution exists. It's called fully homomorphic encryption.

See:

https://researcher.ibm.com/researcher/view_page.php?id=2661


If you combine a) fully homomorphic encryption with b) mutation, genetic algorithms, and mitosis you could end up with truly autonomous software agents, that collect bitcoins entirely for their own benefit.

They would be the bacteria to the computer virus.

The interesting thing is about these "computer bacteria" is that, just like real bacteria, they don't need complex AI to be successful. They could do something relatively simple like the example of inducing people to solve captchas, mentioned above.  So this would be almost possible using today's technology.

As long as they keep finding people (and other software agents) who help them spread, they and their offspring could survive for a very long time and collect a large quantity of bitcoins that "belong" to them only and not a human being, not even the original author!

I'm not sure to what extent fully homomorphic encryption is resistant to brute force attacks though.

http://bitbrew.net/guatemala-joe/   and a few other 12-oz packs of coffee for under 2BTC.  Not sure about shipping cost - but may be within budget for Americans at least I imagine.

yeah thats totally the thing I imagine bitcoins for:

literally just virtual cash.  absolutely every single aspect of real life cash has some kind of hypothetical equivalent with bitcoins.  all we need is the infrastructure.

its funny and ironic but the biggest problem is going to be CONVINCING PEOPLE TO USE IT

The producer asked me what bitcoin was. I just started babbling about cryptocurrencies, decentralization, and deflationary liquidity. She put me on hold and never came back.

As a newbie, however, I have to wonder out loud why a community that trumpets the independence from "central authorities" as one of the merits of its alternate currency is obsessed with chaining it back together with some form of government-backed currency.  I mean, everyone is worried about its (declining) exchange rate with the US dollar.  Or when I look around, any kind of services or goods that can be bought with bitcoins is always converted to its US$ equivalent.  Unless I misread the part that reads: Why aren't many more services and goods being offered without having to reach for the calculator and plugging in the current USD:BTC exchange rate?

mm.. yes.
Bitcoin seems like it may be far from the anonymous libertarian dream many saw it as - but I still think it levels the playing field somewhat.

Receiving such bad coins would be no big deal *if you subscribe to the blacklist*.
(hence why I referred to it as 'viral' in the stackexchange question)

Just don't give anything of value in return - and make sure you're using wallet software that is subscribed, so it won't use them as input on another transaction.
(or the software may allow you to select and spend those specific poison coins back to the sender so you can ask them to resend 'clean' coins or abort the deal)

The software might also be able to spend them over to a quarantine wallet I guess.

Oh look, another example of capitalism working out wonderfully in theory even though it repeatedly fails in the real world. Why don't you ask some of those early 20th century American coal miners how easy it was for them to work their way up to management or save up enough to start a business and listen to them laugh their asses off (well, I mean, if they hadn't died of black lung 70 years ago).

I notice, too, that the DUI thing continues to go unanswered, so I'll just assume that you're the type of person who likes to ignore his own blatantly contradictory beliefs rather than try to confront them and figure out why they conflict. A hardline, uncompromising ideology is always more important than logic and common sense, right?