So merchants will quote prices in mBTC.  Problem solved.
Doesn't change the fact that (in your example) 1 BTC is $1,000.

If your friends are so foolish as to value things on the nominal value (100 metrics tons of manure is worth more than an ounce of gold so invest in shit litterally) then just tell them the price in mBTC.
"Bitcoin is still pretty cheap with a mBTC going for only $0.16").

BTW In your example that is a $6 soda but then again with as much as the federal reserve is printing that might be realistic circa 2020 or so.

What are you talking about? I thought this was dead but then you feel the need to throw in new falsehoods. .NET is a software framework.  Nothing more.  

It can connect to just about any db on the planet.  No need for custom libraries.  Out of the box, day 0, in visual studio you can build a new MVC project and setup MySQL as the datastore in all of about five minutes for example.  ADO.NET, LINQ, and Entity Framework all work fine with MySQL or even Oracle (if one felt so inclined).  Data access isn't slower for non-Microsoft RDBMS.

You can do it faster than 10 minutes, LTC uses 2.5 minute blocks for example.  You probably (if super majority of nodes were on high bandwidth low latency links) could get away with sub 1 minute blocks.  10 minutes was simply chose as a compromise.  The smaller the difference between the AVERAGE block interval and AVERAGE propogation delay, the more hashing power that is wasted in orphaned chains.   Remember just because the average time between blocks is 10 (or 2.5 or 1) minutes, it doesn't change the fact that each block will have variable time.  A significant fraction of blocks will be solved in less than a minute.  No node has connection to every other node on the network.  Nodes have to broadcast to peers who independently verify and broadcast to peers.  As blocks get larger maintaining a huge number of connections (to reduce the number of "hops") becomes more expensive in terms of bandwidth.    A cryptocurrency could choose any number as a block interval just remember there is no "free lunch", shorter or longer there are pros and cons to both.

Buy $1,000 worth per week for next 10 weeks.  Maybe you leave some profit on the table if the exchange rate only goes up but on any dip you will freak out less knowning you can deploy more capital.  To get the most of dollar cost averaging the dollar amount should be the same on each purchase, not the amount of BTC purchased.  This means you buy more at a lower price and less at a higher price automatically and your basis (entry point) is lower.

Blockchain.info only reports the IP address where it first saw the block. 

So

Miner ---> you ---> blockchain.info

Blockchain.info saw the block "relayed from you" doesn't mean you mined it.

Actually it could be this

Miner ---> another node ----> another node -----> another node -----> another node ----> another node ----> you ----> blockchain.info

This. This. This.

Sadly we see dozens and dozens of these reported cases and not a single one involving 2FA.  Granted 2 factor isn't a magical bullet.  With clever use of trojan/rootkit an attacker could trick you into giving them access to your wallet (or in the case of something like MtGox trick you into withdrawing BTC to their address) but the 2 factor greatly increases the security.

Fail.  I already have centralized money.  As much as I dislike the Federal Reserve I trust them about as much as I trust you.

It should go without saying that the worst possible thing you could do is engage in "free wealth management" with noobs.

My guess is you didn't read anything I wrote.  I addressed the fact that miners are free to set fee policies and sometimes even high priority tx need a fee for timely processing.
I also addressed the fact that there is no reason to change the limit a client imposes on creating new tx, until most of the nodes have ALREADY been updated to allow relaying.

Nowhere did I indicate that x min fee would always get a tx in a block.  It hasn't never been that way, not today, not since block 1.  Miners have always been free to pick which transactions can be included.  However given the fact that miners ARE ALREADY FREE TO INCLUDE THE TX THEY WISH and market demand has resulted in miners ROUTINELY DELAYING LOW FEE TX there is no real reason for the extra fee rules.   

Simple version (for those who like to only skim and point out errors which don't exist):
Let miners set their own pricing and have the client only enforce a min fee on creating & relaying (i.e. 0.0001 BTC).

Ever wonder you see such inflammatory, unresearched garbage on Seeking Alpha.

Simple

The more inflammatory it is, the more it gets linked to, the more the author gets paid.

You would be mistaken.  Taxes are due when a taxable event occurs.

If you choose to not pay your taxes at least go into it with your eyes wide open and not laboring until delusional dreams.

So Bitcoin welfare?  The purpose of mining is to secure the network, we want the most security possible and a free market is the best way to accomplish that.  The fact that miners receive compensation is merely the incentive to secure the network.  There is no decentralized method that could be used to limit individuals. Very easy for a single 1TH/s farm to look like 1000 "individual" 1 GH/s rigs given the decentralized and psuedo-anonymous nature of Bitcoin.  Even if it could be done essentially it would be artificially lowering hashing power and thus network security.  Not a whole lot of value in doing that.

Sadly in the US unless you renounce your citizenship (and to do that requires you gain citizenship in another country first) and pay an "exit tax" simply moving to another country doesn't erase any tax liability.

Still people shouldn't get tax advice from the internet.

If it is a small sum honestly the IRS has bigger fish to fry.  The IRS audits less than 0.5% of tax returns for people making less than $250,000 per year.  They aren't going to spend the manpower to track down some guy who had a $300 capital gain on some Bitcoins a couple years ago.

If you have a significant amount of wealth you are already use to dealing with the IRS (they concentrate on the "top") and likely already have professional tax support.  If you suddenly find yourself in this latter category and don't have professional support ... get it. 

The moderators don't believe in heavy censorship.  They don't delete anything other than obvious trolling, illegal activity, or violation of forum rules.  Potential scams are not acted upon.  In the decentralized nature of Bitcoin, users should take personal responsibility for their own wealth. 

The system doesn't know how much is in your wallet.  The system only knows about addresses*.  That being said your wallet cointains the private keys for all the addresses in your wallet.  So it will use multiple addresses as needed to create a transaction.

The concept of selecting the exact input to use is called "coin control" and the QT client doesn't have that capability.  Some wallets so.   If you want to experiment with a small amount of funds I would recommend using the hybrid eWallet blockchain.info.  It allows you to select the input address you want to use.

Generally speaking this isn't really necessary or even useful in most cases.



* If you don't want to go really deep into how Bitcoin really works stop reading now.  Bitcoin doesn't actually work on the concept of value at addresses.  Bitcoin works on the concept of transferring ownership of outputs.  The output of transactions are called "unspent" outputs.  When you create a transaction the inputs are unspent outputs of prior transactions.  So even if you use a single address if it received coins multiple times the transaction will have multiple inputs.  Outputs can only be spent or unspent.  You can't spend half of an output.  So if you receive 10 BTC and want to spent 4 BTC your client will actually create a 10 BTC tx which has two outputs, 4 BTC going where you want and 6 BTC going to another address in your wallet.  The 10 BTC becomes spent and the tx creates two new unspent outputs (4 BTC and 6 BTC).

Well that isn't exactly true for low priority txs.  Nodes enforce min rules for creation, relaying, and inclusion in a block for low priority txs.  There is some merit in reforming that aspect. 

Bitcoin is a protocol and a currency. Bitcoin can't control anything.  Remember there is no state.  The dollar is used for all types of crimes.  Nobody excepts dollar bills to fight malicous use.  Now the STATE might do that but there are two seperate entities.

Of course the STATE isn't the only entity which can prevent crime.  Potential victims can also.  If people hadn't given Pirate any Bitcoins ... Pirate wouldn't have been able to steal any Bitcoins.  It is called personal responsibility.   People have a choice they either demand the state protects them from ever potential risk or they starting protecting themselves.  Anyone who gives this "bank" anything will lose everything and hopefully they learn from it.

One simple change which could be done quickly is to remove the min mandatory fee rules (which only apply to low priority/spam txs) related to block inclusion and keep the lower min mandatory fee rules for relaying.

For those who don't know the QT client (and many other clients copy these same rules) enforces the following fees as a denial of service prevention mechanism:
1) For high priority txs - no fee required *
2) To relay low priority txs - 0.0001 BTC per KB  (0.1 mBTC per KB)
3) To include tx in a block - 0.0005 BTC per KB (0.5 mBTC per KB)
4) To create a low priority tx - 0.0005 BTC per KB (0.5 mBTC per KB)

The third and fourth rules can probably be removed completely.   Miners are free to set their own fee requirements anyways and malicous users would simply use a modified client anyways.

So the rule set could be reduced to this:
1) High priority txs (create or relay) - no fee required *
2) Low priority txs (create or relay) - 0.0001 BTC per KB (0.01 mBTC per KB)

At the same time the relay (but not create requirement could be reduced to 0.00005 (0.05 mBTC).  The reason you can't change both at the same time is that older clients will reject those txs so you don't want to drop the create rule until a super majority of the network has upgraded.  Once a super majority of nodes has upgraded a new client version could be released which creates tx which will be accepted by the upgraded nodes.  Longer term Gavin presented some good ideas for starting to build a "fee marketplace" but this could be an interim step.   It could even be done in the next version and release in a relatively short period of time.

Also the default optional fee should be lowered from 0.01 ($1.34) to the min mandatory fee (either 0.01 mBTC or 0.05 mBTC).


* Now remember miners are free to impose their own fee requirements and often no fee high priority tx have to wait many blocks for inclusion so optional fees may be useful in a lot of cases but these would be between the miner and clients, the protocol wouldn't care.

You will be waiting a long time.