You own your Bitcoins because they are associated with your private keys which only you have and keep secret. The private keys are stored in a file called wallet.dat (%appdata\Bitcoin in Windows). Therefore, you should back it up and encrypt it if you don’t want to lose your Bitcoins.

I’ll do it if anyone reputable who you traded with can vouch for you. Or maybe if you can link your identity to an Ebay Account etc.

Also, you didn’t mention the exchange rate. I’m offering 0.9$ – if you can provide proof of your reputation.

Without any reputation (maybe ebay or something?), noone will sell you higher sums for PayPal, as the risk for chargeback fraud is great.

Okay, I’ve sent the mail now and suggested Mt.Gox. I don’t see any really superior alternative except maybe for trading with individuals who’ll buy at lower rates and sell at exchanges for profit – which I mentioned too.

Yep. Can you even send USD to normal European bank accounts? I don’t think they’d like complicated workarounds.

Maybe there’s a better alternative to MtGox for EUR? I haven’t really checked all possibilities.

I’ve just recieved an answer from getdigital.de: http://paste.pocoo.org/raw/357150/

They would very much like to use Bitcoin, but they have little time for this atm, although they state that they are going to eventually.

Also, a question that came up is what the best way to convert BTC to EUR would be… Can you send EUR to MtGox and they convert it? Your thoughts on how I should respond?

The third, I sent them a mail yesterday.

You should definitely have a look at http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4667.0 then.

As soon as they put it on their donation page, certainly.

Care to elaborate?

Note this thread, by the way. That should provide higher incentive.

Services like cam4 is a very good idea in my opinion. Thanks for your input.

Thanks, Mahkul. Hopefully, that will be a sufficient filter.

Just make sure that it fits the criteria.

Are you looking at the Euro? LRUSD is .83 on Bitcoin Central.

I liked it a lot, too. Usually, I show more technically interested people the episode on Security Now, but this surpasses it by far, due to its length and Gavin on board, so it will be my new reference from now on.

Looks like you forgot to consider that every four years (approximately), the inflation rate is reduced by 50%, so inflation in 2013 would be around 8.5% etc. – check this graph.

What kind of shop is that? I’ve never heard of it.

I’ll add to OPs restrictions that the shop/organisation needs to have a website with a Google Page rank of at least 3 in order to get awarded with my bounty, because I don’t really care about obscure, unknown shops.

I absolutely agree with the OP and also with bitcool. It’s a bit of a hen-egg-problem though, because if you market Bitcoin to a broader audience at this stage, they could be scared off as it’s not easy to handle and there are few shops accepting it. On the other hand, features/applications needed to reach this audience don’t have enough demand at this moment.

If we don’t manage to continue this influx of new users we had, a continuing price reduction would be unavoidable as we are in a highly inflationary phase. A further devaluation and volatility could lead to less trust in Bitcoin, causing it to devaluate at an even faster rate.

I’ll pledge the same amount, this is a great idea. So it’s 20 per shop and 10 per organization now.

And how do you handle unjust chargebacks? Does PayPal sort it out in your favor or do you blacklist the scammer’s IP/PayPal-Mail and just swallow the loss?