Thanks for the warning; however I have avoided Microsoft Windows for years for anything financial long before hearing of Bitcoin for safety and security reasons. That means using GNU / Linux for running Bitcoin software or any form of online banking. |
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And if MtGox gets hacked? Or targeted by law?
I'm not going to answer the "hacked" part of your question (mtgox was hacked already), but the "targeted by law". Bitcoin is currently legal in the countries that protect free speech and trade. Changing the law in these countries is a long and complicated process, that tends to spark public debates. And if you want to stop Bitcoin, a public debate is the last thing you want. If they want to stop Bitcoin, banks and governments are more likely to use existing anti-money laundering laws. What they can do with these laws is limited. They can target exchanges that rely on bank accounts, such as MtGox. However, there is nothing they can do against semi-centralized exchanges such as bitcoin.de or bitcoin-otc. Targeting MtGox with anti-money laundering laws will have zero impact as MtGox already follows anti-money laundering laws. |
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For example, I could use for my stash wallet a timeframe of 3 month : This essentially means that if I try to move coins from this wallet to another adress, the transaction will only be effective in 3 month. In the meantime, the transaction can be canceled at will.
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Are we talking a protocol change to allow for chargebacks here? |
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Now my question is this. How many members of the bitcoin community are going to save a copy of the above archived TOS onto their own computers around the world just in case Dwolla manages to pressure archive.org to remove said archive? |
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This is excellent news for bitcoin as it effectively creates an "Apple tax" on the competition in a critical market, namely the online purchase of goods and services by adolescents. By the way Apple will succeed here; however their invention has nothing to do with bitcoin. With bitcoin the parent can simply transfer a predetermined amount of Bitcoin to the child, which is no different from giving the child a cash allowance, effectively sidestepping the Apple patent. If on the other hand the parent wishes to use say a credit card then the "Apple tax" will have to be paid.
This is pay Apple or use bitcoin.
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Thanks so much for your reply.
Starting BitMinter from that command line as suggested above works great, so it is a very effective workaround for me;
however it will not start from the browser even after deleting Bitminter from the cache.
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After upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 11.10 Bitminter will not start at all. I have tried it with both Oracle java and icetea. I currently have Oracle Java version: Version 6 Update 30. When launching Bitminter using Firefox it prompts to open the jre with Firefox and then launches a new tab. i have verified Java on the Oracle site and it says "Your Java version: Version 6 Update 30" Thanks
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My favourite quote from the article is the restroom sign from the South African border station with Zimbabwe. Toilet Paper Only
To be used in this toilet
No Cardboard
No Cloth
No Zim Dollars
No Newspaper
The implication of the article is that the Canada Border Services Agency http://www.cbsa.gc.ca/ and Aduana México http://www.aduanas.gob.mx/ will soon need similar signs for their restroom facilities at Canadian and Mexican border stations with the United States. Of course replacing "Zim" with "US" Suffice is to say that if anything close to what is predicted in this article happens it will send the price of Bitcoin through the roof even in terms of a "hard" currency such as the Swiss Franc, Canadian Dollar or the Australian Dollar. |
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This is bringing in some good first-time users! Many people were curious about bitcoins, but the opportunity to pay for this project has gotten them to actually buy and use bitcoins for the first time.
It is also very likely that they did not have a credit card or PayPal account, had never heard of Bitcoin before and wished to participate. There are many people who do not have a credit card nor do they have a PayPal account and who would love to purchase things online. When thay get presented with Bitcoin as a payment option they will go out of their way to research and purchase Bitcoin because that is in effect their only option to participate in the online economy. |
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They obviously never heard of bitcoin  . Encrypted Wallet in dropbox or pendrive would suffice lol. Only problem is cashing in/out from bitcoin To obvious. I would suggest a floppy diskette for the encrypted wallet. Who in their right mind would look for Bitcoins on a 5.25in floppy diskette for example? |
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Paypal, while appearing to be big now, it's not certain it will always remain like this. When you have a large amount of customers, treating them like garbage may seem like no big deal, but the customer base may decline, and one day they won't longer be able to keep going with their current business model, and they're out for good. Seems to be down right now, but otherwise http://www.paypalsucks.com/ is a good site to visit.  Why isn't there a Bitcoin donation option available on this page? http://www.screw-paypal.com/bottom_nav_homepage/donate.htmlWho's in charge of this? This is a perfect site to bring awareness to Bitcoin. ~Bruno~ Because the awareness of Bitcoin is simply not there yet. Give it time. I ran a search for Bitcoin on http://www.paypalsucks.com/ and all that came up is someone trying to sell a limited PayPal account with approximately 2K USD for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still minuscule even when compared to other Free Libre Open Source Software projects. For example for Bitcoin to have a market share comparable to GNU / Linux on the desktop the price of a single Bitcoin would need to be approximately $15,000 US |
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I am not going to suggest divorcing the "evil bitch" but an affair on the side with the Bitcoin bitch can make a lot of sense here.
Their audience is going to need to be familiar with bitcoin in order for it to work really well. Yeah, it's a chicken and egg problem. It is more like they will get an additional audience consisting of: 1) Bitcoin users very small and yes this is where the chicken and egg problem applies 2) PayPal haters. There is a lot more to these than (1) and if they hate PayPal enough they will go out of their way to learn about Bitcoin. 3) Those who do not have a Credit Card and / or cannot get a PayPal account even much greater than (1) and (2) combined and again they will go out of their way to learn about Bitcoin. |
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“You might wonder if Smashwords should simply switch to a different payment provider. It’s not so easy. PayPal is designed into the wiring of the Smashwords platform. They run the credit card processing for our retail store, and they’re how we pay our authors and publishers. PayPal is also an extremely popular, trusted payment option for our customers. It is not feasible for us to simply switch to another provider, should such a suitable provider even exist, especially with so few days notice.”
This is why you don't marry an evil bitch.
I am not going to suggest divorcing the "evil bitch" but an affair on the side with the Bitcoin bitch can make a lot of sense here. |
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Paypal is also notorious for outright denying Indian applications even if completely legitimate. Check all the hosting forums like digital point for their epic paypal pain stories of seizing funds, denying ID scans, dropping accounts, ect.
But before blaming PayPal has anyone asked the question why? In particular how different laws and regulations impact a company like PayPal. Lets take the US and the UK for example. To do business in the US one has to ban gambling. In the UK one has to ban guns. Now to do business in both the US and UK one has to ban both gambling and guns. The more places one wants to do business the more things one has to ban and restrict. |
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Paypal has had those rules ever since Meg Whitman wacky republican nutjob bought them out. There are entire countries banned from using PayPal, as a global payment processor they have no future. Problem is bitcoin is too unstable for merchants to use still or else all of India and Pakistan would start using it..they go to creative lengths to get a paypal account just to punt some junk online like the rest of us.
I would never trust any US based payment processor
People in India can use PayPal https://www.paypal.com/worldwide/ however a lot of the restrictions have to do with Indian laws and regulations. India
As of March 2011(Date needs to be changed), PayPal made changes to the User Agreement for Indian users to comply with Reserve Bank of India regulations. Notable changes to the agreement were:
Export related payments for goods and services may not exceed $500.
Any balance or future payments must not be used to buy goods or services but transferred to a bank account within 7 days from the receipt of payment.
Credit/Debit cards must be used to pay through Paypal.[citation needed]
The per transaction limit just been changed to USD 3000, since 14 October 2011 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPalMultiply this by 190 countries worldwide and one soon sees the problem that PayPal or a potential competitor say Google or Facebook faces. Bitcoin does not have this problem at all |
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Buried in the fine print of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy are all kinds of moralistic restrictions. Some examples:
1) No porn
2) No gambling (lotteries, online poker etc)
3) No weapons
4) No firearms, ammunition or firearm parts
5) No items "considered obscene" (whatever that means - up to them I guess)
I absolutely detest PayPal telling me what I can do with my money but unfortunately there aren't any real (i.e. widely accepted) alternatives. I've run into the part regarding firearm parts. They'll freeze your account without warning; good luck getting your money out after that.
They have no choice in order to stay in business across so many different regulatory regimes. |
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PayPal has to deal with regulations in over 190 different countries and who knows how many different state, provincial and local regulatory bodies around the world. It is actually very surprising how much one can do with PayPal given the worldwide regulatory exposure they have.
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Are we looking for competitors to bitcoin?
Does bitcoin need some of these licenses?
Is that even possible given that no one is "in charge" of bitcoin?
Mobile Wallets and Mobile payments will be a very, very crowded space in 1-2 years. So yes, it is quite interesting to see Facebook take the steps now to be a licensed Money Transmitter. Bitcoin services like the exchanges, payment processors, and expediters like BitInstant definitely fall under existing regulations for currency exchanges, payment processing, and money transmission. Especially when such businesses use Dollars or Euros as part of their business. So yes, the recent crackdown on TradeHill, etc, just shows that bitcoin related businesses need the proper licensing. If facebook and Google are getting this type of license, then bitcoin businesses should probably follow and do the same thing. There is a very critical difference here that gives Bitcoin a great advantage. A Bitcoin business only needs to be licensed in the jurisdictions where they do business but the Bitcoins themselves can be used worldwide. Let us say I wish to transfer money from here in Canada to a person in Kenya. I can purchase the Bitcoins here in Canada at a business that is licensed in Canada but not in Kenya, send them to a person in Kenya who then sells them in Kenya at a business that is licensed in Kenya but not in Canada. A competitive money transfer using say Google or Facebook requires that business to be licensed in both Canada and Kenya. M-PESA is not an option here because M-PESA is not licensed in Canada. There are many innovative money transfer and e-wallet services worldwide but they are for the most part local products. Even PayPal who has been at this for over a decade does not allow a withdrawal to a local bank account in most parts of the world. https://www.paypal.com/worldwide/. The challenges that PayPal faces with regulation worldwide illustrates this issue very well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal |
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seriously. This US citizen tech and finance savvy newbie is at day 9 attempting to buy $50 of BitCoin. I think I might be able to by the end of the week.
Here is Canada one can do this in a matter of a few hours 1) Sign up for an account at https://www.cavirtex.com/2) Walk to the nearest Royal Bank of Canada and deposit $50 3) In 1-3 hours your account at https://www.cavirtex.com/ is credited 4) Purchase Bitcoin and withdraw to wallet |
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