This might help.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEE9A33593A261433

I know it took me over a year to accept bitcoin. I went through a phase where I was willing to accept it as a medium of exchange but not a store of value. Basically, I figured I could accept it and immediately convert it to dollars (which I still do mostly because I need to in order to buy the raw materials for my products).

https://bitcoinstarter.com/ is the other one I am aware of.

I do hope people are going to use these for their appropriate purposes. For a business startup it makes more sense to use an asset exchange (bitfunder.com or btct.co or the like) - I'd love to get a few shares of the next Apple  . But the crowdfunding platforms are great for things where there isn't any expected return on investment, like an art installation or if someone ever figures out what Tesla wanted to do for distributing free power.

LOL, he's either Satoshi and misdirecting or he just hasn't been paid to check the code.

Last week I uses WeExchange to put a small amount of bitcoins into my Ripple account, and it wasn't hard - but I have forgotten how I did it. I'm sure if I want to do more I can figure it out easy enough.

Its the internal deal making and handling that I'm still fuzzy on, and I don't really have the time right now to dig into it.

My Internet connection is terrible, but Ben Stone (Bad Quaker) AND Jeffrey Tucker is just plain golden bitcoinen  and worth the time to download.

Don't cash out, but if you have a significant amount of bitcoins you might want to diversify your portfolio.

Those are light machine guns that are intended for use as area denial. You don't really need to aim as much as you need to be able to swap out magazines quickly. Point in the general direction of a swarm of attackers and spray. The guys behind them with the AKs can take care of the shooting where aiming is important.

I have ordered from Amagi Metals and had a good experience. Recommended.

I also sell gold, but in a form more intended for use as an alternative currency than as an investment. ShireSilver.com Our Twentieth Gram Gold Card is the world's smallest physical gold trade unit.
Note that our integrated bitcoin acceptance is temporarily down, but we can do it the old fashioned way.

I wouldn't trust it for sums worth paying $10/card for unless it uses something like Shamir's Secret Sharing or the BIP-XX(?) that Casascius has talked about using. That is, there should be a way that I can order a card and you only ever see part of the private key so there's no way you could steal from the account. Simply asking customers to believe you have destroyed the copy you have is insufficient.

I do like the idea of using stainless steel as long as the data is stamped into the card and not simply printed onto it. The metal might be able to withstand high temps, but the ink likely would not.

I really don't like the headline because it will tend to make liberals be opposed to bitcoins when they should be welcoming it.

And as far as taxes, yes bitcoin can eventually lead to the elimination of transaction based taxation, but real estate taxes are pretty much inescapable so I foresee governments switching most taxes over to that. They will probably have to lower overall taxation though.

Yes, it is. I've had George's Baklava and it very much is. I've also had it deep fried which is orgasmic.

Yep. I run a private mint, and I make sure to put more in my products than they say they are because I want to make sure my customers are satisfied. You never know who is going to try to verify the accuracy of your claims and if they know how to calibrate their equipment, so putting a little more in there just makes good sense from a business standpoint.

Exactly. Use bitcoins when you can, and use Shire Silver cards for in-person non-digital transactions. 

In the mean time, Tonto, maybe consider the even cooler Shire Silver cards. Amagi Metals should be come a reseller too, especially now that we have better bulk purchasing options.

DT was the person actually managing the FZB asset, IIRC.

Yeah, demurrage is a really bad idea.

I know the proponents say "but Worgl!", and I respond that the Worgl experiment didn't run long enough to prove that the idea had any value. It also would have needed to be tested in competition with as many other currency ideas as the market would have provided but it didn't - it was only tested against a failing fiat currency.

Yep, I had the opportunity to show Peter my Shire Silver cards a year ago but didn't bother because he's pretty clearly stuck in traditional investment thinking.

I do like the combi bar idea, and had tried to do something similar a few years before these hit the scene. I just couldn't make it work economically, and it doesn't really make sense as a currency. Its a kind of a cross between an investment and a OMGTSHTFWTF temporary currency for a scenario that isn't really likely to happen.

That said, this does seem to indicate he's learning and will eventually get on board. Its just going to take some time and some profit incentive.

I gave up on the Fools when they gave up on their original Foolish Four idea. It was a simple way to get respectable returns that anyone could understand. That was the whole point. But they thought they could be smarter than the market, by doing a lot more work, to improve the returns. Totally defeated the purpose of their original idea, and also had too much hubris.

What prevents the government from forcing Shire Silver to give up shipping addresses is that we routinely delete old fulfilled orders. Its called database maintenance 

Plus we're agorist and even if they come to us with a warrant we'll just tell them to pound sand. Yes, I'm willing to go to jail for that, and we have contingency plans in place if that happens.

Please note that the shape of an object can affect the conductivity, so a conductivity test isn't a good way to test for purity. This is one of the reasons why Shire Silver has never implemented a method of directly accessing the metal through the plastic. We considered it when we were creating our prototypes, putting holes at each end of the embedded wire to allow probes to be used. For more on this, you might start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_conductor and particularly note sections like
and
This last one indicates that a conductivity test would likely be more accurate for Shire Silver than traditional bullion, but it would still not be accurate enough and adding the probe access points would add significant cost to the card production.

And yes, we get our silver and gold from a well known jewelry supply company who has been in the business for a long time. We also try to make our cards contain at least as much metal as they say they have plus a small amount to help account for our production variance. For example, a half gram silver card will have 0.52 +/- 0.02 grams of .999 fine silver.

I suppose I should get around to making a Shire Silver specific thread so I can post stuff like the news that our recent site upgrade has temporarily cut off the ability to accept bitcoins in the shopping cart, which we're trying to fix.

And people following this thread might find this page interesting: https://shiresilver.com/counterfeiting