the reason everyone is acting like sheep valuing bitcoin based on the mtgox price is because no one knows what to base a bitcoin price on if MTGox wasnt around.

me personally..

i want £50 a day (average days minimum wage after taxes in the UK) ($75). so whatever bitcoins an average miner would make in a day is what i would call a fair daily income/valuation.

base it off the proof of work EG the mining costs. (edit: im not a miner, but i think using the mining costs is a fair starting point)

so if an average miner can only get 0.3BTC a day then that puts bitcoin at £150 ($225) per coin. and as difficulty increases and the daily coin production decreases, obviously the per coin price will rise to ensure miners get a fair daily income.

not based on rampant speculation that is tied to nothing but panic and profiteering.

so when i trade with someone in another country using just the clients.. if everyone based the bitcoin price on a average daily production vs average daily minimum wage of their country. then it would create a stable price valuation

i propose for the asset/trading investment of bitcoin to be
XBT

and for the currency version (thinking about far in the future when we will be doing daily transactions in satoshi's)
SAT

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52543.0 Bitcoin100

they already doing a charity drive to get charities to accept bitcoin

using any remote service for storage that is not owned by you is risky.

no matter how much security a bank vault has, there have been hundreds of years of examples of bank thefts involving gaining entry to a vault.

no matter how much security a bank has on its computer systems there are decades of examples of hacking banking institutions.

the only reason to still trust banks is that your money is insured.

with bitcoin it is not insured.

so don't let third parties hold all your funds, no matter how much security they promise they have.

remember if the only copy of the private key is on your hard drive or a piece of paper in your possession then the coins only belong to you.

if a third party service has it, secured or not. there is always a risk.

so only risk what your willing to use/lose.

i think the bitcoin foundation does need to have some fundamental principles lined out that will never change no matter what "agenda's" get voted in or out.

after all if there is only a couple dozen members then it will only take a group of craze minded saboteurs to pay a members fee and then over cast the votes in their favour.

imagine 50 bankers or public-servants buying the memberships purely to control the voting results. to get "agenda's" passed through and then persuade the community to change to the updated clients containing these voted changes.

so this is why i think the OP asked the question..

before donating to become a member, what intentions/fundamental principles does the foundation hold.

EDIT:

i like how this post just earned me to be ignored by 2 of the foundation members. As if them no longer seeing the message makes the points of the message less valid.

a TV drama about courtrooms and lawyers. this episode was more about "anonymous" helping to get justice for a rape victim, but using a guy named Mr Bitcoin as the front man of all things bitcoin and "anonymous"

the last episode featuring the character "mr bitcoin" was last year which was more about trying to prove if he was or wasnt the bitcoin creator.

i personally preferred that episode last year as it was verging NEAR reality by talking about bitcoins a lot more and the mystical true identity of the creator of bitcoin.

this latest episode seems like a stab in the dark trying to highlight "anonymous" as if "anonymous" is tightly tethered to bitcoin.

it needs to get more to a point where localbitcoins is the place people should go to to buy in-out of bitcoins. not the banking infrustructure. i have yet to see media show much about localbitcoins.com.

i have though seen a few TV pres stuff showing mtgox, bitpay, and btc-e (including showing the trollbox where people were swearing) (media facepalm moment)

i think anyone that likes fiat should have their name listed on localbitcoins.com, alternatively if your really into bitcoins and you think your the most knowledgeable person in your town in regards to bitcoin. start up a community exchange website for your town/cluster of villages.

don't rely on mtgox as the centralised valuer of bitcoin

keep the exchanges at BTC but if you personally want smaller amounts you, on your own services or excel worksheets are free to move the decimal place of dollar and BTC..

in the future investors will still want the whole BTC valuation.

but retailer places like bitpay can freely do measurements in satoshi's, bitmills, bitcents.

much like the real world with gold. the spot price is measured in ounces. but on the street/retail level its sold in grams/ coins/ ingots values

i just checked kalyhost is owned by that tibane guy linked to mtgox.. so you can renew with BTC direct on kalyhost.

bid $80

lol well its only a template https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92969.0
the true notes have tamper proof holographic stickers hiding the private key.

which is me just hinting that non escrow non digital non bank backed/insured bitcoins can be done

ill change it for you

here you go heres £35, should be enough for a few pints down the pub

to feed your paranoia.
QR codes are not made by someone with a pen doing dot to dot. in 99% of cases people use googles QR code generator or blockchain.info, or an app designed by a third party to grab the QR Code image to then print out. whats stopping those third parties from keeping logs of every string of code it receives to convert into a QR Code image.....

banks third party services, paypal are the digital protection.

paper notes EG bank notes are irreversible without a fight and maybe a bit of blood, or a slap across the face with a wet fish if refusal to repay occurs. or if your night a fighter. then a small claims court case.

so here is the solution..

escrow for digital protection. (a comparitive to banks, visa, mastercard and the dreaded paypal)

and bitbills, cascasius coins for irreversible instant transactions..

now that is one possible future path bitcoins can take.

2 points to make

1. ever since the minimum wage came in. it became widely known that one hours minimum wage is worth £6.20 .. and a mirror to that obviously is that £6.20 is worth 1 hours minimum wage. put it into context of other things. EG a loaf of bread or 4 pints of milk are worth 10 minutes of minimal labour each.

now on that scale the promise would be that you will be paid in something in the equivalent to just over 1 hour 30 minutes of minimal labour in exchange for a £10 note if the bank note disapeared and the government had to trade your bank notes for something new/different.

now lets move onto bitcoin. although its harder to judge true value. i have seen the network hash rate of mining and seen similar waves as the network hashrate sky rocks so has the price. and where the price sky rockets totally unrelated to network hash rate thats where things like the 2011 spike and dump happens.

as long as you can see some form of correlation between new users buying into bitcoin, network hashrate. then bitcoin has a value. if you cannot see the price follow any pattern or statistic at all, then its a speculated bubble.

bitcoin is still too new to have one single set guideline for its value.

point 2.
FSA have no issues of you making bearer bonds and promisary notes. they do however have issues with reproducing the UK pound note using the word 'pound' the symbol '£' and the queens face all in one place without their consent or explanation. but so as long as you ask FSA and the UK government you can (with alot of paperwork and red tape) make your own pound note.
take these guys for instance.
http://bristolpound.org/

the protocol doesnt need to change. bitcoin can still be irreversable. but exchanges can adopt policies that if a merchant is scammed then the merchants access to fiat is frozen. and their identity (due to high volume trades) is passed onto the authorities.

much like paypal cant stop a delivery of goods mid flow. of demand the merchant sends the goods that are promised. but they certainly can use merchants /customers identity and access to the service to cause enough headache to sort out a few genuine issues.

it aint much of a stretch of the imagination for places like starbucks to get a MTGOX account right now, not in a few years. but now. and just request MTGOX codes for payment for coffee..

instant confirmation. and out the door while the coffee is still piping hot with a layer of throff on the top

exactly my point.. he thinks anything growing at more then a 45% must be a bubble... hense me facepalming, just reading that article

i read the first couple paragraphs and just facepalmed that the article missed so many examples that disprove the article


here is a link to an image that gives away an example. i wont use the image tag as i dont want to give it away before you read what i had to say above first.

example

next is talking about why the article continues to assume btcoin is doomed to fail


the same can be said about gold and silver. but guess what guys. while gold bars are for investors, gold nuggets, gold dust ingots and coins can be used as "currency".

hang on.. how about BITCOINS for investments. and satoshi's for currency.. problem solved.

that being said, bitcoin legally would never 100% replace FIAT, but keep in mind, there are 7 billion people in the world. it doesnt need EVERYONE holding bitcoin. infact it only takes TODAY 12 million people (amount of bitcoins in circulation today) to want to invest just one months salary of £$€1000 into bitcoin. to make bitcoin instantly worth £$€1000 each

that is just 0.17% of the population putting only EVER one months salary into bitcoin.

so how do you like them apples.

food for thought

what a load of FUD

there was no exploit, there was no hacks or thefts done by the exchange. it just shows that you would rather beleive the scare tactics of the troll box then to learn the actual facts of the case.

on april 4th a majority of exchanges and pools got DDOS'ed. for those that are not aware a ddos is not a hacking method to steal money. it is a method to just push so much information into a website that it lags.

BTC-E decided to disable its email servers so that more server power went into active trading.
https://btc-e.com/news/128

other exchanges have been known to temporarily remove/disable less key systems to ensure stability for the more general user.

on april 9th the email servers were switched back on
https://btc-e.com/news/131

so those that did not get emails, please don't call it an exploit. it was in the announcements from the 4th of april. so keep an eye on the announcements. they may lack english grammar but atleast they inform you better then mtgox.

i for one am a person that if something looks dodgy i will go out my way to look into it *cough* BFL *cough*   but BTC-E although run by russians where most trolls stereotype them as 'russian mafia', BTC-e has done a great job when actual hacks occured last year and they dealt with it in a speedy time, without anyone losing out.

that being said. they are still a third party. so using them as a long term bank, using anyone that is not yourself as a long term bank is something you all need to think about intensively.

only put in the funds you want to play with in, the day you want to play with them. and withdraw it before you go sleep. only truly trust those people long term that you know, and are able to slap across the face with a wet fish if they deceived you.

remember its your money, no banks will bail you out. theirs no government insurance policies against loss. so trust yourself to be wise with your funds.

i have many coins but i would only keep in a few coins overnight that i deem a safe risk to add a few pennys if the orders hit. i do the same with institutional banking systems also, so its not just a bitcoin precaution.

what you will find though is shouting abuse will not get speedy results. infact they are within their rights to put your issues to the bottom of the pile if you become abusive/extortionate.