gold is wonderful because it can be used for jewelry, decoration, in electronic devices and many other things. it also has a limited supply. hence why its the 'big thing' in investments
you cant do as much with rubys and sapphires as you can do with gold. so yes in ancient times pretty things meant alot more to the rich then today, multifunction of limited resource matters more these days, take gold and platinum for instance.
diamonds can be man made... need i say more
i agree home made is a nightmare. but going back to the gold analogy once gold miners dropped their pickaxes and wash bowls and started to convert cheap second hand farm machinery into makeshift mining machinery the 'game' increased. yes it was a nightmare but it kickstarted a new industry and then came the professional machines. gold miners use to buy a pickaxe for under £50 now they spend a few hundred thousand on professional machinery.
with bitcoin what you will find is that those that do not have ASICS will start diversifying their business plans. to either not mine at all and start producing products to aid others mining, and profit from product sales. offer services to change the mined coins into native currencies for the miners, or create other wonderful businesses/services. creating new industries revolving around bitcoin.

back hundreds of years ago only the kings metalsmiths were the only ones able and skilled to do anything with the gold once it was mined. now anyone can do anything with it. take samsung for instance. they invest alot of time and money into getting gold for their components. and solar panel company's are currently right now seeking out alot of silver to ensure adequate supply to make solar panels. but you would never imagine them to be gold miners or investors as that is not their niche. but they are part of the gold//silver industry.

i will say bitcoin is not a commodity. it is a asset. so using a gold analogy has its limits. as bitcoin only has one purpose a store of value. (you cannot make jewellery out of a bitcoin).

although the program to generate coins is called a miner, i have always felt that satoshi's paper was a work of art and that using gold mining analogies was a failed comparison due to its limits in comparisons. if only miners were called vectors or designers or something more related to the art, people would not be seeing bitcoin as a commodity purely on its gold references everyone uses, but as its true representation, an asset.

so lets take an asset that cannot be used for any other purpose but to view, admire and store value... ART:
paint brush companies, canvas companies, art galleries, auction houses, art schools, and many other 'rich' businesses have succeeded in increasing wealth without themselves putting paint to paper to create the asset themselves. bitcoin will be the same. it will change the game.. not kill it.

if your looking for some charts.. its limited because of anonymity, its hard to tell where people that use bitcoin actually live.. but here is probably as close as you can get to a chart showing numbers and locations. (warning: outdated, but useful as a guide to location ratio of the community)



it came from here http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/

if you want to see it in a nice and impressive view here:
http://blockchain.info/nodes-globe

location based info should always be taken with a pinch of salt. but from reading forums the leader is USA followed by europe, which does have a big market for bitcoin businesses. unlike australia or asia south america or the UK which is small in comparison to the two top 'players',.

my solution to 20 different random passwords is easy

have a random character word u can remember and the somewhere in the word you also put in something else. EG the websites address

eg:
1h9f6e0 49d8ve7 becomes 1h9f6e0bitcointalk49d8ve7
or
193yzso37dsw becomes 1B9I3TyCzOdIoN3T7AdLsKw

by the way my password looks nothing like this, its just an idea to have something that is not in the dictionary.

you can even make a VB.net webbrowser that reads the web address and auto spells your password for you to just copy and paste into it, thus avoiding google chrome addons and internet explorer extensions from listening into the webpage data transmissions. and bypassing keyloggers if u simply copy and paste.
if your smart enough you can even use the document.element code to directly put the passphrase into the webpage login box without the need of your passphrase going into the 'clipboard' which avoids any smart keyloggers which might also copy every text you copy and paste.

there are many ways to secure yourself and the best security is personal security. not relying on third party design or service to secure your system for you.

because if everyone started using the same security service hackers would direct their interest at that single service. but an individual style of security where no two people use the same method, will make hackers lives even harder.

i know of millions of people that buy gold and trade gold. but they dont mine it because its expensive to buy the machinery and too time consuming. they would rather continue with their regular day job and buy gold for other reasons, whether its for investing or for making things from.

bitcoin will be the same. hobbyists that gpu mine btc will start to either up their game and make it into a proper profession by buying / making their own bigger rigs or change their method of accumulating wealth.

much like gold miners had to upgrade from pan washing gold to using excavators and wash machines.. or they became gold merchants, trading mined gold which other people mined, for fiat currency and pocketing the profit margin in the middle.

bitcoin will be the same. you will notice more fiat exchanges pop up and other bitcoin related ventures. use this time to think up new avenues of income. EG google "drop shipping" and see if you can find legit products that you can sell for bitcoin without the hassle of packaging up the goods, as the supplier handles all that.

and if you truly want to help the economy and help increase future strengths of bitcoin. aim your plans at the outsiders.

try not to be a sheep making yet another gambling site that only those within the community will use, or another coin lending site only the community will use.all that will achieve is stirring the pot of cash within the same group of people. no wealth creation, just diluting wealth within the community.

and as for the identity of these secretive ASIC creators i think its now widely known that Sonny Vleisides and josh zerlan are behind BFL.. and their address.. you could probably find it..

but with that in mind about trust. do you know steve jobs or bill gates home address off the top of your head? yet people dealt with their companies without issue a few year back before they stepped off their CEO thrones for differing reasons.

i do agree that bitcoin businesses need to be transparent and honest as it creates alot of scepticism when they hide certain facts about themselves. and even now people are not 100% sure about BFL due to the vagueness of facts BFL decide to release. Which is totally understandable.

their PR does suck and i think aswell as miners having to up their game when asics come out, i think bitcoin businesses need to up their game too.

there are only a handfull of bitcoin businesses which i find great, and they are bitinstant, moneydealers, bitcoinstore bitpay. and strangely enough they are all linked together by certain people.

i think other businesses, oops i should say other hobby stores should learn from the legit businesses and up their game.

bitcoin is still growing, not dying. so look forward to change and roll with it.

wait for it.............
we have had the sales pitch, wait for it....

pre-orders/ investment, donations will come up next..

maybe worth reading through this thread
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52543.0

about the BTC100 they already started talking to charities from what i read. might save you some time with your own endevers if u collaborate or steal idea's off each other

let me think. credit mtgox.. hang on.. thats my idea

if you have a bricks and mortar shop and want to accept crypto but without the hassle of confirm times.. there is and has been a solution.

MTGOX codes

this means the amount has been pre confirmed in mtgox and will instantly appear when you redeem it.

need i say more?

yep.
just need to create an app that says send your mtgox code to this page. (which is linked to the shop owners mtgox account or bitinstant)

my sentiments exactly to both of you. this is why i and a few other people with the same mind set have moved over to litecoin and are in progress of doing a few things with that.

a few of us have already been in contact with merchants/ e-commerce and brick and martar stores and for all the propaganda about silk road and limited userbase of 200k regular users world wide = 1 people per town. its not really in it for them. plus asking the merchant to fit the bill of the discount does not look good either.

although the counter argument is: free advertising on many websites, maybe some media coverage and the only cost is x% loss on the potential 1 customer per town, which on the scheme of things is just a drop in the pond. the whole propaganda of SR keeps rearing its little head up again.

the whole anonymous SR niche market VS mainstreaming legit businesses. is still like knocking ur head on a brick wall.

i do though think that people making insureances and gambling are just stirring the pot of cash amungst themselves and not really creating actual value or expanding the community. a much better idea is to create a website selling goods and using a drop shipper to do the hard work. it costs you nothing upfront, no need to store unwanted goods if they never sale , no need to package them up or take them to delivery points. you just get an order and pass it onto the drop shipper adhok.

wrong. in 2009 bitcoin had 0 value..  and you cant use bitcoin to do anything else. you cant bend it or melt it to make jewellery out of it, you cant eat it or drink it so it has no commodity value. it wasnt till months later that people started putting a monetary value to it making it become an ASSET.

bitcoin is not like gold (commodity) at all. it is more like van Gough art (asset) but instead of a dozen paintings theres a few quadrilian satoshis.
it wasn't till months later that people started putting a monetary value to it making it become an asset.

in 2009 it had no value, but because some people started selling alpaca socks and pizza for it, it created a demand. and the production costs set the price accordingly increasing due to difficulty changes(supply) which then increased the costs of electricity and hardware to continue mining. move on 4 years and the price is now linked to production costs + miners profits.

500 years ago water was free, anyone can have it. no one seen monetary value in it. but then water companies created value. how you may ask.
by making it easier to get hold of instead of the people gathering it themselves (supply) and by setting a cost based on water pipes and treatment facilities (production costs) and now they are making huge profit due to the demand for it increasing.

short answer: its backed by production costs
EG gold miners sell gold to cover their costs of production and a profit to cover their livelihood. gold is getting more expensive to produce a gold bar, hence the high prices.

long answer: its backed by productions costs and profit dependant on demand
EG if an individual gold miners costs were $1500 to make a weeks worth of gold bar the minimal they would sale for is $1500 plus a weeks wages. that's if their was not much demand and the miner was desperate to sell it just to break even.
but if the demand is high, the miner can sell for higher prices and rake in the profit.

same with bitcoin,  its electricity and computer components mainly, as oppose to excavators and 'washer' machines. bitcoins are getting harder to mine a block hence the higher price. then add on the costs of a few grands worth of rigs the miner has pre-paid for they will want more buck for their BTC. the amount of profit ontop of costs varies depending on the demand for it.

so just wait till ASICS hit the majority. at first there will be a flash flood of BTC hitting the market which may cause a drop, due to too much supply and not enough demand. but once the difficulty changes a few days later the supply amounts will decrease, demand will then increase again which would cause a rise.

very true. and if customers didnt want a 24/7 service they would not be trading.  and exchanges would have already implimented daily closing or weekend closing during dull periods of business.

yet the community as a whole show that 24/7 is useful. and that a call of arms to boycott a service intentionally goes against freedom of choice.

im not saying people shouldnt stop using a service if they dont have the funds. but demanding a mass boycott purely on individuals circumstances, affects other individuals and other businesses. causing ripples.

much better to ask the exchanges for statistics of when they have typical dull periods of trade and ask them if they are considering a standardised shutdown period for those regular times. and if so to advertise a poll for people to vote on such an idea instead of boycotting a service without knowing all the details and effects it may cause.

crypto exchanges should not be relying on banking infrastructure to dictate when they should trade. think of crypto as a whole country. you would never ask a whole country to shut its shops and go home for the weekend purely because it cant get hold of a different countries money.

people in the community should have the freedom to continue trading with the currency they already have. and crypto shops like memory dealers, cupcakes and alpaca socks don't want to have to wait to trade their crypto. (meaning they wont take any sales at the weekend). they want and rely on 24/7 service, and so they should.

in england a few decades ago all shops closed on a bank holiday days as they knew the banks would not be open to take their daily profits. Now shops are going against this and continuing to do business, because they are realising they dont have to rely on banks on a daily bases.

instead of demanding a revolt simply because some people cant get money in on a saturday..you should BUDGET your money to cover the weekend.

BLFC Jordan, yes  thats what im talking about
great idea

google search: drop shipping.

no need to pre-purchase stock. just list the items they offer. you accept bitcoins on your website at a marked up value. and you pay the drop shipper in fiat along with the customers delivery address.

saving you time by not having to package up goods and travel to a post office to send them off, not having to store products, and many other benefits.

thats the simple idea of it. but do your due diligence checks that the drop shipper is legit and has good satisfaction of the flow of stock going through, to ensure customers get what they want when they want it.

well creating fear by telling new people their stash is not safe in their own hands and they require an insurance is not good for bitcoin either. people know they cant hold bitcoins in their hand and have to rely on computers. but telling them they cant rely on their own computer or paper wallet... thats just silly.

the whole point of bitcoin is that no other entity owns or controls your funds. by using the insurance company idea's you have suggested you are saying for people to input their stash into a insurer controlled 'bank' and if anything goes missing they will repay it. plus ontop you have to pay them a monthly premium to keep your coins safe.

i have a mega load of coins now.. i have no fear of funds being stolen. and i wouldnt pay a third party to look after them for me. but good luck.

teach people about paper wallets and data backup

for geniune legit businesses a service that has registered bitcoin addresses linked to a user. kind of like tinyurl would work better

eg tinybitcoinaddress yet to be made.com/franky1
would take you to 1FrankZ7t5Wbf5uTMxMtCiQy9eKDsj1fUn

heck, even blockchain.info is already tagging known addresses so using their service to find the lengthy address is better. such as satoshi dice
http://blockchain.info/fb/1dice8

not an actual submission. just food for thought
edit: google image search doctor who gallifrey

use of colours can be tricky due to light exposure making cameras not pick up colours that easily EG yellow street lghts can make yellow look white (missing transparent/white like the paper its printed on)

with 10 numerics 26 lowercase and 26 uppercase letters = 62 variations of shapes.

so heres a idea

Hexagon grey = 1
hexagon white=2
Square grey=3
Square white=4
Circle grey=5
Circle white=6
Triangle grey=7
Triangle white=8
basically multiply the outer shape by the inner shape and then add on the number of the centre shape
EG top shape is 1 4 7 so 1x4+7=11
EG bottom shape 6 7 5 so 6x7+5=47

now using the 0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
top shape=a (lowercase a)
bottom shape=K (uppercase k)

excellent news bitpay. especially liked the new demo video about stompromp guitar website. much better then the starbucks maps demo ages ago.

a recent conference you attended talked about your 2000 merchants. any update on where this elusive list is. or atleast point us in the direction of some that dont mind listing their bitcoin involvement.

so that we can high light to outsiders that bitcoin is not just for the young hobbyists selling knicknacks from their house.

insurance for coins.. i see alot of fraudulent claims happening

EG set up 2 addresses, send funds to yourself and claim the receiving address is a scammer (show a shady website you designed and the 2nd address listed on it and u want to claim a loss of income.)
EG put a load of coins in the address and then claim that you lost the private key due to a computer wipe/virus. (showing the windows directory time stamp (after using properties plus to change the info) to show its a recent install and u want to claim a loss of income.)
EG u set up 2 aliases on BTCJAM the second alias requests a loan. you then loan yourself the money and claim they did not repay. (showing stats, blah blah as proof. and you want to claim a theft)

followed by a scam thread where the insurer does not always pay out due to obvious false claims.
EG "Insurer A wont pay me, he thinks i falsified evidence to get free coins, what a scam"
EG "Insurer A asked for evidence which i dont have and wont pay out, what a scam"
EG "Insurer A wont pay me" (never subscribed to the service just want to call them a scam)

if you want to be a hoarder. dont trust second parties to look after your stash
here is a big secret to insurance. LOOK AFTER YOUR OWN MONEY and you never have to worry about insurance.

now instead of thinking up idea's how to stir the community pot of cash amungst itself. how about thinking up idea's to expand outside the community and get new legit businesses onboard. instead of new ways to sway money between peter and paul within the community.