I bought a video game and sent out some bounties. That's about it so far, but I'm still pretty new at this, and pretty cheap in my daily life, and I'm not going to buy stuff I wouldn't otherwise just because it's priced in BTC.

Consider what a half-cent was actually worth in the nineteenth century when they were being made, and what this says about the level of precision actually required to have a workable currency. Today in the US there is some serious weight behind the movement to cease production of the penny, because frankly 1/100th of the current US dollar is too much precision to be worth the trouble.

If it ever does become a problem we can always go 128-bit. As others have pointed out, this is a problem I don't think I'd mind having.

If I were you I'd take that $1100 and just buy as many bitcoins as you can. That's what I wish I'd done last month.

So if the supply of gold were theoretically infinite, but limited at any one point in time, it would be a poor choice of currency? Not only a poor choice, in fact, but an anti-market choice?

And stored electrical energy (in the form of, say, batteries) would be a terrible form of currency because more could be generated? Again, not only a poor choice but an unfree one that redistributes wealth to the undeserving?

I really don't think this argument generalizes very well.

Since "the end of the year" doesn't seem like such a great target any more, I thought we needed a new poll.

August 18-21 is going to be really difficult for me. We'll see what happens.

Curious: Is anyone interested in selling or buying wares for bitcoin at this event? This factors into my own nefarious scheme useful idea.

So Bruce, did you ever get those samples? Were they samples of bitcoin notes or only of the paper they might be printed on?

No way, Scrooge McDuck has a vault full of gold that he swims in. I saw it.

Well, if you were stevenbucks trying to hide behind a new identity, SteveB would be a particularly poor choice, so I for one believe you.

As far as proof... if someone insists on disbelieving you, I'm not sure what you can do. I guess you could get stevenbucks' victims to believe you, and then everyone else would follow.

My exit plan for mining is still unsettled---I can't decide between keeping my 5970 for gaming, and reselling it for moneyz (and buying a less super-powered video card). Since I wouldn't have bought it just for gaming in the first place, keeping it just for gaming seems like nothing more than the endowment effect---but then again the added time cost of finding a buyer and possibly shipping, not to mention reconfiguring my machine, makes this not so obvious. I guess I'll just see what a heavily used 5970 is going for once I'm pushed out of the mining business.

Bill Gates? Scrooge McDuck? Idunno, it's a lot of money but there are a lot of billionaires out there.

An interesting thought I had earlier today: anyone with large gold reserves could singlehandedly peg the exchange rate as high as he likes by putting on the market, say, 10,000 ounces of gold at 600 BTC/oz.

Well, has Bruce put his money where his mouth is? i.e. is he using all his disposable income to buy as many bitcoins as he can? If he puts the probability of $1000 at year's end at even 10% then this is the ohvious thing to do---even if he's most interested in promotional work, he can engage in it much more efficiently by first becoming filthy rich.

Nothing wrong with the post, I just don't see much to respond to in it. There will be some vulnerabilities with paper notes, just like there are with, say, checks---but most people decide that the convenience makes up for the risk.

Is anyone planning on buying or selling wares for bitcoins at the conference in August? If so, I have some ideas for a sort of "clearing house" that would make this easier.

Well, that's it---I'm buying while it's still cheap. With that sort of press we're bound to get a few thousand newcomers buying in next month.

I'd say we'll easily hit KWD parity after the print article appears in Forbes, and once that happens more print articles are likely (Economist, anyone?). So 20USD isn't that much of a stretch within the year.

XAG parity, now that's a stretch.

I'll be happy to order anyone a pizza for only 1000 bitcoins!

 If I could go back in time and do it again, I wouldn't have bought a card for mining... I would have just bought bitcoins directly. I could have made something like a $500 profit already, where right now I'm still about $200 in the hole.

Is anyone here in the Seacoast region of New Hampshire? We cook a pretty mean quiche and I might be able to talk my wife into selling them for BTC. If we could buy the ingredients for BTC, even better!

There are farmers' markets all over the place up here. I've considered talking to them about Bitcoin, but I'm not really a regular shopper there and wouldn't have any sort of shared trust to start that sort of conversation. Maybe others who do shop locally would have some luck with this, though!

Guyz this sucks I've been mining for weeks on my back porch and nothing, people are telling me I need to buy soil wtf is soil this is such a scam.