What if you lose it?

Strong passwords are the answer to wallet theft. Having all your coins in a single device that can be lost or stolen or broken seems insane to me.

Furthermore, the last thing I need in my life is more gadgets and gizmos to carry around. No thanks.

And, BFL. I dont think I have to say anything there. Its all been said.

Companies are just starting to experiment with Bitcoin. Once they see it works, and Bitcoins have longterm value, they may decide to keep some of their profits in Bitcoin.

Thats their decision to make, and nothing we can say will influence this and I certainly dont think this topic needs much discussion.

Want Bitcoin to get more popular? Start spending it, and give some to family and friends.

The easiest way in my opinion is give them some BTC on coinbase. Once they have some of their own, they will be much more likely to appreciate its value and learn more about it.

It can be a tiny amount, like .01, its just that they have some. The best people to give it to are people ages 10-20, as they are the future, and younger people tend to be more open minded.

I store them in my head, and they are 20 character passphrases not passwords.

I forgot one for a BTC wallet late last year. It wasnt fun but I remembered it after trying combinations for a few days. You have to be very careful.

Not backing up your wallet and losing or forgetting your passphrase are by far the easiest ways to lose your BTC. If your wallet is locked with a decent passphrase and backed up its 99.9999999999999% safe.

Also, consider the possibility, if you have a family, that something could happen to you. Plan for such a contingency (e.g., leave an envelope with passphrases for your wife in escrow with a 3rd party)

How did that work out for file sharing with film and music?

Government crypto? lol that was a good one, but dont quit your dayjob

Quantum computing? If we ever get that, every bank account and military network in the world could be plundered. Bitcoin would be pretty far down the list of "things to do"

how would a person move USD$ onto and off of a decentralized exchange

Maybe you havent been paying attention, but with Bitcoin the relationship between price and difficulty is strong, this has to do with the investment people make in mining hardware, and the difficulty isnt going anywhere but straight UP in 2014. It may begin to plateau in 2015-2016 as ASICs reach the limits of current manufacturing tech like 20nm and below, gains in efficiency will become increasingly smaller and many small players get squeezed out of the mining game if they havent already.

if you go with a sempron, and undervolt GPUs, and use SSD, and power supply is gold+ rated, it could be OK, but it depends

It will work for a few weeks then your PSU will die, maybe if its platinum rated it will last a few months

So you spent hundreds on GPUs not knowing how to set them up properly, just hoping it works?

It wont. You can probably run 2 cards without risers. Maybe if you had 280x's you could undervolt a ton and run 3-4 on a single mobo in a cold area with extra fans and have temps under 90c

I agree. If you look at the mining forecast for 2014, its BRUTAL.

Great time to buy coins and let lunatics do the mining for us as BTC and LTC see huge gains.

Agreed, at the top of the OP you should have totals. Like, I invested 13 BTC and now have 7.8 BTC or whatever, to make the case against entry level mining a bit more clear to everyone

If you arent already mining and running a pool, it seems highly unlikely that entering at this stage in the game will result in success. If you have a $100k+, maybe try a giant GPU farm.

Very scams! Much shady! 

lots of shopping on humble bundle, and now overstock.com also

The game is over for BFL. After the latest Monarch fiasco, even their most ardent supporters are lost. Nobody will dare buy their next product, the lawsuits pile up, they declare bankruptcy and ride off into the sunset with over 100,000 BTC, laughing all the way: "Suckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssss!!!!"

They''ll ship when they get done mining on them, they send it to you then as it saves them on disposal costs.

They only took 30% downpayment, and I paid via paypal. Suffice to say, my risk at this point is 0.0% and my upside of having a first gen 25mh/s scrypt ASIC is quite high.

Overall, yes the pics of the office dont inspire confidence. However, remember that this is just a small design team. Everything is manufactured in India, and their partner there is quite a large engineering firm.  

Sure I understand why people would be skeptical, but lets be frank - scrypt ASICs are coming, period. Im onboard that crucial first boat, because I understand risk/reward quite well.

Those machines wont ever ROI, so only buy if you enjoy donating to KNC and Bitcoin network

Instead do us this favor, go buy some Bitcoins. You will save $, and our coins go up in price. So win-win, instead of loss-win

The hardware manufacturers and their partners are the miners and will be from here on out.

There are no other miners of consequence, only people who choose to donate their money to the manufacturers.