Hell yeah, good idea in principle, you'd think you'd need captchas more than bitcoin. Something that costs time if you tried to manipulate it, not money - plenty of people have money to throw around, the committed will to lobby someone or brand something, and it penalizes honest but broke voices.

Interesting idea. Kinda how facebook "viral" stuff works sometimes but without the sudden reveal - nice twist.

1 + 20999999 = x

If you've come back to answer this security question, then yes it works.

But no, it doesn't, and neither does the "show new replies to your posts" function.

Yeah I thought that too but I feel if you don't say "currency" it'll bring to mind beenz and flooz and whatever the hell. Currency is an under-utilized and powerful word. To my mind, "Internet money" conjures an image of etheriality and substancelessness not on par with the current/projected buying power of bitcoin.

How is it that discussion about a worldwide digital hard currency revolves exclusively around the good old United States of America?

How come nobody ever discusses the prospect of heavy-duty legislation against bitcoin or similar currencies in China, Iran or North Korea? Those strike me as a lot more interesting scenarios, especially given their capabilities to censor and surveil the internet. Americans have been spied on but the government has never publicly shown the ability to get something like the Great Firewall going or track Tor users.

Huzzah! Too true. Though I think bitcoin is a robust enough idea to withstand the general disdain most people have for anything libertarian, there's an exclusionary attitude around these forums that doesn't help either. Every time you say the word "bankster" or "brainwashing" one person nods in assent, two people are bored and ten leave in disgust. Just sayin - no need to post it in every single thread, you do more harm than good.


Huzzah! Also too true. I suggest:

Hi Craig.

Just a heads up, feel free to list your store in the bitcoin wiki. Might get a bit more traffic once this post drops off the first page, just put a little note saying "email me for bitcoin pricing" if necessary.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

What forms of currency controls are you referring to?

Also, should I congratulate you on operating the first bitcoin site on the continent?

One hosting service, one donation-accepting activist website and one btc lottery added to the wiki in the 24 hours. Day before that four new services/businesses listed. Also check out Silk Road, last time I took a look there were 1200 members, tough to gauge how many are active but assuredly some are, and they don't mess with anything other than bitcoin.

To answer your question "what do we do about that?" just start up a business that accepts btc for goods or services. It's a smarter move than buying bitcoin, that's for sure - you reinforce the overall economy and obtain coins with a safety margin, your profit.

check the wiki for new btc-accepting businesses.

Between May 9th and May 10th, four more places to spend money!

https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?title=Trade&action=historysubmit&diff=8236&oldid=8200

Exchange rate excitement is one thing, but watching a whole new economy grow is really satisfying. I started paying attention to the wiki in early March and the page was 1/5th the size that it is now. Seems like that's a pretty heartening indicator of bitcoin's longterm adoption.

Is anyone else more interested in regular old merchants than another dollar on the mtgox chart?

Hell yeah, constructive is what we do, right?

A bit unclear on my part, I looked through the first page of results couldn't find anything to back up the latter half of your statement.



I can't find any valid data to back that statement up I'm going to have to call it an anecdote and thereby not fitting material to discard an entire political philosophy.

I'd say we need this fucking list. I'll start:

1. Anyone can use and understand bitcoin. It's as simple as you want it to be.

And with this p2p shit there's no temple to be thrown out of either.

So yeah I looked through the first page of your lmgtfy and I couldn't find anything about this statement.

There's no data to back up what this guy was saying?

These three questions in brief:

What use? Money is money. Like conventional currencies, distribution of bitcoin is dependent on market forces and regulatory bodies.

Equitable distribution? Perhaps some benevolent actor will start pre-loading One Laptop per Child machines with the client and one bitcoin.

What is being done? Nothing that I'm aware of. There's some idle talk of hawala networks, and if bitcoin becomes useful it will certainly be widely adopted in the Southern hemisphere. As Garret Burgwart noted, go tell someone - charitable organizations are an especially good way to get bitcoin circulating amongst whatever communities interest you.

At any rate, examples of racial equality  based on what Fortune 500 companies do suggests to me "troll post" but I'm willing to believe you're acting in good faith. Just so you know, board members of that group of companies are currently around 73% white males, not exactly a benchmark of diversity.

I believe I will buy some bitcoins at that point since they're a proven store of worth.

 

Hey Ross, don't let them get the better of you. Thanks for coming into the bitcoiner's den, shows your genuine interest and willingness to accept or reject ideas and technologies based on their merits and that's a true maker's attitude. The thing is there are a lot of acolytes here who have been stewing on these forums for a long time and almost every possible debate has been brought up multiple times; they get a bit prickly:)

As mentioned above, donations are probably your best reason to use bitcoin right now. If you want proof you might check out the little list of organizations that are taking bitcoins on the wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade#Donation-accepting_organizations_and_projects. Find something you like, go to donation page and copy/paste their bitcoin address into www.blockexplorer.com. For instance, Hackerspace Brmlab (first hackerspace in the Czech Republic) is taking bitcoins, you can see their skimpy haul at http://blockexplorer.com/address/1Ndx4BtSwpyWpGHopQ5fhbB5CB7LYHJFFR

If you get some bitcoin donated, you can sell 'em on www.mtgox.com for USD or bitcoin-otc for any imaginable other exchange, you can trade 'em with any of the merchants listed on the wiki, or you can just hang on to 'em and sell in a year or two (lotsa speculation that prices will explode in 2013). You probably will get donations because we're in an era of excitement coupled with many people who have a whack of bitcoins to go around - I've given outlandish donations to organizations because I paid $0.60 for my bitcoins and now they're cracking $5.00.

One final note: this forum is the home of the true believers. I don't count myself as one of those, I don't particularly give a fuck about American fiscal policy or "banksters" or even PayPal, but I do appreciate bitcoins' ability to put more practical power in the hands of anyone who wants to bother. We have homebrew 3D printers and CNC machines galore, unprecedented access to materials, and hopefully we'll have a native internet currency to pay for it all someday soon. Long-term, that's exactly where bitcoin dovetails perfectly with the maker's credo.

Ripple is really interesting, both for the fact that it's genuinely revolutionary (no kidding here, the implications seem to run deep) and for the fact that it's been going since 2006 and hasn't really taken off, not compared to bitcoin. Financial incentives are higher for early adopters of btc maybe... at any rate, ripple is pretty cool. Good idea with that blockchain thing!

And just for people reading this list, there's also Open Transactions, not really bitcoin like but complementary in every way. https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Open-Transactions

Seller's advantage doesn't seem to be a bitcoin-related problem. There are any number of irrevocable cash transactions you can get involved in on the interwebz.

This is why ebay exists in its current form, to grapple with this kind of thing. When they started they were an auction house and a unique marketplace, now they're in the business of being the worlds largest dispute-resolution mediator, a function they've proven themselves to be somewhat competent at. Except for all those horror stories:)

Clearcoin, bitcoinfeedback - just a couple of things that have come up to deal with this, and if bitcoin really is going to become the native currency of the internet there will doubtless be dozens of dispute-managing services and escrow systems emerging.

That's an interesting take on the origins of bitcoin - I haven't dug into the shadowy past of this thing to validate the truth of that statement. But the best part is that no matter what your political leanings (or lack of them, should you just so happen to be an apathetic person) bitcoin still works for you.

That's great, isn't it? It's a very useful invention. And sometimes I feel that the forum paradigms around here might lend a bit more weight to the perceived political "purpose" of bitcoin than is strictly correct - it just so happens that many of the regulars around here are believers of a common stripe, it doesn't necessarily mean that the forums represent the average bitcoin user now or in the future.

If I were ready for a political debate (and I'm not, I'd surely be exposed in all my glorious ignorance) I'd raise the question: what kind of terrible political agenda would necessitate the creation of a tool that is equally valuable to all competing political agendas. Bitcoin is just as useful to terrorists, the Secret Service, Chinese activists or Santa Clause as it is to someone who, let's say, has concerns about American monetary policy?

Anyways, sorry, we were talking about gold. I love going off-topic.

Here's a discussion amongst the Ripple developers about a p2p implementation of Ripple using a bitcoin-like blockchain.

http://groups.google.com/group/rippleusers/browse_thread/thread/eac0505ca4e5b839

I don't know how far they've gotten with this idea though.