Mr Coleman, if you say you've been to the Vatican, you're a LIAR!

I'm sorry to point it out, but had you been there, you you would know there are no hotels. I'm not saying there's only a few hotels, I'm saying the truth which is that there isn't a single hotel in the whole country. No hotels, and there's never been one. Guest houses? No guest houses either. Not a single one. I suppose they have some guest rooms, but I know that when they have a congress, some priests have to sleep outside the Vatican, so there should not be many of them.

Besides, when it comes to restaurants, don't think about Las Vegas. It's impossible to buy a stiff drink there. Coffee with pastries, and you can get a decent meal, but don't expect huge T-bone steaks like in Texas. All the food and drinks are modest.

The only free space is in the garden. That place is absolutely spotless, large with beautiful flowers. One of the best garden I've ever seen. But opening it to refugees would ruin it. Just imagine London allowing all British homeless to camp in Hyde Park. Nobody wants that.

This allows me to repeat that the walls around the Vatican are totally different to the wall the Donald is planning to build. Regarding catholics, the average American only thinks about himself, so nobody shall be surprised but religion is falling.

No, there aren't any Syrian refugees there, for the most obvious reason that it isn't a good place to house people. Most of the Vatican is a museum. It's like saying that the Louvre in Paris, or the British National Museum should house refugees. Let's put it clearly that this isn't a proper place for that.


Have you been to a government building in Europe recently?
Armed police forces are everywhere. I bet there are more soldiers around the city hall in Paris than in the whole Vatican.
I've seen loads of police forces and soldiers with machine guns in hand in Paris, Ventimiglia, Barcelona. That's a sad sign of our times.

Has anyone here ever been to the Vatican?

I've been there, and it's not a walled estate at all. It's more like a large meeting place, with restaurants, shops, a post office and museums. Nothing's closed. Most of the place is open to all. I mean you need to buy a ticket to get into the museum, there are staff only areas, and the free parking is for employees only, but you can get into the church for free, and no one asks you your ID. So it isn't like a border wall the way Trump's planning one.

There are so many amateurs videos available for free, I doubt I'll ever pay to watch one. This could only work for real full length movies, but it's a nice idea. I'm sure it could work if they manage to get good content.

Hospitals are in trouble. BTC isn't, but this is a really sad sign of the horror of our times. Bad guys used to attack banks. Could we have imagine a generation ago that criminals would attack hospitals? Happily, considering the pay of top doctors and surgeons, ransom was quite low.

Very true. The Pope knows what he's talking about. Things are different in Europe because of all Syrian refugees, and terrorism, but with both Mexico and the US in peace, they should make deals rather than building a wall. Besides, there are more Americans crossing than Mexicans. I've seen with my own eyes loads of American teenagers crossing the border South of San Diego to go drinking and partying in Tijuana. Does Trump wants to stop that, too?

The goal should be to make Mexico a richer country, so that the people will not want to leave it have a better life up North.

Good to know that I'm not the only one. I hope I'll be luckier than you were. I guess I'll talk about the advantage of speed when paying with BTC. Many dentists are being paid by insurances, and they sometimes have to wait several weeks to get the money.

I meant only for Italian residents. So foreigners would be only be allowed with an Italian's government ID. I know that when I've bought a property in Italy, I had to register as a taxpayer before I was allowed to buy. In London, it's easy to open an account as a non-resident, but I don't think it's as easy in Italy.

Very interesting. It's nice to see developers from the world's largest software company being excited about BTC. I wonder what's next. If Google could pay the webmasters who have an Adsense account with BTC, that would be fantastic. Am I dreaming, or is it possible?

How much is he willing to pay? What limit does he expect? I've had a nameless credit card from an European phone company, but it wasn't good. There was a Mastercard logo on it, but I went to several places where they do accept Mastercard, but that card wasn't working.

Anyway, if the plan is to finance the nameless credit card with another credit card, it's useless, all transactions will be recorded.

I'm pretty sure it's only for Italians. You'd need an Italian street address and an Italian ID card number or something similar. There are KYC regulations everywhere, and banking is the most regulated industry. I mean their relations with their clients. The banks themselves remain free to create money out of thin air.

Oh yeah! Dentists in Budapest are about one third the price of a dentist in Paris, and one fourth on a dentist in Geneva or London. Even when adding hotel and food bills for 6 days (well, I'll stay in a very cheap hotel), I'm expecting to save 1,000 €, so it's definitely worth the trip. Thousands travel to Budapest for dental work every month.

Video doesn't show anyone hurt. I've seen much, much worse in war zones. You only see babies crying, and some furniture displaced. What I find amazing, or stupid and sad, is that someone choose to shoot a video instead of trying to calm the babies.

In the past 30 days, we've seen several blocks with more than 1,500 transactions included. With the current 1 MB limit, it means the average transaction must be below 666 bytes to fit.

Well, I made a transaction today, and I discovered it was 1,481 bytes. I'm very sorry. Other BTC users will have to make smaller transactions so that another 1,499 can fit into a single block.

This just shows the block size issue is very real, and that it needs to be solved as soon as possible.

I've bought BTC because I don't trust much banks or the financial regulators and politicians which should guarantee that national fiat currencies will not loose their value over time. Can you trust the Federal Reserve? The European Central Bank? The blockchain is probably better than them, even with the block size issue unresolved.

I suppose you haven't noticed (please, pay more attention), but this board is about BTC. The people here do not want to change their BTC into any fiat currency. We want to use to use BTC everywhere and everyday, including when going to the dentist.

Legal repercussions? LOL. To the taxman or even the FBI, Bitcoin Classic, Core or XT are exactly the same thing. Why should they bother make a difference? You can be a butcher, a salesman or a plumber, and the taxman doesn't care, you'll get the same treatment.

Not looking for anything besides arguments. I have one dentist, and several appointments for next week. Incidentally, I just found one:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1362868.0

If taxis accept BTC in Budapest, my dentist may have heard about it, and that will sure help convince him that BTC is real money, and that he should accept it.

You may see this problem as another reason to raise the block size, but I'd rather see it a risk for the network. I guess that if I were a miner I would simply reject all transactions above 100K. Come on, that's just not normal. Or do we want another stress test? Imagine some hackers launching several 950K transactions all at the same time. Let's play safe and reject all abnormal transactions.

How cool is that, I'll be in Budapest next week. I usually travel by bus when I'm in a city I'm not familiar with, but I may try a taxi. Not very sure though, that taxis will be a large market for BTC. I've always paid them with cash, but if there's a sign "BTC accepted here" in hundreds of cars, that will be huge to promote and raise awareness about BTC.