tnguy

"Satoshi Nakamoto" apparently not a pseudonym.   http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html

But without debt, you can usually coast along for a while and keep a roof over your head. For many, if not most people, their debt is a house of cards that comes tumbling down at the slightest gust of wind.

Wonder if it would be worth contacting the ammo suppliers also.

Whatever happened to "Sell your cloak and buy a sword" anyway?

How about we forget the numbers and just move to symbols and change the symbols every month? 10 minutes past goat this month could be 10 minutes past stetson hat next month.

  I never grew up around guns. But I emigrated to the US when I was 30 and I acquire shoot and carry guns because I possess the power of critical thinking.   (I did get to recreationally shoot them a couple of times though. Enjoyed it a bunch though I had to swear an oath that I hadn't taken any empty brass with me when done (some of the people I shot with did anyway))

0.9l. Nuff said.   Except for "49mpg city".

That is actually the system I'd prefer if there was even a miniscule chance of it being adopted. People are rather attached to their arbitrarily assigned numbers though.

  Pretty much. It's some clever stuff. Bitcoin's value is unlikely to disappear overnight unless some outlandish weakness is found in the protocol though it is still very volatile right now. Fiat (and in particular the US Dollar) is less likely to devalue but the government sure does like inflating it. Other countries like to do things like bail-ins and other cash controls (in addition to the inflation) as well, of course. And I haven't even looked at what's going on with the Ukraine's currency right now.(Edit: Hmm. Capital controls in place).   http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-28/ukraine-imposes-capital-controls-limits-foreign-currency-withdrawals

Heh, that's fair enough. But it would have been nice to see some of that flim-flam in action if that's the case.

It might be possible to track some of that stuff if MtGox wasn't so uncommunicative. There's speculation that this was an inside job. No doubt there's some effort underway already but it depends on how careful the purported thieves are.

NoBanStan: The software is out there for all to view. If you really want to know what it is doing rather than make baseless conjectures, you are free to do so.   Hersh, the value of mining is that it preserves the integrity of the blockchain. Eventually, no new bitcoins will be created from mining and all will come from transaction fees. Clearly, if people are willing to pay transaction fees, they likely feel they are being provided some value.   There are no extra applications for the problems being solved. It is a sunk cost much like the lighting (and many things besides) at your local bank. Much often seems to be made about the energy consumed for Bitcoin but it is a drop in the bucket compared to traditional banking services.

It's not so much that the video card is important. They can just mine much faster (and more importantly, for less cost and energy) than CPUs. However, they have now been superseded by ASICs in the Bitcoin world..

MtGox filing for bancruptcy today. While someone may have got rich out if it, it apparently wasn't them.   But in general I agree. What little mining I did was mostly just out of curiosity. OK, it was also a little fun.

Yes. But remember, there are no actual bitcoins, just transactions.   Everyone running a full node gets a copy of the blockchain. That is what makes it distributed.   There are even public interfaces to look into it. Here is an example   https://blockchain.info/address/115Q77tKkFjnkQCkdELn7V8vvjVqtsBQnT   The problems solved are probably not very useful (other than as part of the protocol)

What 2.Ooohhh wrote is essentially correct. It's probably closer to think of a wallet as a credit card (or a collection of cards) and a wallet app as a POS system that interacts with the network. I actually think calling it a wallet was kind-of a poor choice since many people keep cash in their wallets.   It's also important to realize that there are no actual bitcoins, just transactions. You (or rather software) work out how many bitcoins you "have" by summing the ledger.

If the stories of others are anything to go by, they probably wouldn't have listened (though one guy's father has made some serious money). Crazily enough, the guy who bought the two pizzas with Bitcoin (10000 bitcoins) surfaced recently. He got out of Bitcoin after that and never really made anything out of it. Unfortunate for one of the seminal events in rise of Bitcoin. The Lamborghini cost 216 bitcoins FWIW.

Even the Magic Mountain Roller Coaster makes my face ache.

This is true. Even ASIC mining is marginal these days. a NVidia card might be more reasonable value.

  It's not easy having a good time...

  Yes. There is an adoption curve which will have to be followed. It can't gain market share without gaining in value and it can't honestly gain in value without gaining market share. Speculation will help it get there and there will be plenty of volatility on the way.   There are companies that will allow stores to take payment in bitcoins and immediately convert it to dollars. Many do not consider this true adoption. Many of the smaller places take bitcoins directly though. Fiverr.com goes the conversion route for its sellers but many have been requesting that they be able to receive funds directly in bitcoins.

I don't even know how many times I ignored it before I paid it attention. At first, it just sounds like some daft scheme but when I looked at the details of what it was actually about, it made a lot of sense.   I don't advocate anyone puts any money into it. I just try to answer misconceptions when I see them posted. I think it will either go huge or fall to zero. If the former, I think it still has a long way to go yet.

Another amongst mine is a friend who ended up on the roof of a car and had six stitches in his chin even *with* a full face.

Quite a few places already. Some of the big names: tigerdirect.com playboy.com overstock.com Virgin Galactic Lamborghini Many places (including Amazon) via gyft.com (gift cards). Plus many smaller retailers.

  You can make as many backups as you want. Though typically you should avoid using the same wallet in multiple places due to the way Bitcoin makes change (this actually bit someone* on here recently who I had sent bitcoins to). Though when I say Bitcoin, I mean the default wallet software and some other implementations. Some wallets do not work the same way.   Though as to what reconciles two wallets, it is the parsing of the blockchain which is the transaction ledger. If you spend say 3btc using a wallet in one place, the other wallet will see the transaction and adjust appropriately. This does bring up something I neglected to mention above which is that proper use of Bitcoin does require some form of internet connectivity   (*not in a permanent way)