my sentiments exactly to both of you. this is why i and a few other people with the same mind set have moved over to litecoin and are in progress of doing a few things with that.

a few of us have already been in contact with merchants/ e-commerce and brick and martar stores and for all the propaganda about silk road and limited userbase of 200k regular users world wide = 1 people per town. its not really in it for them. plus asking the merchant to fit the bill of the discount does not look good either.

although the counter argument is: free advertising on many websites, maybe some media coverage and the only cost is x% loss on the potential 1 customer per town, which on the scheme of things is just a drop in the pond. the whole propaganda of SR keeps rearing its little head up again.

the whole anonymous SR niche market VS mainstreaming legit businesses. is still like knocking ur head on a brick wall.

i do though think that people making insureances and gambling are just stirring the pot of cash amungst themselves and not really creating actual value or expanding the community. a much better idea is to create a website selling goods and using a drop shipper to do the hard work. it costs you nothing upfront, no need to store unwanted goods if they never sale , no need to package them up or take them to delivery points. you just get an order and pass it onto the drop shipper adhok.