I think this is an awesome idea. Bitcoin stamps may actually be more viable as a currency than the Bitcoins themselves.

I figure if it's a little more stable now, maybe it'll be more useful. Of course, trying to sell a lot of coins at once in such a shallow market isn't going to work very well, so I'm limiting myself to only a handful.

I don't think that's what they mean. When you have a fistful of cash, you feel more attached to it than if it's just a number on a screen. Experiments have shown that people are more likely to take risks/spend money when they don't have a physical representation of that money.

Ahahaha! So anyone who was happy to make a profit off of this will have their transactions reversed?

Nice, so all someone has to do to mess with people is,

1) Hack someone's account
2) Send the coins to random wallets
3) Watch as people have their accounts frozen for no apparent reason

I'd start to worry if it drops below $10, personally. One big dip is not a problem, but getting past a second big dip in a short time span is the big challenge since the last one is still fresh in people's minds. This is where we'll see how much in common it has with a bubble.

Well, I'm out for now. Someone else can play with my coins until the dust settles. Maybe I'll get back into it when it's more stable and less of a hassle to deal with. God speed to the lucky buyer.

Who's paying the corporate taxes, then?

I think the important thing is that the individual difficulty will increase as long as the number of new coins is a constant. The more people who mine, the more people the coins will have to be divided between. It's like winning the lottery, except more and more people will pick the winning numbers. In the end, no one is going to bother entering since the ticket price will be that much higher compared to the prize you get *if* you happen to win that day.

I don't think the dollar is a failure per se. I can see how the inflation of the dollar and the growing US debt is going to be a problem if nothing is done to balance the US trade deficit, which is really the core issue as I see it. However, this is what happens when you decide to stop printing more money and instead cut public expenditure:

http://i.imgur.com/BbR6f.jpg

So you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, so I don't see what a new currency is going to fix if the fiscal policy remains the same.

So it's going to be the exact same system we have now, except that you can't print more Bitcoins? What makes that different from going back to the gold standard?

With all the scamming and thefts going on, it seems like Bitcoins are only proving why an anonymous currency is a bad idea. If transactions are tracked, it kind of defeats the purpose. If they're not, anyone can make a profit from shoddy security and/or gullible users. It seems like the people benefiting the most from Bitcoins are speculators and scammers at the moment. It's an interesting experiment, but I think more people need to treat it as such and not put their life savings into it right off the bat. There are obviously a lot of wrinkles to iron out, and before that happens I think Bitcoins are going to suffer from a lot of negative publicity when people get hundreds or even thousands of dollars stolen from them. I feel that it should have been thought through a bit more before it was opened up to speculation.

What would you have done differently if you'd been the creator behind a new currency and what would you have kept the same?

It's certainly reason for concern if that's what it really is. If even Mastercard and Visa can't withstand such attacks, then I doubt something like Mt. Gox is going to, and the greater the potential damage, the more people seem drawn to attacks like this. I wonder if this is going to make people worried enough to abandon the currency if it continues and there are no alternatives.

That's nothing new, I guess. I'm a little worried that I won't be able to sell my coins when I finally decide to.

They changed it to 5 posts and 4 hours online now, I think. Hence my ability to post.

But wouldn't countries in a global Bitcoin economy end up like Greece? The countries that have adopted the Euro have no other way to cut cost than cut people's wages and pensions. This cripples their internal market, interest on the Greek debt rises, they have to take up more loans and down it goes. You see the same problem in the US in states like California and Florida because they're all using the dollar and can't do anything other than cut public expenses. If they could adjust the value of their currency, they could export more goods without cutting wages. If everyone uses Bitcoins, is there a way to regulate exports and imports that won't hurt regular people's wallets?

The thing I don't understand is that on Mt. Gox, it says that the bitcoin is a commodity?

I don't know if bitcoins are good for anything long term since that trend seems to be stable in only one direction. Short term, though, I think you could make a nice profit, but that's why I'm sticking to buying these with dollars and then selling. Seems like the risk is lower and net gain higher that way, or at least that's what I'm hoping.

Looks like it's up to 16 now

The FPGA stuff sounds like a really interesting investment and in the (unlikely?) event that the bitcoin stuff doesn't pan out then I'm sure you could sell the rig to an internet security company or something. 3 months to make your investment back really doesn't sound bad, though.