i dont think i have any stupid useless bitcoins, theyre all too inteliigent

dont get me wrong, i wish bitcoins success, but i also think it's worth looking at it from different perspectives...
i think bitcoins currently needs:
-more ways of getting btc (exchanges)
-more merchants offering clearcoin
because it will help fund gavin (which i think he deserves), and it provides more confidence/security in the system.

Sorry, but there's more than just Alipay being compared here. Alipay is like clearcoin, but only because of the banking system provided in china.
They have no transaction fees and transactions are faster than bitcoin. As a consumer being paid in the local currency, bitcoin offers no real advantage for purchasing online (in fact it's worse in this situation..)
Also when dealing with LRUSDs, PPUSDs, DWOLLAs one can describe them as currencies.. so I don't see an issue with alipay being used in this manner.

It seems banking services in china work a lot faster than they do here (UK)... The UK has only recently been able to make EFTs in 2 hours or less between most banks, still on average it will take 3 working days.
Also Alipay works as an escrow service for this. They charge nothing for transfers under 5000RMB which is more like $750, and 1% for transactions made over this (like clearcoin, but without any bitcoin transfer fees!)
They make money off other services like alibaba. Even their ebay like service Taobao seems to be relatively free compared to ebay.

It only charges when over 5000RMB for verified users. Which is a lot of free spending, considering how much stuff costs in china


With services like this out there.. I think globalisation should be a greater fear for banking related businesses than bitcoin.

There are no fees for sending or receiving using alipay.
The transactions can be instantaneous (relatively ofc).
Bitcoins has a middleman (the transaction fee & an escrow like clearcoin is required due to the cashlike nature of it). It doesn't have to, but that would be like doing a bank transfer in most countries. (free, no chargebacks)

Local currencies are a lot more convenient compared to bitcoins as you don't need to pay some service to buy the currency(mtgox 0.65%? 1% LRUSD? 2% EUR?). Local currencies are almost always readily available and at no extra costs...

How popular is the need for an anonymous decentralised currency? How much more are you willing to pay for a product for this priviledge....?

I was speaking to a chinese friend and what he said made me wonder why the fuss over bitcoins.

In china their ebay-like website Taobao uses a service called Alipay that offers an instant, free, escrow-based transaction service.
-it's faster than bitcoins (instant)
-it's cheaper than bitcions (completely free, unless you use it a lot, similar to clearcoin)
-it's easier than bitcions to buy/sell

The only benefit I see with bitcoins is that the transactions can be anonymous. Also perhaps the fact that the currency is limited and controlled by a group rather than a government...

So that leaves me with two questions..
1.) why does the 'western' world seem so far behind?
2.) if this becomes the norm, what would it mean for bitcoins?

But bitcoins are only divisible upto 10^-8, so why not just use the atomic state of bitcoins to discuss bitcoins in small quantaties as it is a unit that can even be fairly easily be used to describe larger quantaties.

I think creating names for 0.001, 0.00001, etc. is silly.
Just use two different units BTC and something like satoshi/bitcoinunits/bitcreds/credits representing 0.00000001 BTC.
The problem with milli/micro/nano is that when you get a bitcoin amount like 0.00245678, what random btc name do you use..?

Also it's a LOT easier to tell the size of something when it's larger because of commas and no leading zeros:
eg 34,400 BCU vs 0.00034400 BTC

technically to talk about bitcoins completely you need to use nano. The issue with nano is it starts at 10^-9 so you have 10 nanobitcoins, but not 1nanobitcoin.
(bitcoins only go upto 10^-8)

we should use some name that sounds as good as bitcoin to talk about these base units.. like 'bitcoin units' or BCUs?
(i know people have suggested 'satoshis', but i don't see how that can be shortened..)
if we then ran most systems with both Bitcoins/BTC and Bitcoin Units/BCUs then I think it will alleviate issues of readability with decimal places.

Do we have a list of charities/non-profit orgs that accept Bitcoins for donations?

All I know is of the following...

Name of Org	Address	Received so far (14/may/2011)
EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation	1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt	3486.92
FSF - Free Software Foundation	1PC9aZC4hNX2rmmrt7uHTfYAS3hRbph4UN	313.04737515

(There was also the Japanese Tsunami relief fund someone started here, but as it wasn't an official organisation I haven't listed it)

I think Bitcoins could easily be associated with the anonymous giving to charities.
If places like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, World Wide Fund, Wikipedia, Wikileaks, etc.. I think it would be a big boost to the image.
As Bitcoins seem ideal for giving to charity due to the minimal fees and the simple transportation across the world, why don't we all try to get more places to offer it?

So do you use kilo/hecto/mega to describe bitcoin amounts?
It's currently a mishmash, no?

But other large denomination currencies don't need to do this because large numbers are made easy to read through commas and more well known common naming systems.


But other large denomination currencies seem to do this fine..? Would you be able to say what 0.0000001btc is in english?

why not just deal in 'satoshi's? That will get rid of the need for mBTC/µBTC..

But there's still a fairly big issue with 0.xxxx values. They are very difficult to read because unlike large numbers we do not split them up using commas.
For example 1,000,000 is fairly easy to read as being 1 million. Whilst 0.0000001 isn't easily recognisable and I doubt most people would know the SI unit... :/

there are many currencies that deal in high numbers (jpy? krw? zwd (extreme)?)
but I don't really know of any that go below 1/100th of the currency's basic unit.

with cash it's easy to see a trillion dollar note vs a billion dollar note, but with online transactions the UI should help with the zeros. (eg commas, 'read' the amount, etc.)
the largest possible number base you would have to deal with is a quadrillion which is used to describe all the bitcoins in the universe..

even if btc was 0.00000001 current btcs, a 10k btc would be.. 10^12 or 1trillion btc.
numbers & currencies are easier to talk about in large numbers than small ones like 0.xxxxxx.
people arnt really used to talking about milli/micro/nano, especially when dealing with money..

Why not have 1 btc as 0.00000001current btcs?
(or 0.000001btc, allowing for 1 btc to be split into 100..?)

It makes a 50btc block reward 5,000,000,000 btc (or 50,000,000.00btc) reward sound much better  

This means if some addon/patch is done to create more divisible bitcoins we could then use the 0.xxxxxx?

2.1 x 10^15 doesn't actually sound like that many bitcoins if you compare it to USD M2 in pennies.
If such a change is made later it might be quite confusing, but as the user base isn't that large right now, why not plan something like this to hapen after a certain date so everyone is aware and is ready for it?

Some extra notes (13/may/11):

x	| Current Bitcoins |	| Bitcoins+8 (aka satoshis) |
'Total BTC':	21million	21quadrillion

Some examples assuming 6usd per btc and XE market rates...

100USD in BTC:	16.66666667	1,666,666,667
1USD in BTC:	0.16666667	16,666,667
1UScent in BTC:	0.00166667	166,667
1EUR in BTC:	0.23809524	23,809,524
1JPY in BTC:	0.00206271	206,271
1KRW in BTC:	0.00015319	15,319
1VND in BTC:	0.00000817	817

Pronouncing values below 0 in the english language can get interesting...
a number like 1,543,234 can be read:    one million five hundred fourty three thousand two hundred thirty four.
whilst a number like 0.1543234 is read:  zero point one five four three two three four.
On the face of things current BTC looks shorter and easier, but it sounds very drone and as a listener it is very difficult to tell what value the number is.


(going to make a table of pros & cons here..)

I don't believe your example works to describe an online transaction. When you walk into a store you usually pick out the item -> walk to the till and pay for it. The buyer has already seen & received the item before paying. In distance selling (such as the internet) we must first pay the seller then when the seller feels like it he provides the buyer with goods that may or may not be what they wanted.

In Satoshi's paper he suggests escrow services for the protection of buyers, but as far as what I've read of Clearcoin it seems Clearcoin is currently unfair to the buyer?
Mybitcoin offers a convenient payment gateway, but doesn't offer an escrow service afaik.
Sellers have protection by implementation.

I'm just trying to point out that as far as I can tell a suitable escrow service does not exist.

But doesn't this just lead to a load of scammers ruining it for the legitimate businesses and people losing faith in bitcoins?
How does MyBitcoin.com offer recourse for buyers?

People are only happy nowadays to purchase items using the internet due to consumer protection through payment gateways and credit cards.
The flaw in bitcoin for purchasing products seems to be the fact the seller has an advantage over the buyer.

It seems to be fine for trading currencies, virtual goods or face to face transactions, but I don't see how one could trust an online seller accepting bitcoins when you have no recourse?

Clearcoin would be helpful, but it doesn't fully address the issue because it means the seller loses out.
For example someone could pay 100BTC for an apple
 the buyer sends clearcoin 100BTC
 the seller notices payment & sends the apple
 buyer receives item and forgets to confirm clearcoin
 transaction expires & seller doesn't receive coins?

The other issue is that the seller only gets their money a lot later than using a service such as paypal/googlecheckout.

Solutions??

How about if someone with a lot of bitcoins rented a machine like that out for a short period?
You could then cash in on the bitcoins several times over?

What would/could happen to bitcoins after such an attack?