You mean transfer between my email accounts?

Don' think so....

Hi folks

I only registered and had a look around Mt Gox - I never used it.

I have been through the csv list and found my login and email address.

I am getting the messages from Mt Gox at this address, and also some weird spam telling me to use Tradehill.

But - I am also getting exactly the same emails at another email address I use.

I can't remember - did Mt Gox ask for 2 emails? If not, where have these ppl got my 2nd email from.

Where ever it is, its not from that accounts.csv file that is going around

Tim

I am serious. I think it would do his business good to accept BTC.  I am NOT suddenly suggesting to him that he takes BTC *because* it is swinging so wildly, rather I am suggesting he takes BTC in general and needs a way of not getting burnt in the short term until things settle down.

I agree with you totally something swinging so wildly is deeply unattractive to any merchant. That is why my suggestion is that he only takes the days minimum rate. The customers can take it or leave it. If they think the rate is unusually low they can wait till it rises.

He would need to move it to an exchange and transfer it to dollars pronto. He is unlikely to lose on a sustained basis by doing this (ie the rate may rise or fall on any given day from the time he quotes a price to the time he converts to dollars)

Forgive me if I am bit off topic. It is less about Mt Gox and more about how a volatile BTC is making it hard for me to make a case for a "real merchant" to accept them.
Tim

After what I saw this weekend I will be recommending that my friend offer the intraday low for staying in his hostel. If you as a customer think this is just a wobble in the price you can always wait a day for it to go up.

Tradehill needs to sort that kind of rubbish out quickly. I would argue that any ask or bid price simply not be accepted if it is too far off the current price. This is what happens on online share trading. Try putting in a bid price for google at $1 or an ask at $100,000... aint gonna happen.

Speaking someone who is trying to get a business owner to take BTC I find it totally bizarre that an exchange trading in USD will not settle to a USD checking account. Once my friend saw Liberty Reserve listed he said "what the F*** is that ? Why dont that just use a normal bank - is this stuff legal?" and I have to admit I was at a bit of a loss to explain it myself.

I am pleased that Tradehill simply has a US bank account and Dwolla. I would say that something like that looks a lot more legit.

Tim

Is possible in Australia but exceedingly rarely used.

The one time I recall it being used was when the government announced that a particular tax evasion scheme known as "bottom of the harbour" would be made illegal. They said there's no law on the books yet, but we will draft and pass one and it will apply from today.

Retrospective legislation is EXTREMELY unpopular.

Tim

This is a bit frustrating.

I am trying to get a friend of mine who runs a bricks-and-mortar business here in Sydney to start accepting Bitcoin for international reservations.

I am not that interested in the speculation on the bitcoin price either way - in the end my friend (if he accepts it) will just make a quote for a guest which will be good for day. They pay their bitcoins and its done.

Could I be whitelisted ?

Tim

They may not be opportunists, it might just be schadenfreude

Speaking as a non-speculating noob, I'm with you. I think it would be tragic for this rather ingenious system to be destroyed by cry-baby speculators. Anyone who knows anything about market pricing should be able to spot a price bubble, and the bitcoin chart is a classic.
Whenever a bubble is forming around a commodity, the talk around those who are speculating is always "this one is different".  In this case, there has never been an international cryptocurrency before.

This article is pretty good - it's Australian focused but it applies generally

http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/confs/2003/simon.pdf

If you cant be bothered reading through it all, just look at the charts, the slopes of the lines and all the rest.

When the fuss is over hopefully bitcoin can revert to what it was meant to be - an electronic medium of exchange. I'm never planning on hoarding them, only using them so I don't really care what the price is so long as it is relatively stable in the short term. Volatility of 50% in one week is not doing anyone who is trying to encourage "real" businesses to accept bitcoin any favours (speaking personally)

Tim

MtGox is quoting $14 now.... so is that worrying? Or does it have to fall through $10?

From my point of view none of this is worrying at all. There may have been a price bubble but bitcoin goes on...

One thing he has wrong is that "gold can be infinitely mined" - in fact there is talk that not only have we reached peak oil, we have reached peak gold.

What I find particularly ingenious about the Bitcoin system is that it mimics this whole cycle. In the beginning gold was easy to find in Australia. We are still producing but its much harder.

Lead story in the Sydney Morning Herald ("Drugs Bought With Virtual Cash") online. The article is 50/50 about Silk Road and Bitcoin - including the exchange rates for USD in the last couple of days.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/drugs-bought-with-virtual-cash-20110611-1fy0a.html

The breakthrough has happened folks. Everyone is talking about it. Coming soon to a hostel near me (hopefully)

Tim

I'm the receiver of these coins...Thanks everyone for your help with my first bitcoin transaction.

Following the block I can see the status of my coins is "not redeemed"

 I'm running the mac os client v 0.3.21

The connection count is 0 and the block count is 127397 - so it looks like my client has not caught up with the fact that I am now the proud owner of 2 BTC's.

There doesnt seem to be any option for starting a rescan from this s/w.

Any suggestions on what to do now?


Tim


EDIT: Did some more reading - port 8333 was not forwarded to this machine. Forwarded the port from the router, and suddenly 120 connections and blocks coming in at about 100/minute.

EDIT2: And sure as eggs is eggs, they came in....

Thanks everyone - especially for showing me how to trace a payment.

it probably doesn't help matters that there is a service called the Bitcoin Laundry listed on the "who accepts bitcoins" page

wouldn't that mean

1) opening a UK bank account ( and that is possible but a hassle from Australia )
2) paying said bank transfer fees to get the money to Australia ?

What problems do you foresee in accepting them?

I'm a newbie as u can see - and I might be naive about it all - but it seems surprsingly simple from looking at the merchant "how to"


Tim

Not for now.

All he is looking for is a way to stop asking for people for their credit card numbers in emails when they want to make a reservation.

The desk mostly runs on cash - I think credit card transactions incur a 1 or 2% fee - will have to check (and yes that's legal and increasingly common in Australia - Reserve Bank changed the law about 2 years ago - no more subsidising peoples reward schemes by those of us who pay cash)

Of course if he gets enthusiastic about the whole bitcoin project anything is possible.

How come it is fairer than the arithmetic mean?

Thanks so much for that. It looks like the market is becoming more liquid in Australia so that will help me convince him that BTC will be worth him trying.

This is the proposal I will put to him - what do you think?

It will be done a trial basis at first until he is convinced he can "get his money back".
He will accept a maximum of USD $100 worth of bitcoins per day - presently 6 BTC or so per day.
The will be no commissions on accepting bitcoins during this trial period
The rate you will get is the Mt Gox rate * the gx.com AUD/USD midrate
It wont be automated on the website in the trial period - you email him for a quote which will be valid till close of business in Sydney.
You can make a part payment so long as it is over 50% - with the rest to be paid in AUD cash on arrival.
For the time being, bitcoins will not be accepted as payment if you are already at the hostel in person.
He will sell bitcoins for cash at the front counter after 11am - before then it is too busy.
Buyers might like to contact him first to make sure he has some to sell or risk a wasted trip.
There will be a 2.5% commission on bitcoins for cash sales.

If all this goes well it will start to be integrated on the hostel website.

I will see what he thinks of this. If he agrees it will be in place very soon, and you can add another real business to the bitcoins list.

It will be a particularly pertinent addition because it is a wholly legitimate family owned business which was turned down by PayPal because they were not incorporated.

Well what they are supposed to do is make an empirical choice, take a sample BEFORE starting you on AB's, and let you know if you have to change later.

Could not agree more about repeat scripts. Where I live you can generally phone for another prescritption and pick it up from the secretary. You pay nothing for the script (but you will pay to fill it) and it saves clogging up the doctor.