A lot of what you said can be attributed to simply not knowing the options. That is because it is literally brand new.

When you installed web browsers back in the Windows 95 days, you didn't know what you were getting. Was Netscape good? Probably, a lot of people use it. But who knows for sure? And what about those browsers that came on floppy disks with magazines? Those were filled with adware... You wouldn't have known either way, because Netscape hadn't built up a reputation yet

The remittance example isn't the best "this is what you can do today" but more of "this is what it will be like when bitcoin is more adopted, but can still be done today perfectly easy as a proof of concept". Yes you can send $100 to anyone in the world instantly for basically free, but they have to find somewhere to spend that. Right now it means selling it for cash, but hopefully in the future that will change. Right now it's a bit of a pain to buy with bitcoin.. Just like it was a pain to send email and browse the web when they were brand new. I try to spend with bitcoin as much as I can. When I buy something with it, I simply deposit the same amount to my local exchange, and buy some BTC at the current rate. Others can do this too, once you have an exchange set up, or you can go to the bitcoin atm.

The most beneficial people to this will be emerging economies. Everyone here in Canada loves their Fiat, which is backed by a strong government and economy. That's all well and good, but how about you open your eyes a bit and think of the rest of the world? There aren't many countries that are like Canada. Look at all of Africa for instance. What happens to their fiat when the government decides to just keep printing billions and billions of dollars? You get inflation at a rate of 89,700,000,000,000,000,000,000% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...09_Obverse.jpg

These are the people who need bitcoin more than anything. They can't count on their shitty governments. People think fiat has intrinsic value for some reason.. well the intrinsic value of these currencies is basically the paper you are holding in your hand. Maybe it's good for starting fires or using as TP.

Outside africa you have these european countries falling apart. Cyprus was screwed over so bad by banking russian mobsters that they had to literally take money from their peoples' bank accounts. Ukraine will be another good example, along with countries run by shitty governments in South America.

So yeah, things are all peachy in Canada, but there is more to the world than you and the people in your country. For once, the PEOPLE will have their own currency, instead of counting on basically faith.

As for wallets, it's not that hard to just ask your local bitcoin geek for suggestions. If you are dealing with bitcoin in smallish amounts (under a few thousand USD) then I would say use blockchain. They are leading the industry in technology and trust. Otherwise I wouldn't trust putting my money somewhere that isn't backed up by insurance. That would be just dumb. Luckily, you don't have to do that (and the people who lost their money on sketchy services should have known this, the info is out there).

For larger amounts I would use multibit, and keep a backup of the encrypted data on as many backups as you find convenient. Dropbox, google, usb sticks, hard drives, etc. Also if you have Android you can use bitcoin wallet for buying and selling things on the go.. keep a couple hundred in there for going to restaurants, etc. Blockchain has an app as well that you can use with your account. Apple bans anything to do with bitcoin (which in itself is sketchy as all fuck) but there is a solution in the works using html5 so it will be browser based, and there is nothing they can do to ban it.

If you are storing savings, I would recommend cold storage (printed on paper, or on an offline device, and stored somewhere safe).

None of these can be stolen by anyone without your private key, or lost by a poorly run company. Unless you physically give it to someone and tell them your key, it's safer than anything.

Skinnypupp should be the bitcoin mod!

And what is this weakness you're speaking of? People losing money with the Gox debacle had more to do with Gox's incompetence and the people's failure to recognize said incompetence than it does with Bitcoin itself. It's been known for long time that Gox carried a systemic risk and this latest incident wasn't the first time something's gone wrong within Gox. Is it Bitcoin's fault that the people who used Gox failed their due diligence to keep their money off a centralized exchange like Bitcoin 101 suggested? That's like getting a speeding ticket and turning around and suing your car manufacturer for making your car too fast.

If anything, I think this Gox incident will be good for Bitcoin and will help it grow. Once you weed out the bad apples and let the free market learn its lessons, it'll be hard pressed to repeat these type of operations again.

I only gave you that example because you said Fiat is so much more superior due to its transparency and ease of use. True, volatility is a concern right now. And again, I'll bring you back to the argument that Bitcoin has only been in the mainstream's attention for a bit over a year. Of course it's going to be volatile, but, as the market grows, this volatility will get smaller and smaller and the example I made earlier about the remittance advantage will come full circle.

I'm glad you asked because the road map is vast and complex.

Bitcoin, as the mainstream understands it, is just a currency. However, the more complex iceberg that's underneath, which is what people in the know are actually more excited about, is the Bitcoin protocol and network.

For example, with the protocol, Bitcoin has the ability to implement an escrow service directly into its transactions by requiring third-party keys in order to execute a certain transaction. You can also turn transactions into a trust by setting certain transactions to unlock for a specific person only after a certain amount of time has passed. For the network, people are leveraging off of it and building interesting applications such as notary services, uncensored domains, and secure messaging services.

And this is only the very beginning of what's possible. Like I mentioned before about Netflix, nobody really knows how far this rabbit hole will go. However, by leveraging the protocol and network, the possibilities are basically endless for programmers and entrepreneurs to play with and build things that weren't possible before.

I think you need to look at what I say in context. Carl mentioned that Fiat is far superior because of its ease of use and transparency. If you're talking strictly about ease of use and transparency, without mucking around with volatility and widespread adoption, Bitcoin is superior.

Now, if you want to start talking about volatility and ease of purchase, I can understand how it's a barrier to many.

Volatility is an issue, but it's much less an issue with remittance. If you want to change it back to Fiat, just tell your friend to go exchange it the second he receives the Bitcoins. From the time you send it and the time he receives it, the price isn't going to change much. And that's talking about today. In five years, if Bitcoin continues to grow, it isn't even going to be worth mentioning. The remittance business is a multi-billion dollar business that could be taken care of entirely with Bitcoin.

As for purchasing Bitcoin, there are options for people in North America to get Bitcoins without providing identity. Just go on craigslist or Localbitcoins.com and you can meet up with some dude at Starbucks and transact in real time.

So what's your actual mining payout like per week?

Difficulty went up today, but "only" 11.5%

https://xapo.com/

Free bitcoin wallet, but also has a vault service with insurance for a 0.12% fee if you don't trust yourself not to lose your bitcoins. Started by a billionaire banker who hates banks

Bitcoin 'vault' company raises $20 million from big-name investors - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blogTerm Sheet

Lemon Digital Wallet Founder Wences Casares Gets $20 Million in Funding for Bitcoin Startup Xapo | Re/code

Xapo Raises $20 Million To Bury Your Bitcoin Underground | TechCrunch

Be very wary of these claims

I'm at .11 BTC after a week. LOL, the 11.5% probably cancels out the overclock.

lol i have 180ghs and it mined me 0.04 in 7 days.

^^

Ouch. I guess you're using the Antminer? Is it overclocked? What's the pool reporting for your speed? Unless it crashes, I get a solid 190+ GH/s average as reported by the pool.

Yeah you have to keep an eye on your income at the pool vs what your actual hashrate is. Some pools are way better than others. So if you're nowhere near your expected income, switch pools

Just bought a 780TI for gaming... maybe I should overclock and mine

skinny how much bt u have?

Not good for mining
Not really any of your business

ok then lol.. i was more curious to how much u have mined, since the thread opened.. not invested with cash

That would be like telling everyone your bank account balance or stock profile :fuckthatshit:

Making Money
 

That comic makes no sense whatsoever

many interpretations can be drawn from that comic

some possible perceptions that I can see people deriving:
-bitcoin can be used for illegal activities
-people fear what they dont understand.

I think I get what they're trying to say... I think....

In any case whoever wrote it has no idea at all about it

what they're trying to say is, anyone can go out and create a currency.

but no one will trust it unless it's backed by a trusted governing authority.

Then why would he be arrested for offering his currency?

I'm guessing some people think it's a form of fraud.

although... I think there's no such thing as attempted fraud... LOL. so really there has been no fraud.

the comic is obviously drawn by a nay sayer of bitcoin.

most merchants only accept legal tender... if you try to pay them with "fake" currencies, you can get arrested. that's my best guess.
or i guess if you're there and you keep trying to barter with something else other than legal tender, they'll call the cops on you.

Exactly, it's a horribly written comic. I don't have a problem with 'naysayers' but at least know wtf you're 'naysaying' against :lawl:

I think it's trying to say, altcoins are to bitcoin what counterfeit currencies are to legal currencies. The website appears to be pro-bitcoin so I don't think it's criticising it. It's certainly very poorly written and confusing.

Yeah hardcore bitcon geeks love to shit on altcoins... IMO most alts are useless, but there are some that make sense. There is one that combines cryptocurrency with distributed folding for medical purposes... There is also Litecoin of course, but as soon as ASICs show up, forget it. There's another scrypt based coin that is supposed to be truly ASIC proof (Litecoin could be if they wanted it to) so that may be where the GPU miners go once the difficulty becomes too much for them to be worth it. In that case, now would be a good time to start mining that coin ;)

Or there could be cryptocurrency's "Facebook" where bitcoin is the "Myspace". I don't see it that way though, since it can be adapted to suit any changes needed. And the analogy doesn't really work since cryptocurrencies are products like websites.. they are more like the internet itself. A protocol for products to use.

There are plenty of alts worth shitting on, like all the pump and dump coins based on stupid memes, etc