What do you mean by shutting down the exchange? You mean the Mtgox? That wouldn't kill bitcoin would it?

It wouldn't kill bitcoin, but if the government shuts down enough exchanges, then it would make it pretty difficult to use them.

No, but that's probably what they'll try if anything.

The people making the decisions may not even understand that there is a distinction between MtGox and bitcoin. If they do, they might just personally buy bitcoins and not worry about starting a potentially unpopular war against the international public because they are hedged anyway.

isn't it more likely they force MtGox to cease business with US citizens (as opposed to completely shutting them down) like they've done with Party, Neteller, FTP/PS, Intrade, etc

Yeah this is totally possible and somewhat likely IMO if BTC continues gaining ground only in the gambling/porn/drugs/hitman world. Not sure if this would have an effect on the price, tbh

Can't even buy on coinbase today

"Sorry, the maximum number of purchases on Coinbase has been reached for today. Please try again in 24 hours. We'll continue raising this limit over time."

I don't think the gov will go after mtgox, mtgox i'm pretty sure is registered as a us based company. If they lose mtgox from the usa they close out their ability to monitor 80% of all btc transactions. Its much better for them to just leave mtgox alone and use it to track everyone.

But i guess they have done dumber things in the past. so who knows.

mtgox is a japanese company

Someone dumped 700k USD all at once on mtgox yesterday, and it didn't stop bitcoin from hitting a year high.

Check out http://bitcoinwireless.com. Now you can put credit on your phone or pay your bill with 280 carriers in 112 countries. No vig.

This just in, you can buy reddit gold with bitcoins now: http://blog.reddit.com/2013/02/new-g...tcoin-and.html

News article about it: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/14/red...with-coinbase/

Need some COOOINS. Have:
- 5K PayPal (I know .. I knooooooooooooooow) - Will pay premium.
- 1.2k cash, GDMP, or bank deposit. - Will pay little to no premium
- Guess we could also do MG or WU???

Thanks!

http://rudd-o.com/archives/the-great...man-ever-built

looking for btc for stars

The blockchain is a papertrail of bitcoin. They could either rollback or split and whatever Gavin chooses will be done. Could be a good time to compress the chain too.

It may the case now that Gavin will only "choose" things that everyone will go along with. But Gavin has no special ability in regards to controlling Bitcoin. I mean he does, but it is reputational/social not technical. Just clearing it up for anyone who might get the wrong idea. Bitcoin is not normal primarily in the fact that no one owns or controls it.

Gavin is like the King of Bitcoinland. He's more of a face and figurehead than actual ruler

Holy fahk $29!

Wow I was down when it was at $14 thinking about how I could have doubled my money in 5 months. I ended up passing on it because I didn't want to take a risk. Could have gone balls to the walls and doubled my money in two months. Jeebus!

I started buying some at $21. I figure it's kind of like a lottery ticket. Lose 100% or make possibly 10,000%+. With a market cap of $300 mil right now, 10,000% doesn't seem too far fetched.

I feel there's a ton of possibilities that haven't even been thought of yet that will involve bitcoin. Every time an idea is released the demand/price will rise. There are also a ton of ways this could fail, but only have to be right once with these odds.

Definitely not. The silver lining of government distortions is you can speculate against them (when you're not busy donating money for Ron Paul to save you), and fiat currency is the best one there is. Tons of wealth waiting to pour into somewhere else.

So I live in Canada, have done some reading and have a pretty decent handle on what Bitcoins are and how they're used.

Can anyone give me a compelling reason to not get into the business of trying to exchange bitcoins for cash for people? Not huge volume, no real desire to sit on any amount. I don't mind the idea of sending people money orders or trading them on stars etc...

Is there a substantial downside here? And I'm not viewing this as a get rich scheme, just a very small amount of side income.

The downside is of course the risk. Bitcoins are irreversible. So someone pays you on stars, you pay them Bitcoins, and Stars for whatever reason decides to reverse the transaction (say it was a scammed account, say they just don't like being involved in the transactions), you have no recourse. The other problem you have to worry about is if it's worth your time. You'd have to mark up significantly to cover the risk along with your time. I'm not sure how much time it would take to do a transaction with someone, but if there is enough money to be made, it would make more sense for the person to just use means with less juice to get the coins. There are a lot of decent options for getting coins now.

Chargebacks, fake checks, etc... are your biggest concern. You have to think, who is going to be using your services? Chances are, if they are legitimate and not someone you know, they wouldn't be using you if it wasn't some kind of scam. Or at least a good percentage of the time. Which drives up the juice you need to charge, which makes it more likely someone is a scammer.

You could also do in person cash for Bitcoin transactions, but that is fairly time consuming and somewhat risky for randoms you would meet up with. It will be hard to be worth your while, unless you just really enjoy seeing more people using the coins.

1BTC > $30

selling bitcoins for stars/ftp (silent_0ne69) at market price

I have $40 on black chip poker looking to trade for 1.3 bit coins at 1BTC per $30 pm for details.