Yeah. I agree that bitcents stuff is confusing as hell right now. especially to existing players.. I am looking into best way to describe this. I want to allow players to play for a fraction of bitcoin, since it cost alot now, but in the same time bitcents confuse players too.. Probably, I switch to "chips" with some published exchange ratio.

That's probably a good idea. Maybe define a unit (mBTC), and label them all as .2/.4 mBTC or something.

I am afraid to name them as BTC-something, 'cos if tomorrow bitcoin will cost $100, I will need to go over it again and existing players will be confused again. But if this will be "chip" or something else - it's way easier to adapt imho.

Is it that you can't support more than 2 decimal places? If so, then making the chip idea is probably the best. I might suggest doing the smallest level of Bitcoins as well.

The smallest unit is .00000001 BTC, so if you made .000001 BTC = 1 chip, you are good. 1 BTC = 1,000,000 chips. Maybe that's too extreme, but it would cover you in worst case scenario. The smallest table now would then become 100/200 chips.

yeah. software do not support it, and i doubt it will look nice on table too ))

.00000001 i think is too extreme tho... =)))

hippich, If you're looking to get more people involved with the development, you should definitely create a thread in the main software forum and contact _dave_ to get it moved to the free section. As things develop, me and my business partner Bryon would likely be able to donate some hours.

Is there a good way to buy/sell larger sums of bitcoins for $? ($500-5k) Or is this still not possible?

mtgox.com have huge volume (about 60k BTC daily), so this amount should not be a problem at all.

You can get money to MtGox with a wire. Email the contact info on the site for details.

If you want to do a single transaction for $5k, you're going to move the price. $500 shouldn't be a problem.

hippich, just put a BTC in on your site to try it out (waiting for it to confirm). Really excited to check it out.

if you wanted to sell things in BTC on a website, how would you go about pricing? Would it be possible to query mt gox to get current rates for btc or would you just set the pricing so skewed from the current trading value that you're basically "guaranteed" to not lose USD value on your sales?

If you were setting dynamic prices, what sort of premium should you give yourself on the pricing to help mitigate future costs of trading the BTC out to get USD ?

Very uncertain right now. Price is swinging $2/coin/day

mtgox have a trade api. for example you can get this address to find the current price in usd: http://mtgox.com/code/data/ticker.php

it looks like you could quite easily set a site up to automatically sell the btc for usd on mtgox straight away, so you'd be somewhat insulated from swings. https://mtgox.com/support/tradeAPI

Please, please, please stop using .... at the end .... of .... each ..... line....It's extremely unpleasant and detracts from what you are trying to say. With regards to your points I believe heads up poker solves most problems except superusers.

Thanks for the links. Do people think it is a fair system to charge the daily high for a product? Say your product costs $80 and 1BC is worth $8 - $10 on that day, is it acceptable to charge the high of 10BC to help protect yourself from swongs? Or should you quote current market rate with an expiry on the quote?

You can change your BTC price at any point. I would put a bit of a premium on it just to make sure you come out decently. You could even keep reserves on mtgox, and immediately sell when an order comes in if you are concerned.

Larger sums were easier than smaller sums until recently. Wire or Dwolla works for getting money to mtgox, but Dwolla takes a few days if you don't have money immediately in that account.

zomg i read this thread a bit when it was first posted, the price has gone from 90cents to over $7 in about 6 weeks!

has anyone made a 5+ figure profit or is it difficult due to the purchase constraints?

also i really don't understand how this works, how can someone fundamentally make money from this? is it similar to gold, in that it has no (real) use, other than the fact you think you'll be able to sell it on to someone else at a higher price in the future?

You can get the market depth from mtgox as well for larger priced items, and give a more exact price. Looking now, you can get $1778.48 done at 7.755, $7.92 at 7.73, etc. Sum those up and you can get $5464.41 all the way down to 7.505.

This would be your worst case, as there are dark orders which don't show publicly.

The people who have really profited got in at 7 cents!

It's designed to be similar to Gold. Limited quantity, hard to get, divisible, easy to verify, does not spoil, etc...

Gold has use other than selling it to someone for profit. If Gold's value was constant, it would still be useful as a currency. Currency is good to have because it is almost universally accepted, so it removes the need to barter, and because it's easy to price things and compare alternatives.

If I want alpaca socks, and I can offer computer programming skills, I'll need to find an alpaca farmer who also wants my skills. Pretty rare to find. But perhaps he wants a chicken, and a chicken farmer needs my skills, so I go trade with the chicken guy first, then trade with the alpaca guy. This is expensive even in the simplest case. When I trade through intermediate goods, I need to be sure that they will be accepted when I trade for what I really want. If I use a currency, I can trade my skills to anyone who has currency, then trade my currency for whatever I want. It's much more divisible than many items (I could trade a goat, but I can't easily trade 1/10th of a goat). A goat may die or get sick, whereas currency will always be currency.

Sure, speculation is a part of the market. Bitcoin is not really playing out as a currency *at the present time*. It's still more similar to trading goats, since not everyone will want a goat, and you need to go in and out of transactions. But the economy is growing, so you don't need to do those transactions anymore. As the economy becomes more self-sufficient, you'll see an increase in the usefulness of it and much more stability in the price. You should still see it become more valuable as more people want to get in (as more people contribute to the economy, with the same number of coins, the value must rise to accommodate the growth of the economy).

We are still in the super early stages. It may never reach a bigger economy. There are certain niches that it is incredibly useful for even with transferring difficulties (international transfers that typically have very high fees, and black/grey markets). Right now even those markets are in their infant stages.

The bet really is which leap (if any) Bitcoin makes. If it just becomes a significant currency for black/grey markets and international transfers, it has a huge amount to go up. If it fails completely, it will be worthless. If it becomes the standard for online payments, it goes up even more. There are a lot of longshot scenarios. But it's not just about hoping there are more suckers behind you. Although even in the fail scenario, dumping it off on a sucker could be profitable.

Edit: rephrased:

Assume $1 = 1BC, and so I sell my product for 100BC. If I hold onto those 100BC, and the value of the BC rises to $2/BC, or falls to $0.5/BC meaning my Bitcoins are now worth either $200 or $50, are the gains taxable, and are the losses tax deductable?

IE, in the first instance would I have to pay tax on $200 when I convert it to my normal currency? If it dropped in value and they are now worth $50, would I have to pay tax on $50 or $100?

Tax law is gonna be a bitch on these. In the US, I *think* it works as, when you do your initial sale, it's income of $100. Then if it goes up, you have capital gains of $100. If it goes down, capital loss of $50. Although businesses that do business with multiple currencies probably already deal with this, so it might not be that tricky.

In London, no idea.

Hurm if it's not officially recognised as a currency I wonder if you can class it as gambling, which means it's tax free here in the UK. Confusing, need to speak to an accountant probably!

What if you bartered for a beanie baby or some other collectible item? If there are special rules for currencies, surely a case like that is covered.