nym

Yes, using a 3rd party service such as Coinbase.com.

They're made out of gold/silver, and have an associated BTC value.

Okay, but that 11% figure is mostly because of your traditional bank, which charges for deposits (wtf?)

Lets say I want to $100 to a friend in Mexico:

* My bank doesn't charge me for deposits. (still $100 USD) * Coinbase charges 1% to convert my USD to BTC (converted 8.947 BTC at 11.05usd per btc) * Sending that to someone else costs almost nothing (8.947 BTC). * The person receiving is not charged anything, unless they want to convert to another currency (e.g. pesos)

In this scenario, there is certainly slippage / costs, but it still beats MoneyGram, WesternUnion, Xoom, etc in terms of cost to send money from country to country.

Coinbase.com will allow you to buy up to $100 with a 1% fee. It's pretty much what I'm recommending these days to Americans.

http://howdoyouusebitcoins.com/

You can buy and sell bitcoins on Coinbase, which is also a wallet (bank). They keep 87% of their funds offline to prevent customers from loosing their funds in the case of hacking.

http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/from/coinbase/

Use a wallet like Coinbase, which stores 87% of funds offline.

http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/from/coinbase/

Pretty sure you can still get charged back with Amazon.

You should work with Brian Armstrong to allow sellers / buyers to use bitcoins on the site. The advantage is that bitcoin does not allow chargebacks. Their interface is very close to PayPal, and makes it much easier to get started with.

http://coinbase.com/

It seems like these services are moving to a model where they get their user's trust by storing the majority of funds offline, which means they cannot be hacked remotely.

YES!

There will be a big "Bitcoin Friday" sale on Nov 9th.

http://bitcoinfriday.com/

Cups and Cakes Bakery in SF will be participating as well.

How many Paypal users do you think there are? How many of those also have given Paypal their account information?

(honestly would like to know)

Mint asked for bank passwords, and had 5m registered users as of 2011. They sold for $170 million. I believe Coinbase is copying common UX patterns which have been proven to be palatable with users.

So, I originally signed up with a local bank, which takes 2-3 days (unfortunately). This is the same model that Paypal follows.

Since there is clearly a demand for buying bitcoins _quickly_, I believe Brian is providing both a good UX for those who want to just use their account / routing numbers, while also allowing people to get bitcoins in LESS THAN 10 MINUTES (I bought 1BTC today with coinbase / wells fargo).

I should note that Mint did the same thing in order to get access to transaction history, and they had 5 million registered users as of 2011 (source: http://qr.ae/8QB9G).

If the big banks addressed the need for APIs, startups like Mint and Coinbase could do this in a more sane way, but we're talking about big banks, and in the case of Wells Fargo they actually charge users a monthly fee for using Quicken to talk to their backend.

tl;dr- Mint asked users for bank passwords and got 5 million registrations. Likewise, Coinbase is just providing a "quick" ux path for the people who want to act quickly.

I trust Brian Armstrong / Coinbase more than Paypal, and Paypal also requires your routing / account number.

Full disclosure: I run http://howdoyoubuybitcoins.com/ and my wife's cupcake bakery, cupsandcakesbakery.com sells cupcakes for bitcoins in San Francisco (9th/harrison)

Very exciting!

Indians cannot buy-watch-use digital content legally or easily.

Therefore, Indians do not buy digital content as often as their US counterparts who are able to legally and easily.

Source?

Have you ever tried putting a GPS in your bike?

http://www.gizmag.com/spybike-gps-tracker/22999/

I wish Bitpay or BitInstant would partner with mFoundry!

Your original title was slightly linkbaity. I approve of the mod's change for clarity.

I'm glad they make it so easy!

I would totally do this.

If #2 is correct, wouldn't they tease a new release instead of introducing a new model? No sense making customers buy something only to release a new model out of schedule.

Source?

It's so much worse in iOS- to share a picture on Facebook you need to close the camera, open up FB, then find the file and upload it.

After switching from Android to an iPhone, I miss the powerful User Experience that Android provides.

I have heard it very difficult to get a prescription for Modafinil, even if you have work sleep shift disorder because most doctors aren't used to prescribing this drug.

BoingBoing went through the same thing... they closed down comments completely, and then some time later brought them back with a community moderator, who ironically privately censored posts by "disemvoweling", as well as completely censoring posts related to Violet Blue (or anyone referencing that fiasco).

http://sfist.com/2008/07/01/boing_boing_responds_to_violet_b...

This is exactly why I'm contributing to the Locker Project. I personally have data on tribe.net I'm concerned about losing.

I could write a scraper myself, but I know a ton of people who feel the same way. These are people who aren't programmers but would personal copies of the digital snowflakes they've created on that site. It's far more useful to build a Locker connector that anyone can use to sync their contacts, messages, photos, etc.

Also worth mentioning (not free, but great programming screencasts)

http://peepcode.com/

Thank you for clarifying. I agree that having supporting material is important.

...on the other hand, screencasts on JavaScript by Khan / Resig would be exceptionally good for the JS community.