There are no bitcoin accounts, its a local program. No one controls the system, there is no central web site or server. The regulation is done by everyone who mines bitcoins, and the miners get paid for their trouble. Couterfiting bitcoins makes counterfitting dollars look like a walk in the park.

The ad hominem against the bitcoin community is not appreciated and will be ignored. I was simply pointing out that both currencies are backed by trust, and currently i trust the currency that no one controls over the one controlled by a Government drowning in debt and in desperate need of more dollars, which they…

Bitcoin was not hacked, an exchange was, just as a bank robbery does not mean the dollar in insecure a hacked exchange does not mean that Bitcoin is insecure.

What is making bitcoin unsafe? Or for that matter any more stupid than a very special piece of paper?

Actually the exchange rate has been quite constant for the last couple of weeks, saying right on $17.

You pay with bitcoin using a bitcoin client to send coins to the stores address.

You would have to sell the coins at an exchange to receive their value in USD. The two largest exchanges right now are MTGox and Tradehill.

Its not a pyramid nor a ponzi scheme, we all know the risks (we are informed quite regularly by very vocal detractors) bitcoin is an experiment, one with the potential to change money the same way the internet changed information.

@microlithx: Linux

That was my ideal world software patent, i know that it does not work that way right now.

you dont own the concept or the idea, you own your implementation of it.

@magus-21: +1

@LittleKingPsyz: I will bet you 1000 internets that there already is one.

thats my job :P

@CODENAME:SAM: Probably a Linux distro.

The same thing could be said about any and every paper currency, replace "virtual" with "paper" and it works just as well. Currency is given value by its users, this is our experiment to try and make better currency, and yes it may fail, but if it works it will make the world a better place.

@12eward: its perfectly possible if they go with a whitelist instead of a blacklist.

Me thinks google checkout, not phone bill.

1) To be honest its not ready for large scale public use yet, the back end is mostly finished what needs to be done now is a large project on a very user friendly client for both computers and mobile devices of all makes and models, this alone could take a year or more.