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[G-Flex]

Might as well accept payment in Magic: The Gathering cards, frankly.

[kragnoth]

Bitcoins smell like a scam.  Don't know why, but any company that spams my inbox I could trust as far as I could throw their sleazy owners.

[MrWiggles]

Bitcoins smell like a scam.  Don't know why, but any company that spams my inbox I could trust as far as I could throw their sleazy owners.

Bitcoins aren't a scam, just nearly pointless.

[weenog]

Ah, how about http://flattr.com/?

The GIMP guys implemented it and thought that it wouldn't really give them more than 2 cents, turns out after three months they received 800 times the amount they expected.

1600 cents?! Now I can buy that candy bar I've been saving up for!

[Sizik]

Ah, how about http://flattr.com/?

The GIMP guys implemented it and thought that it wouldn't really give them more than 2 cents, turns out after three months they received 800 times the amount they expected.

So they got $16?

[Boea]

Bitcoins smell like a scam.  Don't know why, but any company that spams my inbox I could trust as far as I could throw their sleazy owners.

Bitcoins aren't a scam, just nearly pointless.

Median price is about $12. [ 122,096,072 USD / 10,426,650 BTC = ~ 11.7$/B ]
The problem is that transactions are final, and are finalized in roughly 60 minutes of the transaction. [Take steps to encrypt your wallet file, or find a reputable site. They always scramble to reimburse losses from major attacks]
Tracking can only be done via associating transactions with accounts, and accounts with people. It's far-fetched for a layman.

The rest of the problems involve conversions [it's pretty much a market, itself], or finding people that accept it, as is.

[King Mir]

Well what are the pros/issues? Otherwise [default:no]

Pro:
More donation

Con:
Extremely unstable exchange rate compared to most currency
Lack of legal protection and oversight on the exchanges
Exchanges can be blocked from currency transfer, out of concern of illegimate earning ( due to bitcoin's common association, banks are legally obligated to block any illegal/gambling sites from exchanging currency )
Not very many people using it in first place
Possibly being shut down once government figure out a way to do it ( grey area due to it's statue as secondary currency )

While interesting, I don't think it's worth the issues currently.

None of those issues matter for accepting donations in bitcoins. They're reasons why maybe people should not invest in bitcoins, but that's not what's being talked about.

As I see it, the only Con is that it's another online account that has personal and bank information. The pro is convenience to any donors who would prefer to donate bitcoins rather than dollars. That's it.

So you dismisses my cons as rather unimportant? Those are wee bit of an concern for actually getting the money into bank. Hell, just having the feds a bit bug-eyed at it is probably a good reason to think twice.

Then again, the few bitcoin devotees I've spoken to declare it to be the holy grail of freedom and ignore issues like lack of security in exchanges and unstable currency market making it pretty much impossible to do a fair currency exchange. Maybe y'all should stick to having gold pieces sent around, it'd be a lot more stable and fair exchange. And probably less traceable

Your cons are important, but only to someone considering actually owning bitcoins. Taking bitcoins in place of dollars as a merchant does not have those issues.

Also a separate consideration would be whether it is worth mining bitcoins, since once again coins don't need to be held long either, and can be converted directly to dollars.

[King Mir]

Might as well accept payment in Magic: The Gathering cards, frankly.

You can't instantly convert goods into dollars. You can with bitcoins, at an exchange.

[Boea]

Might as well accept payment in Magic: The Gathering cards, frankly.

You can't instantly convert goods into dollars. You can with bitcoins.

For about $11.70 per.

[G-Flex]

Might as well accept payment in Magic: The Gathering cards, frankly.

You can't instantly convert goods into dollars. You can with bitcoins, at an exchange.

Yep, that definitely makes it a useful currency.

[King Mir]

Might as well accept payment in Magic: The Gathering cards, frankly.

You can't instantly convert goods into dollars. You can with bitcoins, at an exchange.

Yep, that definitely makes it a useful currency.

It be just a payment method to someone like Toady. How generally useful it to own bitcoins is irrelevant.

[MrWiggles]

Might as well accept payment in Magic: The Gathering cards, frankly.

You can't instantly convert goods into dollars. You can with bitcoins, at an exchange.

Yep, that definitely makes it a useful currency.

It be just a payment method to someone like Toady. How generally useful it to own bitcoins is irrelevant.

Its a payment method which may take more man hours to manage then what its worth.

[Cruxador]

Ah, how about http://flattr.com/?

The GIMP guys implemented it and thought that it wouldn't really give them more than 2 cents, turns out after three months they received 800 times the amount they expected.

Actually, that does seem like it would be a handy thing for Toady.

[GoombaGeek]

How about we donate with large generated DF worlds? It takes lots of processing power to create them, so only reputable sources will generate them: plus they have inherent value because you can play in them too!

[King Mir]

How about we donate with large generated DF worlds? It takes lots of processing power to create them, so only reputable sources will generate them: plus they have inherent value because you can play in them too!

Bitcoins are valuable because people are willing to buy them, not because they use processing power. The processing power is used to officiate bitcoin transactions, in place of a bank.

In fact. bitcoins are do not benefit from people using improved processing units (generally GPUs). Individual miners do, but the system as a whole does not. The system is designed so that a transaction takes an average of an hour to officialise, and adjusts the reward to miners to make that happen.