10 Exciting Things About Bitcoin - Right Now

1) The success of Bitmit - Bitcoin's eBay. Over 550 listings and growing rapidly.

2) The boom happening over at Silk Road. While I don't condone the illegal applications of Bitcoin, the site's success if further proof that Bitcoin is a technology that fills a gap.

3) The appeal and rapid growth of Ogrr.com, which is bringing in hundreds of new users each month and expanding exponentially.

4) Mt.Gox is about to launch "e-commerce solutions" this week.

5) Recent discussions regarding making Bitcoin truly anonymous.

6) The upcoming completion and launch of Bitcoin.com by the good folks at Tradehill (currently down).

7) The popularity of coinworker.com.

8) The announcement of the upcoming Bitcoin Conference in London.

9) Through no fault of their own, tens of thousands of Bitcoins were stolen from various high profile Bitcoin businesses. Why is this good news? Not a single user was impacted as the owners chose to absorb the losses. It was also the first time that a major hack or closure didn't impact Bitcoin's market value.

10) And the most exciting news of all: you can now tip cows for Bitcoins.

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Hugh Thompson Addresses Bitcoin at Google Conference

Thanks to RSantana on the Bitcointalk forums for this one:

At the 6th Annual Google Test Automation Conference 2011 (GTAC 2011), security consultant Hugh Thompson, of People Security, addressed a question from the audience about Bitcoin. Follow the link below to jump to the relevant segment in the video:

Highlights:

"From a security perspective... we're going to need something like [Bitcoin] on a go-forward basis."

"In the not-too-distant-future, we're going to have a privacy armageddon incident... which is going to force a legislative change... that is going to be a scary period for all of us."

"At that point, people are going to be really freaked out that there's then, traceability, from what they've spent, to the merchant, and how it was used, and it's going to spawn the use of more disruptive payment technologies that can disassociate those things electronically, which I don't think we have a good mechanism for today."

"Yeah, I would use [Bitcoin]. There looks like to be some really strong... and difficult to decipher crypto behind it."

"I think it's such a great project, to see how it's evolving, and how it's disrupting the space."

Link to Video.

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Bitcoin's First Steps into the Mainstream

The importance of this development should not be overlooked. The famous pick-up artist, "Mystery," has decided to start accepting Bitcoin for his merchandise.

Mystery has been featured on every major TV network, various talk shows, and all over the Internet. He also had his own reality show on VH1. His forums have 27,000 members, though most of his traffic is anonymous. For example, at the time of this posting, there are 215 members and 3051 guests online on his forums. Let me re-emphasize: most of his traffic is anonymous. Do you see where I'm going with this? The kids who are buying his merchandise would rather not have people know that they're studying pick-up guides or reading advice online about how to win over girls. How better to cover your tracks than to use Bitcoin?

Mystery's site, Venusianarts.com, has an Alexa ranking of 82,809 in the US and 113,798 globally.

From the Reddit post:

"Hi everyone. Over at Venusian Arts we've taken notice of your new "Bitcoin" currency.
The $30 price point, reached earlier this year, was a little bit concerning to us, but now it seems to have leveled out, so I went ahead and added "Buy Now with Bitcoin" links to our sales pages for our ebook and our dvd set (hopefully the wild swings in BTC price are done, since our interest is in using it as a currency, not as an investment vehicle)."

I guarantee he's not the only merchant that feels that way. It makes you wonder how many businesses are holding off on accepting Bitcoin while they wait for the volatility to settle out. To accept Bitcoin now is significantly less risky, especially if you're holding onto the coins for a few hours or longer, than it was between June and as recently as last week.

"Thank you all for your efforts in bringing us a payment processor for the future, since everyone knows that merchant accounts suck balls."

They certainly do.

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