And who says bitcoin is worthless? Its clearly better than credit cards or cash in this case.

Through repercussions for non-compliance. Land-mines are inexpensive to produce and impossible to restrict but many countries have signed the Ottawa Treaty and the US only uses mines that self detonate shortly after the placement (typically 4 hours). Of course, I'm certain that those who develop drones with AI abilities need only to keep the AI abilities turned off, until the time when it becomes convenient to enable them.

A fair point, from a US perspective since we've never destroyed our currency and had to re-issue it. Lots of other countries have experienced that doomsday scenario - just ask Argentina how many times they've rebooted their peso in the last few decades. Things do blow up - it just hasn't affected your latte drinking, much and yet.

Agreed, it's not an opportunity today. It could be an advertisement for Argentines or say Chinese concerned about the state of their monetary system and what that means for their personal wealth in the future. If 10% of one's cash holdings were BTC, worst case one is down 10%. In the best case, one is down 90% since the fiat is confiscated or worthless, but there is a hedge if BTC takes off. Localbitcoins.com - there's always a way to get some cash for your BTC. Can't always say that about your bank account...

Exactly why the idea of a digital gold would be useful - no concerns about divisibility or spending it in places where you can't be physically present.

Indeed, Greeks that have already moved their funds out of banks don't need Bitcoin and the ones that didn't don't have funds to purchase Bitcoin. With that said, capital controls are a concern for other countries besides Greece and at some point these warnings (Argentina, Cyprus and now Greece) indicate that it makes sense to keep a portion of funds in products that can't be easily confiscated, controlled or taxed. Bitcoin isn't going to solve Greece's citizenry's problems, but it sure could alleviate future meltdowns. Think that the Bitcoin volatility is bad? Try living for a week without access to a bank and maybe only $60 withdrawals per day. When countries horribly mismanage their finances, all of a sudden Bitcoin becomes far more attractive. Just ask any Zimbabwean who is getting $5 worth of value out of an account with anything less than 175 quadrillion Zimbabwe Dollars. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Indeed Monero has more than just built-in mixing. With ring signatures and one time use addresses, it makes using the blockchain to trace transactions very difficult.

It'll probably be about as a well received by authorities as PGP was back in the 1990s. Doesn't mean that it's not an important evolution of the way that ecommerce could work.

I would note that other articles on the OpenBazaar raise, do not use that word. Censorship-resistant seems to be the consensus on what the product aims to achieve.

No, I do not buy into the 'busy weekend' excuse. Sounds like CYA bullshit to me.

Right. Unless you're gay and want to get married or unless you're pregnant and don't want to have a child.

That's not to say that Rand Paul doesn't have some of the right ideas, but he certainly falls short in several libertarian basic philosophies.

No one is going to jail over using a coupon. The bad press from Walgreens prosecuting a customer for a $5 coupon, no matter where they got it is not worth it.

<quote><p>I suppose its not a bad thing to have just in case but I don't see the reasoning behind the fixation on it as a design requirement and their ranting about its "importance" in press releases.  In almost 300 manned space launches a Launch Escape system has only been of verifiable use in a single incident(Soyuz T-10-1).</p></quote>

Marketing. This is a joyride for the rich - they want some danger but they also want to feel that there's a safety mechanism in case of failure. I imagine it'll help sell a lot of tickets, no matter how little use it gets or whether it prevents any deaths.

The fact that many countries have mismanaged their finances so badly that a 6 year old software project manages to improve upon things is hardly a critique on Bitcoin. Volatility is part of the process for anything with a small market cap, small user base and drastic swings in public interest.

So Bitcoin has growing pains. What's Argentina's excuse?