Could it be because there are questions everywhere?

I was at Campus Party in São Paulo this afternoon.

For the first time, I met a bitcoiner in person.  A guy with a "BITCOIN" T-shirt walked by.  I prudently gave him berth; who knows, he might recognize me.

While strolling around I saw a young American giving a talk on e-payments.   He was showing numbers about unbanked people in various places aroud the world.

I braced myself for the moment he would say, TA-DA, bitcoin will solve all the problems of those people, and cure cancer too.

Instead he started talking about PayPal, and I noticed the "PayPal" cushions on the stage.  Oh, OK.

But, when I was about to leave, he puts up a slide with wads of bitcoin bills (!) over a bed of bitcoin coins!

Turns out he was from Braintree, not from PayPal.

But, after a short mention of bitcoin, he briefly described Ripple -- and said it was a very clever idea.

(But it was Ripple the network, not Ripple the coin.  Sorry @Walsoraj, I think I will not be buying yet.)

He said that Braintree was trying to integrate with those things (Bitcoin and maybe others) because merchants asked them to; and merchants were asking for them because their customers were pestering asking for them.

But he said that those things were all quite immature yet.

He also said that they (Braintree) are very positive about Coinbase and are working with them.

First, could you please turn off that annoying "Posted From" line, please, pretty please, pretty please with cream and a cherry on top?

Could it be, rather, a 14-year-old person, with a smartphone in hand, with Android OS running on the smartphone, and an Android-compatible App running under the Android OS?

The condensed order book (rightmost two columns) for OKCoin is now only 2 lines above the spread, and 1 line below it.  Is that an OKCoin problem, or a bitcoinwisdom problem?

Thanks for the tip... When I get that damages money from my former lawyer I will consider it. 

If it is still "very early in development", why are bitcoiners telling random people (including the third world poor) to invest in it? 

Anyone can read about the relevant events and draw his own conclusions.

It has been conjectured that they took 3.5 hours in order to have a free lunch and snacks.

... but the exchange's bank accounts are still required to comply with AML/KYC, if I understood correctly.  Only the BTC deposits and withdrawals are not required to comply.

I smell a troll...  

There Satoshi will reveal himself, make a short but moving speech, and then the Kool-Aid will be served.

Aren't you all envious of me because I have a personal exclusive troll?

Yes, of course.

As others have pointed out, Jesse Powell was not a friend of Mark, but a friend of Roger Ver, who was a friend of Mark.

Shall we try to find one?

Why would we exclude anyone, as long as he/she asks questionable questions?

A good fraction of the transaction volume in the blockchain is definitely not payment for goods and services.  Much of it is coins moving between addresses that belong to the same person, such as hotwallet/coldwallet flow.  Add to that tumbling, deposit and withdrawal to exchanges, etc. Here is a summary of partial analyses that identify various non-commercial components of the traffic.

Bitpay processes about 1000-2000 BTC/day, but almost all of that seems to be miners paying bills and/or equipment. Let's say that the real use for e-comemrce through BitPay it is 500 BTC/day.  Multiply by 20 (wild guess) to estimate the world total by all processors and by direct bitcoin payments.  We get 10 kBTC/day of e-commerce.  That is still only 5% of the ~200 kBTC/day blockchain transaction volume (even after excluding apparent change-backs from the latter).

At current prices, that would be about 2 million USD/day.  If there were no speculation, each of the 13 million BTC in existence would be unavailable only between being bought by a customer and being sold by the merchant to another customer.  If that time is at  most 30 days, then the 13 million coins would be storing at most 60 million USD.  That gives about 5 USD/BTC.  If half the coins were locked up by long-term speculators, the price would still be ~10 USD/BTC.

By my estimates, even with generous assumptions about e-payment volume and coin lock-up time, I get around 20 USD/BTC at most.  The current price is still supported mostly by speculation (people who buy bitcoins and hold them in the hope of selling or spending them at a higher price, minutes or decades later).

Old truth is still truth

Indeed, among the geographers who knew that the Earth was round, question was how wide was the ocean between West Europe and East Asia.  Columbus (and his investors) wanted to get to the latter, and believed that the distance in a due West course was much smaller than it really is.    No one (including Columbus) imagined that Atlantic and Pacific were separate oceans, with an entire continent blocking the way, almost from pole to pole.