As an aside, I think people use intermediate parties unnecessarily way too much with bitcoin. Yes, mining it yourself is not feasible so you do need one to get

As an aside, I think people use intermediate parties unnecessarily way too much with bitcoin. Yes, mining it yourself is not feasible so you do need one to get ahold of bitcoin and to get fiat currency back from bitcoin, but you don't need (and maybe shouldn't use) one just for storing bitcoin, paying with bitcoin, receiving bitcoin. That's the whole damned point of bitcoin, but then people go and store it with mtgox anyway even though they're not about to exchange it, and are bummed out when mtgox loses their money. It sucks, but it's funny that half the point of bitcoin is making this situation impossible, if you bother to do it right (Of course, if you trust a third party more than you trust your own ability to not lose/forget your private key, then I guess it makes sense, but you're trading a lot off in exchange for that)