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I can't say I'd noticed. Admittedly it's not trivial, in that I don't know of anywhere you can just show up with a credit card and buy a bitcoin, but it's hardly rocket surgery to fund a MtGox account.

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It's taken me the better part of a week to fund a MtGox account. 10 minutes to send bitcoin around the world. 5 days to complete a damn USD money transfer.

Urgh. In which case, you have my sympathies. It certainly wasn't that much of a hassle for me. Stick with it, I could certainly believe that MtGox is under a certain amount of strain right now.

That being said, they aren't the only option: other exchanges are cropping up, and bitcoin-otc is also available.

It's not hard, but it is very slow: create MtGox account; create Dwolla account; add your traditional checking account to Dwolla; initiate a xfer from checking -> Dwolla; wait (days) for xfer to complete; initiate Dwolla -> MtGox xfer (wait days); buy bitcoins with USD funds on MtGox.

I started that process purely for the fun of some small-time speculation, but the whole hassle of the process made me realize why Bitcoin is important.

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