It will increase; up until the day the Bitcoin replaces SWIFT for large inter-bank transfers.

I had my personal checking  account closed for trying to open a Bitcoin-related business account. As promised, I never had more than 2 Bitcoin related transaction per month. (My first clue something was wrong is that my account manager moved up, but my account was not re-assigned.)

I don't think the ratio is that low. Probably closer to 20:1

There was one poster that I respected and assumed was male. One day, they posted links to feminist blog posts that they had obviously book-marked (They were not recent). I am not saying men can't read feminist blogs (I do myself on occasion); but from that point on, I "read" them as female.

I think my point is that for every woman than announces their gender, there are probably about 10 that stay "stealth".

I have seen people apparently faking constructive posts by copy&pasting earlier thread comments (with minor edits).

The ignore button works well, but requires you to be logged in. It is also tricky when an actually constructive poster decides to participate in a signature campaign. Most the time, I just hope anything important gets quoted by another poster. I probably have 3-5 people I don't have on ignore despite their signature campaign participation.

All of the amounts in the poll question are equivalent.

Perhaps you are one of the people actually confused by the "bits" term being pushed. There is only one reason the "bits" term is equivalent to 1µBTC: we need convenient a name for that much Bitcoin.

I was surprised by the µBTC hate (my keyboard has a µ symbol). I guess I learned something from this poll.

One term I hate more than 'bits' is "nanocoins", used to refer to the base-unit in BitcoinJS (apparently it pre-dated the wide acceptance of the satoshi term).
1 satoshi= 10 nBTC!

Yes.

Bitcoin shines a light on how silly Know-your-customer laws are. Banks face large fines for failing to report certain transactions. Banks sometimes find it easier to just say "no" to businesses (and individuals) using Bitcoin.

This was the important part of my post. (without the tech jargon)

Is offering an incentive considered entrapment or something?

Reporting requirements apply to financial institutions, while "structuring" applies to customers. As I understand it, "Structuring" is the act of making deposits designed to avoid reporting requirements. BTW the "paperwork" claim was mentioned here. It appears I may have miss-read it:
I interpreted that to mean the bank wanted him to file a form explaining where the money came from (since disclosing a FinCEN filing is largely illegal (I am more familiar with the Canadian rules: only illegal* if it is likely to impede an investigation).)

I don't recall going into the specific penalties.

*I am not a lawyer. I found something in one of the laws or regulations that may make it illegal to disclose anyway (something to do with privacy Act exemptions), but did not have time to thoroughly parse it. (Should have noted the section in question )

For any month other than December, the deposits would be less than $10,000/day. AFAIK, the farmer mentioned was only accused of limiting deposits to under $10,000 (to avoid paper-work), not doing anything silly with multiple branches or consecutive bank days.

TD Bank did not even make the short-list when I was looking for a Bitcoin tolerant bank a year ago.

Not sure what to make of it.

Not anymore. They are now an example of newbies getting their post-count up in order to qualify. Apparently that sig has not been updated in a while either.

Edit: based on their post history, English may not be their native language either.

My first post was on this topic.

I believe that Bitcoin is reasonably secure, but your computer is not. If your want to keep a substantial portion of your savings in Bitcoin (risky for a variety of reasons), I advise you to use "cold storage."

"Cold storage" means that the private keys for your wallet are generated, handled and stored in such a way that they remain isolated from Internet-connected machines. Because there is no "password recovery" such keys need to be stored in more than one physical location as well.

A relatively recent development, multi signature transactions (with m of n keys), can help with securely storing keys in multiple locations. They should also be useful for business or institutional use where the key holders have a healthy amount of mutual distrust. Distrust includes the possibility that at least one key-holder has a compromised machine.

Because is am in the process of trying to register a Money Service Business in Canada, specifically designed to avoid reporting requirements, I found this topic concerning enough to look into it a little more.

Apparently, Structuring is not illegal in Canada, and presumably many other countries. (That Wikipedia page mentions "parceling" is illegal in Australia). While browsing the web, I came across this damning quote:
- “Structuring”: who can get away with it, and who can’t

So the US had a statute where ignorance of the law was actually a strong defense, and by decree: declared that ignorance of the law is no longer a defense. In Canada, I get the impression that structuring is not illegal, only suspicious. That is: if a reporting entity suspects structuring, they need only report all of the small transaction as one large one.

Sometimes there are legitimate business reasons for structuring. When I worked retail, I believe the store had a policy of keeping less than $10,000 in cash on hand. The purpose was to deter theft. Each cash register is supposed to have less then $250 (dropped in $100 increments (I hope this information is not too confidential)). During busy times, they would be making several deposits under $10,000 per day.

It can be argued that working and spending less than you earn (most people's paychecks will be less than $10,000) is also structuring. The Statue on structuring does not appear to be limited to cash transactions.

Thank-you for changing the first poll option.

(I am on record hating the "bit" name, but supporting the 100 satoshi value for the XBT symbol)


No second thought: that may not be catchy enough: I had to look that post up.

I feel like you are either confused, or I am being trolled.

I have never heard of "male" Ethernet ports. I believe even thinnet, AUI, and fiber tend to be female ports.

Second, hubs are distinct from switches. You are allow about 5 levels of repeaters and 250m of distance in a single collision domain (at 10Mbps anyway, not sure how 100Mbps hubs changed that).

You should be able to plug the "uplink" port of the hubs/ switches directly into the "lan" ports on the router.

If your connection is at least 100Mbps, I doubt you will have a problem. If you want to isolate the mining traffic from the rest of the network, you may need a machine with two network cards (to act as a router). (A bridge would work as well if the Rasberry Pi is on the same side as the miners (A switch can act as a bridge (your router probably has a built-in 4 port switch))).

Canadain Western Bank now appears to be Bitcoin hostile.

They are currently having a meeting to determine if they should terminate my personal account over potential Bitcoin use. I had declared the use when I opened the account. It came to a head because I tried to open a commercial account for my low-volume Money Service Business (registration pending).

Update (Oct 29, 2014): They closed my account today when I went in and asked for clarification. It appears that they are not yet at a point where they have a (public) policy against Bitcoin in writing. The closure letter was prefaced with: "WITHOUT PREJUDICE". As I understand it, that means it can't be used in court if I try to sue them or something.

I am trying to live up to my new legendary status by keeping a log of my attempts to register as a Money Service Business with FINTRAC.

The goal is to make it easy to follow in my foot-steps. If enough people do it, I expect people dealing in small amounts will be exempt from reporting and registration requirements as is the case in the US. I am passive-aggressive that way.

Today I went to the bank to try to open a commercial account for my new Money Service Business (FINTRAC registration still pending..). I was informed that I need a registration certificate from the Alberta government. Apparently the simple Trade Name registration does not count. I suspect FINRAC will want proper Business registration as well, so I should register (thinking sole proprietorship).

I was also informed that Canadian Western Bank now refuses to open Bitcoin-related Accounts over AML concerns. I was informed by the branch compliance officer that "Bitcoin is not traceable". I was also informed that she did not want to debate the issue when I informed her that: in fact, Bitcoin was very traceable. She seemed concerned that Bitcoin transactions don't have to be tied to any specific entity.

So, I may be closing my personal account at CWB that I opened solely so that I can make use of Bitcoin exchanges without losing my account at another Bitcoin hostile bank.

Update (October 29, 2014): I went to a local registry and asked about registering a sole proprietorship. Apparently that, and a partnership, are the same as registering a Trade Name after all. My bank also closed my account when I asked why the trade name registration paper was not enough evidence. The lady I talked to clarified that it was in fact enough to prove the existence of the business (but that they don't want to deal with Bitcoin related businesses).