Here in the Philippines, the government doesn't tax capital gains from bitcoins. Already cashed out almost $2500 worth of bitcoins to php without anything hindering me from doing so. Until bitcoin sees widespread adoption, sooner or later the government of the Philippines and other counties will soon enforce strict rules regarding the taxation of bitcoin.

Accept it or not, cryptocurrency exchanges are still businesses tied with certain regulations because first and foremost, cryptocurrencies do have value, so that means it could be used as a medium of illegal activities. Also, you can do money laundering without even holding fiat in physical form; online bank account transfers could do that for you, but it will soon be converted to fiat because it is your goal in the first place. Same with cryptocurrencies. You cannot tell the government that "This is strictly a cryptocurency-only exchange." because you will need to convert to fiat for maintenance costs and what not. The main point is, just because it is crypto-only doesn't mean it should not be regulated and watched by the government. Business is business. Even if your business only involves salt and never touched any fiat, you will still be subjected to regulations because you are bound to abide by the regulations imposed by the government mainly because you are under their authority and jurisdiction.

No one can do something about it after all. Banks are pigs, and sometimes they collaborate with the government to accomplish their heinous acts. Such a good collaboration, that's why not everyone nowadays trust those two institutions.

Eh, happens every time some greedy investors and group of financial institutions wants to make some money. Also, wrong board. Try moving it to Politics and Society or Economics where it would be more fitting to be discussed.

You said it, it should be perfectly legal to operate a crypto exchange, and if it is legal, then you are subject to submit to the regulations because you are making money out of it, just in the form of cryptocurrencies. A business should submit to these legal rules to continue operating. Also, aren't you aware that bitcoin can be a medium for money laundering because it has value? Money laundering isn't exclusive to fiat only.

Well it is less volatile than most fiat currencies nowadays, but the volatility remains, though. Also, there are traders who try and play the markets so we can assume that they are adding into the volatility of the price. Supply and demand doesn't affect btc as much as other commodities are affected, that is one thing I observed in bitcoin's economy.

Sadly, almost every country in the world implements the KYC regulation in order to minimize thefts and illegal activities. An exchange should submit to these regulations in order to continue business.

Thanks for clearing that up. I just thought that doing some withdraws every now and then without an obvious pattern could actually help someone withdraw without complying to verification process. The case is, only Poloniex sees the inside activity in the exchange and not the FinCEN. If FinCEN could actually see something beyond their (Poloniex) system, then it would be very difficult to move out funds and deposit some for trading. I don't think Poloniex would raise an alert to FinCEN if ever someone did some little withdraws without an obvious pattern just to move out funds without submitting to the verification process. Idk, but if Poloniex is really compliant to the KYC/AML regulations, then they will set the bell ringing in case something that I have stated actually happened.

Why the rush? Also, no one is stopping anyone to create a fork of their own. The only problem that someone will encounter in case they did a hard fork is gaining trust and consensus from the network and from the community. You can freely create a fork if you want to, no one and nothing hinders you from doing it. Also, why would you integrate some altcoins concept if you consider them as a cancer in the first place? That seems to be ironic.

I'm the only one in our place that knows something about bitcoin. If I have a friend that is invested heavily on bitcoin but doesn't really know how it works, I'd be glad to lend him/her my time to educate him about this internet money. In your case, why not try to help your friend in learning things deeper than the spending and buying? Your friend holds a lot, so I think it is worth educating him/her on different areas and matters in bitcoin.

Eh, even if all the online retailer in the internet started accepting bitcoin, how about the buying side? If consumers won't start buying things online with their bitcoins, you can't expect anything to happen massively. Surely the economy of bitcoin will expand because of the retailers, but it isn't enough without the buying support from the consumers. In 5 to 10 years, it is basically all or nothing for bitcoin.

I'll try to do that. They would definitely find a way to crack the password to get the money in there. ^_^ Also, it is a good way for them to know bitcoins because they will surely research on that matter.

Doing this is great, but the reality is that most of pizza stores in different countries of the world aren't ready for accepting bitcoins yet, like the pizza stores in my country. Btw, if someone ordered a pizza on the 22nd of May, kindly screenshot your orders so that we could look back on this thread after 4 years.

I always do regular backups once every 10 transactions. Maybe I'm a paranoid? Well it's better to be safe than sorry after all. Also, having multiple copies of your wallet.dat and keeping them on hardware that isn't connected to the internet will probably help you in case you toast your HDD or your storage where you use your bitcoin wallet. Lastly, paper wallets are great for keeping your balance and your wallet as a whole. Just store it safely without anyone knowing where you'd placed them.

-edit-
corrected spelling errors.

Sadly I can't participate in this historical event. There are no online services nor stores in our country that accept bitcoins for payment. For those who can participate, have fun eating a slice of history!

Good thing the quality isn't potato at all, and that is already an advantage and a plus to your customers. However, it would be nice if the average price per call is indicated so that users won't be shocked to find that they're bill is more expensive than a pay phone.

The one who discovered a certain vulnerability cannot be deemed as a thief at all; the one who used the vulnerability and exploited it for his own gain is. Also, someone who was the keeper of the stolen goods cannot be deemed the most guilty of them if he doesn't know where the goods come from in the first place. If everyone on the situation knows what they are doing, and if their intentions are inclined to "steal" then all of them could be considered as thieves.

Tried putting in some international numbers and it asked me for $0.20 for 5 minutes. Very reasonable pricing, I must say. Better than what telcos companies here in our country offer. Btw, in case you guys didn't know, you can actually make an international call in Facebook with free of charge. But I must say that there is an immense delay between you and the one you called. If the average rates could be posted soon enough, this service will take off and gain traction. For those who actually called someone using this service, is the quality of the call potato or decent?

I once told my Economics teacher about bitcoin and she ended up asking me whether it is a scam or not. I told her about the coin's price volatility, the ATH that happened on November 2013, and the bad stuff about it among others. She couldn't comprehend to the technical stuff about bitcoins so I went on explaining it the noob way. Different stuffs, concepts, pros and cons about bitcoins and in the end, she'll end up asking if it's a scam or not. Maybe people aren't ready yet on accepting new things and concepts that are against the norms of this society.

The only problem I have in installing Bitcoin Core in my machine is the long download time of the block chain. Because of slow internet, it will take me weeks to complete the download. Tried the torrent, even that will take me a week or so of synchronization.