So just before all this excitement started i sent a request to stamp support to ask about which bank account to use as I have GBP and EUR

"You can deposit funds from or withdraw to any bank account held in your name.
Which account your chose to deposit from is completely up to you and we can not offer any advice on the subject.
Should you require any additional assistance, please feel free to contact us."

so you can't offer any advice but i should feel see to contact you to seek it? erm   well ok i know what he was getting at, but not very good answer...

what i was really wanting to know was it there any difference in speed and cost between a GBP or EUR based account with BitStamp.

Does anybody have any experience?

BTC quickly losing popularity.

What would that mean?  

If an exchange's outstanding obligations (the sum of its client's account balances, plus pending bills etc.) are more than its assets (furniture, cash in bank, and coins in wallet), why would anyone want to buy it?

http://www.reddit.com/r/farright/comments/1wwn77/pulling_together_some_posts_from_the_pol_thread/

I work as a stock broker for Piper Jaffray located in Los Angeles. What happened yesterday left me absolutely stunned in disbelief.
I manage the portfolios for more than half of our richest clients and my boss called me into his office and told me to cash them all out immediately. My obvious thought was that there was going to be a crash but it was strange that he was so adamant about cashing them out. He clearly knew something so I asked him what was up. He spilled the beans and said look, we are going into a currency crisis. Major banks are going to default in the next 3 weeks. The stock markets are going to go in a violent downward trend not only here but all around the world. The currencies of the world are going to move in every direction and there's no predicting which ones will still be standing after this is all over. It will spill into the bond markets here and it will be interesting to see what the fed will do. He warned whatever the fed did it was not going to help and not solve any problem. When I asked who told him this. My boss said he talked to a buddy of his who happens to be an executive in JP Morgan. I asked what triggers it and he said the Chinese trust default is going to cause a domino effect which will spill into every market and every currency in the world. He also said this coming week from the 27th to the 31st will have volatile trading and that this collapse is imminent within the next 3 weeks.
I am dumping all my stocks and bonds but the problem is holding dollars is not a safe haven as well. I'm in the process of putting my dollars in precious metals, property, Swiss francs, Vietnamese Dong, Nigerian Naira, Russian Ruble, and Mexican Pesos. Why not Yuan? It's not safe at all, they are dependent on the consumerism of other nations. Why buy currency of third world countries? They don't have much industry to be affected. They have more of an agricultural and energy based economy.
If anyone has questions please ask, especially if it is advice on what to do with your assets.

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If this is true (which is already happening stocks are crashing atm and 4 banksters and counting are dying (suicide or murder?) all within a week) then this might be a volatile month for bitcoin as well, definitely feb-april before summer imo

I could be mistaken, but didn't the UK housing market correct massively in 2008 ?

Not true. You need to pay tax at the time the coins are mined.

The IRS hasn't said anything definite but that is most likely the way that it will be treated.

Breaking news today all over tv is the stock market bubble bursting:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/03/investing/stocks-markets/index.html

On top of that i personally think we will see housing crashes in some markets that have never corrected (e.g Australia and many Asian markets)

With investment options running out for investors, i strongly believe we will see an influx of loaded investors, traders and funds into Bitcoin. Not immediately though, the process will take sometime as the "legal" air is still not clear.

European banks have $3 trillion of exposure to emerging markets

(Reuters) - European banks have loaned in excess of $3 trillion (1.83 trillion pounds) to emerging markets, more than four times U.S. lenders and putting them at greater risk if financial market turmoil in countries such as Turkey, Brazil, India and South Africa intensifies.

The risk is most acute for six European banks - BBVA, Erste Bank, HSBC, Santander, Standard Chartered, and UniCredit - according to analysts.

But the exposure could be a headache for the industry as a whole, just as it faces a rigorous health-check by the European Central Bank, aiming to expose weak points and restore investor confidence in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

"We think EM (emerging markets) shocks are a real concern for 2014," said Matt Spick, analyst at Deutsche Bank. "When currency (volatility) combines with revenue slowdowns and rising bad debts, we see compounding threats to the exposed banks."

The Deutsche Bank analysts said the six most exposed European banks - which they did not name - had more than $1.7 trillion of exposure to developing markets.

In recent weeks, emerging market currencies have come under fire as China's growth slows and the U.S. Federal Reserve winds down its stimulus programme, with investors selling developing market assets in anticipation of higher U.S. interest rates.

In a bid to protect currencies, interest rates have been hiked in Turkey and elsewhere, but investors remain nervy, especially around the so-called "Fragile Five" economies of Turkey, Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa.

An emerging markets crisis could hit banks in a variety of ways - a collapse in local currency can hurt reported earnings or capital held in the country; loan losses can jump as interest rates rise; or income from capital markets activity or private banking can fall.

European banks' exposure varies from country to country. BBVA (BBVA.MC) and UniCredit (CRDI.MI) have big exposure to Turkey, Santander (SAN.MC) is most exposed to Brazil, while Standard Chartered (STAN.L) and HSBC (HSBA.L) would be hurt by problems in India and Indonesia. Barclays (BARC.L), meantime, would be most exposed to South African problems, analysts said.

However, they said the impact of apparently individual problems, such as inflation in Venezuela or lower growth in India, could quickly spread into wider concern among investors, and had already contributed to a 7 percent drop by Europe's bank index .SX7P in the last two weeks.

The biggest risk is that a jump in interest rates sparks defaults on loans, analysts added. Often a credit shock follows or replaces a currency shock, as happened in Argentina in 1999-2002.

EXPOSURE

Europe's banks have cut their overseas loans since the financial crisis and substantially increased the amount of capital they hold, meaning they have a better cushion to absorb losses than in the past.

But they still have about 12 percent of their assets in emerging markets, and about a quarter of their earnings come from the region as often the businesses there are "unusually profitable", Deutsche Bank's Spick said.

European banks had $3.4 trillion of loans to developing countries at the end of September, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements.

British banks had a $518 billion exposure to the Asia-Pacific region, Spanish banks had $475 billion of loans to Latin America, and banks in France and Italy each had $200 billion of exposure to developing economies in Europe.

Among the most exposed banks, Standard Chartered makes more than 90 percent of its earnings from Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and warned in December that its 10-year record of earnings growth would likely end.

BBVA had 41 billion euros ($55 billion) of exposure to Mexico - which last year made up 80 percent of group profits - and 52 billion euros of loans to South America.

Santander had 132 billion euros of loans to Latin America at the end of last year, half of which were in Brazil. Brazil contributed 23 percent of group earnings last year, and the rest of Latin American contributed another 24 percent.

Analysts said emerging market turmoil could also have a broader, indirect impact on revenues in investment banking and wealth management.

"A significant increase in volatility in EM bonds and FX may result in volumes drying up and hence a potential for a material slowdown in EM fixed income revenues," said JPMorgan analyst Kian Abouhossein.

He estimated the investment banks of HSBC and Standard Chartered each generated $2.1-2.2 billion from emerging markets, while Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) and Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE) made about $1.1 billion each.

Yes.

Solid source lol

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wwtp8/new_bad_news_from_russia_and_btcecom_perhaps/

Oh shit. End of BTCe confirmed. Goodbye alt pumps.

So say Kraken exchange, if you exchange your btc for $ on Kraken, you are done and you don't need to submit any tax or anything?

Thanks, I suppose you mean this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/dogecoin-crashed-this-weekend-2013-12

So its price crashed because its popularity soared. That may be good news for Bitcoin indeed.

Does it really matter? Overstock just sends Bitcoins to Coinbase and converts them to dollars at the price Coinbase posts for that 10 minute period, then ships merchandise. You can do that yourself; send Bitcoins to Coinbase, get dollars, and buy anywhere.

Someone could create a service which let you spend Bitcoins on other sites by front-ending their checkout pages and doing the conversion for you. The problem is that, given the sleazyness of the Bitcoin world, such a site would probably steal the Bitcoins, the account information, or the merchandise.

what does "bitcoin days destroyed" mean exactly???