If the article is accurate it seems like Great Britain may actually try to foster bit coin business. This would be great. I suspect though that there is also a back door idea to regulate it heavily as well.

No, it's more like saying:

Candidate 1: 18 votes
Candidate 2: 16 votes
Candidate 3: 17 votes

Normal people will say nobody wins, due to no majority.  But you twist it to say candidate 1 should win because of more votes than either of the other 2 candidates.

Meanwhile, if you held the same poll with ONLY Candidate 1 and ONE of the other two candidates, you might find that most of the people who originally voted for the eliminated candidate would not vote for candidate 1, and instead would place their vote for the remaining candidate.  In that case, the MAJORITY don't want candidate 1.

This is one of many reasons why this poll is not useful.

There were a total of 68 voters.  38 of them (55.8%) chose NOT to vote for "bits" as a replacement word for MicroBitcoin.  Clearly, the majority do not accept that new usage that the vocal minority are trying to ram through.

There are 33 votes for any option other than "Bits" (such as Microbitcoin, Microbit, Mike, or Micro).

"so as long as businesses run ethically and control FIAT responsibly......."

Yeah, right.

Leave Bitcoin alone anyway.

Exactly. Eventually, the radical transparency and funds-control offered by the blockchain and crypto will make much of what regulators do in the legacy financial system redundant. Proof-of-reserves, multi-sig, blockchain audits, etc, will allow consumers far more immediately verifiable information about the entities with which they choose to transact, plus more secure control of funds. Providing that sort of transparency and info to consumers was one of the main drivers for the existing regulatory body.

yup, and he will be jailed for his crimes. i know where he lives and what he does.

Asking for payment in BTC is fine and dandy, but it doesn’t push the issue of having the company accept payment for goods in BTC. The way I see it, the best way to enact that is by enabling their transactional systems to interact with the Bitcoin protocol. If we really want change, they need to have an automated system that allows this type of transactional sequence (and in order to truly push it, it needs some sort of micropayment protection). I feel that a company that develops this type of infrastructure can allow this to happen. And the best way of doing that is by creating a Point of Sale machine that has Bitcoin integrated.

his attacks funded by theymos and the forum!

An exohash would be 1,000 petahash.  We're only at 96 petahash, so a ways away from that.  I wouldn't be surprised to see an exohash by the end of the year though.

Britain will probably not lead in financial innovation as only london has a huge presence and no other country in the uk has a lot of banking involvement.

Hi there,

I did a quick search in the forum and I wasn't able to find anything quite recent about this.

Do you guys have any suggestions/advises for quite a big and really established business (based in London) that starts accepting Bitcoin payments ?
What's the best way to communicate it to the community ? And make sure that all the biggest bitcoin news related sites will bring it up ?

Thanks in advance and sorry if the question has been asked already

Bitcoin is a fascinating and ingenious technology, but most promoters are mindful of neither the monetary nor the tax issues. For all practical purposes IRS regulations issued in March preclude bitcoins from being used as an alternative currency.

The IRS treats bitcoins as property. The result is that bitcoin transactions trigger a taxable event. Buyers incur a tax liability for the difference in dollars between what they paid for a bitcoin when they acquired it and the dollar value attributed to the bitcoin when they spend it. Sellers of course are subject to a tax based on the dollar value of the bitcoins they receive for a good or service.

To comply with these tax regulations, buyers and sellers must log all bitcoin transactions and report them at tax time. For transactions that require future payment, buyers and sellers undertake an exchange-rate risk involving the dollar value of bitcoins. This will greatly reduce, or perhaps eliminate entirely, using bitcoins for settling future payments, which is the principal use of money.

Some bitcoin zealots reject the effect of triggering taxable events on the theory that bitcoin transactions are anonymous. That is arguable. What is not arguable is that one who doesn’t report a taxable bitcoin gain is guilty of tax fraud, which is a felony.

In other words, the future of bitcoins depends on users willing to log all transactions, report them at tax time, and pay a tax or to engage in tax fraud. As soon as one of them ends up in prison, that will be the end of it.

Why bitcoins to begin with? We already have a virtual currency, the dollar, which has the purported benefit of being the world’s “reserve currency.”

Some people see a problem because dollars can be created at the whim of the Federal Reserve, and as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan once put it, “without limit.” This depreciates the purchasing power of dollars saved or promised for future payment, such as pensions. At least the quantity of bitcoins is supposedly limited by the mathematical algorithm that creates them. As an interesting aside, the bitcoin folks call the creation process “mining,” an allusion to real money.

Bitcoin supporters understand that dollars are no longer money in the classical sense, i.e., something that has a unit of dimension defined in the physical world, as Sir Isaac Newton put it circa 1699 when he was England’s Warden of the Mint. With neither debate nor anyone voting for it, the dollar has been transmogrified into an ethereal concept of money without any tie to the physical world, created out of nothing, and forced into circulation with legal tender laws.

As Australian comedian Michael Connell so brilliantly put it, what we used to call money has been transformed into “the idea of money.” Mr. Connell’s metaphor is that it’s like playing musical chairs, but instead of chairs there is the “idea of chairs.” It is absurd.

This brings to mind a related issue: U.S. Gold and Silver Eagles, which are legal tender for their face amounts under Title 31 of the United States Code. Yet as with bitcoins, the IRS arbitrarily treats these coins not as currency but as property, thereby preventing their use as money.

Consider: If you pay your taxes with a $50 Gold Eagle, you get credit for $50. No mystery there. However, if you spend a $50 Gold Eagle (or a $1 Silver Eagle), you trigger a taxable event on the difference between what you paid for the Gold Eagle and the market value of the gold in the coin when you spend it. Two recent cases challenging the IRS on this matter went up to the Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear the cases.

It is thanks to the IRS that no one uses so-called gold clauses, which would give creditors the right to demand Gold Eagles as payment in contracts. In other words, IRS policy that has no statutory authorization has rendered inoperative gold clause legislation passed by Congress in 1977.

Bitcoins have neither the advantage of being legal tender nor laws enabling their use. Folks who are accumulating bitcoins should take note.

bitcoin doesn't need to be backed by gold. Bitcoin is backed by the technology math

This is just like using credit cards filled with bitcoin, a centralised agency will have to take care of the payments, defeating the purpose of bitcoin in the first place lol.