you only pay taxes when converting it back to FIAT!!!! and that only if you have made profit above your tax free allowance. atleast read a book once in a while, or even contact the IRS instead of believing the chinese whispers of media sourced waffle

why are so many people trying to create fud to make bitcoin seem impractical and costly. it must be those bankers and gold hoarders at it again..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ZzA7ADpTE

it seems they are advertising it in a way that is teaching people what it is and how to use it.

so thats another country that will be obtaining bitcoin in large volumes

Edit:
to add to this India is going bitcoin too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM10sKEJRho

yifu runs avalon, the only asic manufacturer that did stick to most of its promises.. now if coinvalidation was being run by josh zerlan then id agree with your statement.

to me coinvalidation is not a threat, they just want to ensure exchanges meet all the FIAT rules when dealing with the fiat side of business. this would help to ensure banks dont freeze accounts and also that all the exchanges ran by mysterious basement dwelling teenagers start to disappear.

what i do find more worrying are the protocol changes that mike hearn and luke_jr wish to implement which will change how transactions are processed.

coinvalidation does not touch the protocol, it just advises businesses. learn to research.

oh and from what i believe yifu is a 'client' of coinvalidation, getting business advice from them. he isnt a partner.. ( as far as i can tell )

you are over exaggerating. you are either sniffing glue or hearing things from chinese whispers instead of reading the facts from the source. please research harder and stop creating fud.

im not worried about block chain sizes.

1.5 years ago the block chain was 8GB. now its 11.. not sure where the OP is getting 10 fold per year from but he is simply wrong in every way imaginable.

at the moment an average of under half of each block is full. in most cases its only 10-20%. if you do your maths of 1mb block per 10 minutes

(6 per hour, 144 per day, 52,500 per year) that is the maximum growth per year if EVERY block was filled right to the top.

52GB per year means in 10 years thats half a terrabyte. wow that only $90 for hard drive at todays prices or even cheaper in a couple years.

so i see atleast 10 years time the maximum storage usage of the block chain is half a terrabyte.

hang on thats 10 years away, i remember just 10 year ago complaining that a 2GB game was extreme.. now look at the new COD:ghosts 30GB.. and no one complains.

this is more evidence that in 10 years hard drives of multiple terrabytes will be cheap, that internet speeds will be alot faster today and no one will complain..

the people that worry about the future are the same people that worry about alien invasions, or that miners in the year 2140 wil revolt and cease mining as there is no more block reward. my reply to them is. stop day dreaming about a future thats too far away to be a problem and probably wont affect you anyways

best way to explain bitcoins pseudo-anonymity is this.

show a bank note to someone. and ask them do they know who gave you that bank note.

they will say no.

now get a christmas card, write, "from Franky1" (or your name) and put the bank note in the card and them give them the christmas card.

then ask them do they know who gave them the bank note.

then say, bitcoins are only as anonymous as you are. if someone knows you and you give them money, its not anonymous. if you use tools such as tor, and never reveal that you own the address, by never putting it into the footer of your forum posts, begging for donations. then its alot harder to find out who the funds came from.

glue sniffers please put delusions aside. atleast read the proper information and stop forming dreamed up theories based on conversations from others in a chinese whisper network of ill informed people.

coin validation are purely business advisors. they are there to help BUSINESSES that deal with fiat (EG exchanges) to ensure they comply with regulations.

these businesses found to fully comply will have their business accredited by them and their bitcoin addresses listed as trusted addresses doing legitimate business.

that way other exchanges can trust them more to possibly allow deposits from these trusted businesses to be accepted with a lower confirm requirement.

EG.
imagine bitstamp got coinvalidation accredited also note another exchange EG: BTC-E which requires 3 confirms before balance shows up.

 imagine it if BTC-E had a system that if funds came from an accredited exchange like bitstamp. they would accept the funds with no confirm requirements.

imagine starbucks accepting payments from bitstamp without confirms.

Coinvalidation is not making a database of every users bitcoin address. only those addresses belonging to businesses.

Statistics and a poll on a web forum are even more basically redundant

not everyone will be honest. a few people will say they lost thousands to get sympathy votes to then later beg for free coins
not everyone will be honest. a few will say they only lost a days worth of trade when infact they lost the lot. but dont want to admit to it.
not everyone will want to answer.

so making a poll is useless.. all it will do is identify people that do not do any 'due diligence' or risk checking. which future scammers can use as their list of targets for future scams

buying up a private island is cheap.

constructing buildings, residences, utilities, power generation.. that is the lengthy and costly part

this is not new news. this seems to be standard occurance. i think its time everyone rules out paypal completely as a means of selling coins.

its scam haven, its happened so many times im surprised people still use paypal to get their fiat. seriously guys in a day an age of localbitcoins why would you even do a paypal trade. just search the scam accusation boards. its rampant with people abusing paypal. look at the reason payal even stopped dealing with certain countries.

it appears to be a trial in the single store address:   2922 Main Street, Vancouver, BC V5T
and the corporate HQ are watching that stores sales figures and staff ability to process without delaying customers, to choose if it will become standard across its other canadian stores to accept bitcoin

i love how people exadjurate confirm times required to process a transaction

imagine bitcoin replaced the common banking system (we know it wont, but it can certainly work alongside)

people can store their funds in safety deposit boxes (personal wallet clients)

for ease of use they would put their funds into bank accounts/card issuer EG a certain amount of satoshi's into a third party escrow services/offchain transaction service that's pre-confirmed at deposit, allowing for instant transactions.

then the third party service/bank can move funds across the world instantly to compensate the retailer/recipient and they can be sure its confirmed at the very worse 10 minutes.

1. although local bitcoins.com gives you the code within seconds of the system seeing the funds put into escrow, it is still advisable to atleast get 1 confirmation to assure that the escrowed funds are not a double spend.

2. the seller can either put in a fixed amount or a maths equation that auto adjusts dependant on an exchanges price movements plus a premium ontp for the seller to profit.
sometimes the most expensive guys, are the guys that are always online, reliable and they don't con you. if you see a price below the exchanges average value and not offering an escrow service. stay well clear

this is why its best to not use a hosting providor that specialises in bitcoins. as they are more then likely to know how important the wallet.dat file is, and thus be tempted to access it.

it is best to use professional hosting that does not advertise itself as bitcoin orientated, or best get a server and good internet upstream speeds and run your own webhosting. do not rely on third parties that you dont personally know, to look after your wealth. especially if they have the keys to your wealth.

faucets are suppose to, well originally meant for noobs to get their hands on their first bitcents, so that they can atleast make a transaction and learn how to use the clients/exchanges. its not meant as a career earning path to raid faucets dry. no one minds you taking the odd payout now and again, just dont abuse it.

imagine it like your a fat guy treating a foodbank for the poor as your daily all-you-can-eat buffet.

dont abuse someone elses donations, at the costs of newcomers in more need then yourself.

analysts at the bank of america still dont understand bitcoin enough to value it. they just looked up the price pre-black friday and seen it hit $1300 and thats what they decided.. no skill required

now as for the topic question

"Bitcoin price 1 year from now" the answer is........................................ More than now.

do i win a prize?

so you would be furius at bitcoin, yet acceptable that her employer can get away with only paying her $2.50!
tell her to get a different job.

as for bitcoin. when she was given the tip it was worth X, by the time she got home it was worth X+, and then by locating someone on localbitcoins to cash out the next day at a price preferable to her its worth X++

name me a fiat that can increase in price just by holding it on your phone for a few hours.

and as for FIAT tips if i gave someone $5 that waitress would not take home $5, she would end up having her manager request her to share it between the other staff and the manager. giving her maybe $1, maybe less depending on how many other employees there were.

so again if your GF is a waitress, dont argue that she received bitcoins as a tip. argue that she is in a dead-end job that does not offer fair value for the time she gives to that business.

there are many reasons paypal sucks

there are many reasons bitcoins is better.

but i can only think of one reason to use paypal, which is Ebay's vast product range. and that is it.

once ebay drops paypal and uses a crypto currency as its backbone system for value storage, thus removing the requirement of servers, databases etc(saving ebay money). paypal will be useless

bitcoin allows you to transfer value to anyone without restriction
bitcoin allows you to own and possess value

banks and fiat transfer systems block transfers of their IOU's, add alot of fee's to reduce IOU's value and give delays of upto 3-5 days.

this all proves that bitcoin is a better system then the banking system

once bitcoin goes mainstream to purchase groceries and utitities we can be free of the banking system

people say that cigarettes are not a currency.

but if you avoid paying your income tax when you cash out back to FIAT and land yourself in prison.

cigarettes are definitely a currency.

anything can be a currency. the rich use artwork to swap funds between eachother. street racers use their cars as currency to bet on races, government and criminals use weapons and pharmaceuticals to swap between countries. women use their bodies as currency, and kids use emotional blackmail to get what they want for christmas from their parents.

there are many things that have duel purposes

i guess Ernst & Young are buying bitcoins and do not want competition, which causes excessive price rises. hense the only reason i can think of for them to make such a statement