you spoke too soon
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=432678.0

i smell fish

signs:
1. new member with no background
2. BIG POINT: mentions paypal as payment method
3. pretends he spends 3k on a website, yet the website is a template (seen many similar templates before, all free)
4. individual anonymity yes, but business/services hell no http://whois.domaintools.com/bitcoinbas.com

whomever sells bitcoins for paypal is just looking for trouble.

three key things that made bitcoin acceptance work in my area:

1. talk about it like a foreign currency not a 'product'. when they mention about it being hard to buy, or never at the true exchange rate, mention neither is foreign currency. you cant simply buy foreign currency at a 7-11, and the price you pay is always different then the main forex rates. bureau de change always have premiums.. so do bitcoin exchanges. the only difference (begin to mention point 2)

2. if the person is interested they will ask how to get them, and as such get to know local people already in your area that have bitcoin. a few of them like to sell their bitcoin now and again, and as such mention to whomever your explaining bitcoin to that they can buy bitcoin off of this person. or even through zipzap, localbitcoins. but always offer them a local solution. dont just avoid the question or it would be like a sales man with the best pitch in the world, but no stock/products to sell.. utterly pointless basically.

3. dont talk about bitcoin as a replacement of a credit/debit card, tell them its the FUTURE replacement of those things and that bitcoin is still young, and growing. the main point is that getting in early means that their investments will grow, or if they are a merchant, their customer base and profits will grow. bitcoin has well over 100 years of life, so its not disappearing soon,

some people throw large amounts into an exchange and the withdraw small amounts to numberous addresses. and due to the exchanges method of storing coins whilst in the exchange, the deposits never really go to the same person that withdraws. thus most exchanges are also known for being mixers.

some more paranoid users deposit funds into an exchange, swap them for litecoins. withdraw the litecoins and deposit them at another exchange to turn them back into bitcoins again. thus making the funds double mixed and no chance of being the same taint as the theft.

this is a known process that has been around ever since there have been more then 1 exchange that accepts alt coins. so yes laundering funds can be anonymous

imagine it this way if i stole btc and put it into an exchange. the funds i withdraw will not be the same as i deposited. and some one else will eventually be given the tainted coins. so the police will knock on their door.

thus the police/government wont use the blockchain to identify someone. they will use IP searches and username searches to find out information such as email addresses, forum messages which may reveal identifying information. just like how DPR got caught

proof of passport is anonymous to individuals as the serial numbers are not names/addresses and individuals do not have access to the government databases. but governments can use their database to identify people.

this is also going to make bitcoin harder to use for individuals. imagine it this way. would you sign up to pay pal if they asked you to not just make a username and password, but to also input your passport numbers.

i know my parents and a few other relatives don't have passports. so even if they wanted to sign up to a payment gateway, they cant because it asks for info they do not have.

and also, who verifies that the passport is valid.... this would involve a government agency controlling user accounts.. by them veryifying passports to allow or disallow people from having bitcoin accounts.

mike hearn and luke jr are not good people when it comes to anonymity and ease of use for the individual.

prices have been static for a month now (below$1000) so miners are not making as much profits with the last few weeks jumps , thus the cost to mine vs profit has made it not worth adding more miners. ..... or more simply put:


we should start to see a price rise where miners start hoarding coins, because its not in their benefit to mine at a loss. thus causing a rise in demand/price rise. ..... or more simply put:

the comedy of the radio recording, doing a small poll of the locals of the good old countryside town, where people still want face to face transactions and don't know about online things.

made me laugh

oh well its only a small radio station, its not like its a radio station covering a modern city full of entrepreneurs such as london.

but on a note of bitcoin UK news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-25852802
(cumbrian university to accept bitcoin)

buying any currency is never at the forex rate.

look at forex prices and then try buying euro or yen at that exact rate at your local bureau de change.

look at gold prices and then try buying gold at that exact rate at your local pawn shop

the whole idea of bitcoin is for people to get paid bitcoin as their wage and never have to touch fiat. then they wont see the so called 5% charges

nah, not really. everyone knows that a large percentage of alt coins are just copies of the bitcoin code with alterations. there are not many coins that code is 100% made from scratch. and as such this alone keeps bitcoin on top.

the only difference people would use another coin over bitcoin is if bitcoins features did not meet the publics preferences. basically speaking if LUKE JR decides to mess with bitcoin more then he has and do things that are not good for the community, then people will begin moving to a different coin.

will people stop asking for tax advise on forums and just go talk to an accountant.

each country is different but if you want a general rule.

imagine you buy a car, a painting, a lump of gold.. 6 month later you found out its more valuable. do you claim it as income.... HELLL NO. you only claimit as income when you sell it into FIAT.

taxmen only care about fiat. so if your fiat has not increased they cant tax you for it. so wait until you sell bitcoins before declaring tax.

and if this has not helped clarify things, go talk to a accountant

you answered your own question


the rest of your post is about buying and selling bitcoin. this is nothing to do with sending bitcoin..

guys chill out, the UK and other european taxmen are also thinking the same thing. and the thing is, they are right.
emphasis on thinking. as its not been made official in most euro countries.. yet

but here is why they are right:

bitcoin is not a commodity, a share or a stock. its features resemble an asset. and as such the tax machines are treating it as such.
bitcoin in most countries descriptions of tax category, puts bitcoin in the 'asset' category.


now the bit in the article about currencies having to be linked to banks etc.. that is talking about FIAT currencies (legal tender) not about 'common currencies' which can be anything

now to clarify further. a currency can be absolutely anything.
people can treat gold as a currency - yet the tax man treat it as a commodity
people can trade business ownership as a currency - yet the tax man treats that as shares
people can trade business produce as a currency - yet the tax man treasts that as stock
people can trade vodka, cigarettes, labour as a currency - yet the tax man has other categories for these.

what im trying to say is whatever the taxman describes it has has no relevance to whether its a currency or not.

now lets get more detailed on tax:
when trading bitcoin for any product, (with barter considered) most countries beleive the trades occur on a 1:1 ratio meaning what you receive is on near equal value to the bitcoin value, thus no profit or loss has occured.

again in most countries the only time tax is applicable is on selling the bitcoin for FIAT, in which case in majority of countries income tax is applicable.

this is good for bitcoin, atleast talk to a accountant or tax expert before whining on the forum about bitcoin being considered an asset (same classification as art)

if you cant trust your local hardware store to sell you a safe. or you cant trust a bank safety deposit service. then why would anyone trust a third party on the other side of the world, that they met through a forum??

bitcoin is about not requiring third party protection/control/storage.

not sure who died and made the OP king...

but ill use my funds and addresses in any damned way i please..... thank you very much. as such, if i was to have a donation address id prefer to use one single address everyone knows and can be verified to belong to me.

only the illegal activities community would consider keeping their funds on the move, but i see no benefit in such a practice for my personal bitcoins. the only reason i can see anyone doing this is to create more transactions to feed the greedy mining pool owners with extra transaction fee's. as such it has already been noted that luke JR has already put blocks into his mining pool code that ignores a majority of addresses if they are old/reused. only allowing a small amount through per block.

this is ludicrus. bitcoin is suppose to be used to give people freedoms. not demand they transfer funds in certain ways. i do not have anything against moving funds to new addresses, but trying to force people to do it as a rule... no way

amazon are making a amazon coin. this is not a blockchain/crypto coin. it is more like microsoft points/facebook credits/itunes credit. as such these coins do not magically appear, people have to purchase them. and amazon would at first open it upto credit/debitcards and then using bitcoin to purchase their amazon balance. much the same way that facebook has its own 'credits' to use within facebook, but they too are going to allow bitcoins to be used to purchase facebook credits in the near future.

its only time until bitcoin becomes as popular as credit cards, when it comes to online purchases

the gold market still lives on, hundreds of years after people gave up walking with pickaxes to get their gold. what the done instead was to work in retail or other jobs to receive gold as payment. same with bitcoin. find a job that pays in bitcoin or get current employer to pay you in bitcoin or simply buy bitcoin, much like you would buy gold at a pawn shop or goldsmith for investment.

why oh why do people think mining is the only way to get bitcoin... oh wait, the official bitcoin video is out of date again

an asset sounds better as its better fitting of a description, but also officiates bitcoin into a category that government and taxmen can use, to then allow transactions and holdings to happen without bans.

Paeivi Heikkinen needs to learn economics.

bitcoins features and usage resembles an asset, in no way is bitcoin anywhere near a commodity.

and also this is just Paeivi Heikkinen unofficial opinion based on a telephone call. not the official stance of Finland. so please do not meander/chinese whisper this guys unofficial opinion into something the media will pick up as european fact.

i personally am into donating and have given away alot of btc to truly remarkable causes. but i do like to see upfront how they use the funds, the results the funds bring and how trusting the fundraiser is.

the best way to gain trust. is to put YOUR money where your mouth is. EG if you want to video document donations, then put your money into donating to a cause first, video it and show the power that your own money can make, to change someones life. this is how seans outpost done it, he was using his own money to buy the food supplies first of all and it was only because of the obvious good he was doing himself, that we decided to help him out by donating to him.

the basic rule is, if you dont want to spend your own money donating first, then dont ask others to give you money.

if the dollar collapses, then bread, bottled water, milk and everything else would be worth more dollars.. EG $100 for something normally worth only $1.

this would then make bitcoins worth (using the same exampled multiplication) 1BTC=$100,000, whilst at the same time 1BTC= only EUR1000 due to the euro not collapsing