seems your new to being an investor.
i personally deal with contracts based investment (partnerships) rather then using the crowdfunding sites like the ones mentioned in this thread. but here is my input

1) compared to fiat investing which requires bank accounts and regularly being taxed capital gains and/or income tax dependant on country. bitcoins offer a more choice and less stress method to invest.

2) compared to fiat investing, the % return is higher through bitcoin.

3) bitcoin is a whole economy. so getting away from thinking mining is the only way to make profit is a smart thing. especially if you dont want to be waiting upto a year just to get mining equipment. which causes your funds to be locked in, losing value.

4) knowing your helping bitcoin projects grow which will in the future enhance the value of every bitcoin you hold, is worth more then just the % return you get.

+1 many movies can stem off of bitcoin.

not just documentary channel movies but major picture movies like
social network (facebook)
fifth estate(wikileaks)

so imagine a bitcoin major picture, then many major pictures as spin offs which over dramatise bitcoinica and pirate@40 into some kind of die hard esq movie lol

the op assumes bitcoins are stored on a Pc and are able to be deleted.

your personal wallet is just a password file ( your private keys) which give you access to change ownerships of the coins held on the blockchain which is distributed.

so with torrent websites holding many seeds of the latest blockchain database and not everyone doing windows updates to fear their copies of the blockchain/wallet getting destroyed.. there would be very little damage to the network that cant be fixed within 24 hours.

all i would advise is to back up private keys.

thats where bartaring comes into play.

hyperthetical:

big investor wanting large amount of radioactive plutonium would agree to be the person A..

now the guy with the plutonium agree's to be person B his army of sleeper cell people in the middle are people C

Person A buys a bunch of bitcoins from different methods available to him 50% of the deal value
person A also passes Fiat to sleeper cell C people.

Person B sees his sleeper cell operatives have been paid and also receives the other half of payment in bitcoin direct to complete the transaction.

Person A now takes delivery of his purchase and Person B has a bunch of bitcoin to randomly pay out to his sleeper cells at later dates as wages etc. which the sleeper cells can sell for fiat local bitcoin style.

in the end all the bitcoin get disbursed in many countries for small amounts. which cant be traced to a bank account or to a large product purchase

to save you alot of time trying to convince food establishments to take on bitcoin.... here is a FREE tip

i say free as there are already (if you done some basic research) MANY campus restaurants that take bitcoin.

http://www.foodler.com/serviceArea.do;

just click on the city. then on the right side it will say Campuses

take washington DC. for instance http://www.foodler.com/DC.html

for the other cities that have universities but no campus listings, you could always google maps the addresses and find non campus restaurants that deliver to campus area's.

this should save ALOT of travelling to each city to have meetings with restaurant managers trying to convince them of bitcoin.

there. thats half your job done. now to work from that list to spread the word

my use of the 9 minutes -12 minutes were not to be taken literally. they were used to indicate that the difficulty would change to get an average time of 10 minutes per 4032 block.

hmmm..

my use of the amount 10 minutes and 4032 blocks is not to be taken literally, it is used to indicate that the difficulty over a average time evens out to ensure that the block solving stays on course for its 4 year cycle before the reward halving.

there is infact a slight variance on the number of seconds that has been mathemaically calculated into the bitcoin rules to make it not quite 10 minutes.

(hopefully this reply should quash the anal dwelling but monkeys that want to take things literally, instead of reading and putting into context)

this is where trying to introduce another was legal-now not product fails in regards to bitcoin,

bitcoins don't gt created on farms by anyone. the majority of them are originally from manufacturers funded by governments, making them government products and under government control. hense the requirements for licences etc.

bitcoin is a licence free legal personal possession.. they can't suddenly revoke your licence or inform you they want a recall on their product. its not theirs!!

in a few pubs down in the area i reside their supplier is greenkingIPA which is on my contacts list. but for a short term goal making it easier for pubs to get their pound coins is stage one.. world domination takes alot longer

definetly a winner hense the

each country is different. in the UK bitcoins are being treated like assets.
EG pieces of artwork, (personal possessions with a store of value), your car.

lets say you won the olympics. you received a gold medal worth $2000 of gold. until you sold that medal, you dont pay tax on holding the medal. same as a painting etc.

check with your tax office. they are not there to whip you at every turn, they are always approachable and can explain things. most tax accountants even give away a free first hour consultation.. so abuse that too.. get a list of 5 local tax accountants. go to each, ask your questions and when the time is up, go to the next accountant.

is smells like you have not read the reports or know what fincen actually is...

try researching them..

they only care about FIAT and can only control the flow of FIAT in BANK ACCOUNTS. the whole 'virtual currency' term is about the digital dollar on computer screens/database tables of liberty exchange, bitstamp etc which represents / is a "convertable virtual currency" of the actual dollar in their bank account. nothing to do with bitcoin balances of those companies or of blockchain.info, bitcoin-qt, armory, etc, etc.

the sooner people get their head out the sand that fincen/FSA etc can only control the FIAT. and not scare monger about bitcoin dying.. the sooner the people can create legitimate fiat exchange platforms.


the government only tax FIAT you have, so it will only affect bitcoins when you put it into fiat. just like the last 100+ years. if you buy a piece of artwork they dont request 20% of the painting to be ripped from its frame as tax.. they wait for you to sell it. and then tax you on the FIAT

i have an idea to reduce fee's for UK pub's which is still in development. but at the moment the important thing is that pubs get 100% fiat return + extra.

compared to credit/debit cards which leaves them at a loss.

yes its at a cost of a little extra bitcoin to customers. but then again with bitcoin UK being early days still. its the convenience that matters.

atleast we are not paying 10,000btc for 2 pizza's. so its not that bad. but things will get better

i been telling people on the other threads for the last month fincen is american and only interested in american money.

thy have about as much power regulating bitcoin as they have regulating the heat production of a toaster oven made in taiwan.

fincen dont care about health and safety of food preparation machines. all they care about is the FIAT in bank accounts

when reading the european banks/fincen reports. it no where says that authorities want to regulate bitcoin. (hopefuly a few smart people read that too and not just took forum post summaries as gospel)

its not their financial products, its not in their remit. and its not in their interest.

what is in their interest is the gateways between their financial product (fiat) and bitcoin, and if they had a 100% solution to crime risks involved around digital transmission of both money and bitcoin. they would see bitcoin actually helps them, which some of the authorities have already noted

this particular thread is great britain. although theres nothing stopping you starting a new topic.


im still trying to work it out. im in the south west and there isnt much action here.

theres a couple other people who have formed 'groups' in area's like manchester, london, birmingham. but a few of them seem to just be social gatherings rather then business networking.

i personally am looking more for the business networking groups, although social gatherings are a bonus.

no matter what country you are in Maco, im pretty sure if you start a thread mentioning your location you will soon find some like minded people

ok ill take this on as an example of the savvy thing to do

buyng 1k at the end of 2011, id trade bitcoin hard for a week and cash back out within the last 24 hours of the financial year end. withdrawing only 1k. leaving the profits in bitcoin. making financial year end 2011 - flat, no profit/no loss

then day 1 of 2012 financial year id put that 1k back in and trade like crazy all year round. then in the last few hours of financial year 2012 id cash out 1k - again flat for 2012.

then day 1 of 2013 financial year id put that 1k back in and trade like crazy and cash out 1k. i would then go on vacation. buying a cheap rate flight. no suitcases, no extra's.. just a £30 cheap flight to spain.. once in spain check out the local-bitcoins.com website and swap my bitcoin PROFITS for euros. buy myself a hotel room and some nice clothes. and live a happy life on vacation for a few weeks.

once back home i decide do i spend that 1k on real life stuff or put it back into bitcoin to add more bitcoins to my nxt vacation pot. remembering to cash out 1k before year end to stay profit/loss flat

fail.
based on a 10 minute timeframe the total 21mill bitcoins will be found beyond 2200, but the dates at which the block reward decreases to such a small amount of satoshi's per block to even be worthy of mining, will come sooner

but before we get to that lets address the quoted fail..

lets say based on todays difficulty. a number of ASICS far surpass the estimate of the last difficulty increase and so blocks are now found in 9 minutes or less.. the next change will push the difficulty to a 12 minute rate per block solution to ensure that the solving of blocks stay on their 4 year half life cycle.
and lets say there was a period where miners never exceeded the estimate. then the difficulty would not increase. it would stay the same or decrease, ensuring that at the end of the 4 year the allotment of coins for that 4 year period were rewarded.

what you will find is that in 2037 each 10 minute reward would be worth 1 satoshi meaning unless extra decimals are added, the end would be 2141 for reward mining. even though there is still only 20,999,999 btc in existence (not quite finished).

alot of miners will think its time to end mining in 2029-2033 when the reward moves from just over 1.5btc to 0.7812500 per 10 minutes but thats because they are basing the profitability etc on todays value and hypertheticals

many views, many idea's but im not much of a public face. (bad voice and ugly) so ill stick to text comments and suggestions.

the UK population seem a little smarter then the US counterparts. where for instance the "we use coins" video states that bitcoins are virtually fee free, instant, blah blah. are not actually fully true statements to make.

the main view of bitcoin in the UK is that with "faster payment" scheme UK banks offer, bitcoin does not give much benefit for wire transmitting to other UK residents or Euro residents. unlike bitcoin requiring 10 minute minimal confirm time, i have wire transferred many thousands of pounds to other UK banks in under 30 seconds.

the other view is that if i wanted to send £500 from lands-end to john o'groats. finding someone in lands end to convert £ to BTC incur's an above market value fee due to the guy on local-bitcoins.com or #bitcoin-otc-uk wanting to make a couple % profit. and the same again at the other end. also sending the coin itself may incur a transaction fee. thus turning  £500 into a £490 on just 1% profit at each end (but in reality and experience is more like 2%-5% (£470 receipt))

as for mining, electricity costs being double that of the US, this makes the UK priced out of profit mining anything. especially if you begin looking at the cheaper deals the US get on GPU equipment compared to the UK retail/2nd hand ebay market.

i have not talked about the whole banking/FSA/Tax as a negative thing, because, chats from talking to all of these departments has show me in actual fact bitcoin is not a negative thing to worry about.
now thats the short and sweet of the negatives.. my views on the positives and the ways bitcoin can benefit the country is a much longer story. but i will just title the idea's below for now
credit unions
teentrepreneurs (teenage entrepreneurs)
sending money abroad
contracts and loans
store of wealth
holiday travel money
retail
manufacturing
and much more

http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

about 31btc in fees went through in the last 24 hours with 144 blocks a day it works out as about 0.2BTC per block average.

to me once you spread it out between 100's of workers it does not represent much of an incentive, which leads on to the point of is transaction fee's really that important right now or are they just irritating people that want to send small amounts.

afterall its less then 1% of the block reward, knowing how pools work the workers probably wont even see a +1% increase in payout due to fee's.

i personally think fee's should come out when bitcoin is worth $1000 each and the block reward is under 6.125BTC

my brainwallet will be literally "i invoke my right to silence" with 0.001btc inside

so where they think i am saying i won't tell... im actually telling them.. their just not listening.

but thats all hyperthetical and a comedy moment for you armchair youtube anarchists. that think the world is out to get you at every turn.

in reality unless you personally are doing something illegal you have nothing to fear