yet another taxation thread. all im going to say is

think income tax when you cash out to fiat

nothing at all to do with capital gains(from UK rules atleast), bitcoins are not a share (percentage of a company) or a commodity(raw material).

treat it like going on vacation and buying $2000 of foreign currency. then coming back 1 month later having won a foreign lottery and changing the $1,000,000 foreign value back into your native currency.

bitcoin is over 4 years old.

the term viral is where there is a sudden and unexpected growth.

eg.. medically a 24 hour bug which transmits person to person within hours
eg.. on youtube where something gets 100 hits, 300, 900, 2000, 6000, 18000, 54000, 162000 in a small space of time.
(also note "charlie bit me" is not as viral as gangnam style or kony2012, guess the OP missed those)

bitcoin is on a steady growth, which banking industry would consider more of a cancer then viral. taking month's/years to grow to a point that its effects become noticable. and then in some cases too late to keep under control.

and now reveals why bitcoin mainstreaming wont happen anytime soon.

1. starbucks does more then 7 transactions a second.. add on the transactions of walmart.. instantly with just 2 major retailers bitcoin cannot cope.

2. buying a $1 loaf of bread with a visa card would cost the customer $1 and the retailer would get 99c. with bitcoin he would only get 93c.. why?
well the transaction fee of 0.0005 just to get a fast confirm would cost 6c then add bitpay 1% fee to convert to fiat.

3. as bitcoins fiat value increases gavin andressens ignore dust feature will also add more costs onto small transactions.

so if you want to buy a drink, sandwich or coffee at a vending machine. don't look at bitcoin for your solution.

i would prefer a very simple code that people can input a bunch of randomness into a variable and it gives the output of a private and public key.

basically just the brain wallet section of bitaddress, without the extra functions or html code.

wrote in:
PHP
Python
VB.NET
C++
Javascript
Java

etc

then people can themselves play with whatever they like as a random number/word/phrase etc to link to the input variable. and play with how to display the output variables.

im more thinking along the lines that some half whit 17yo basement dweller proposes to be an insurer, and not a proper insurance institution with all the legal licences.

i read like 50 threads which seem to be from 'teentrepreneurs' with their business plans.

escrow is exactly what bitstamp/mtgox/etc are.

if some bank account is going to receive more then $1000 a day from a multitude of people, without a wire transfer licence. then the banks will investigate it. if the story of "its personal use" is given. the taxman will nibble at each transaction.. plus by having an escrow/third party used as a trusted bank. you have now just demolished the whole idea of p2p transactions.

the only way it would work is having a bank that has API tools to inform of payment transactions. and communications with bank managers that it will only deal with small amounts under $1000 thus avoiding the identification requirements. but even then the OP's project may end up requiring users to register their ID when signing up to the project.

after all FIAT is involved so you cant make up your own rules or pretend the government rules dont apply.

but its those old grandma's and grampa's that fall for these "web browser miner" web-links that are trojans that will also be later informed about clauses x,y,z of insurance policies stating not having antivirus, not having their bitcoins in paper wallets, basically not protecting their property = no payout.

much like house insurance that probably asked a few questions as to how the computer could cause the fire, and challenged if it may have been deliberate, attempting to avoid claim payouts. which with a majority of the elderly, may not have the smarts to give viable answers to ensure the claim is successful.

its far cheaper to not have flamable products near a computer and a lock on the door. and be told the precautions to take. then to just pay a premium with promises before hand and a long list of breached clauses after the fact.

im not interested in doing a voice interview, but as a written opinion. here goes.

creating a new alt-crypto-coin should not only be for the sake of "pumping and dumping" much like the penny shares of industry do with new businesses that have no infrastructure, but to also have plans and developers/entrepreneurs/infrastructure in place to offer proper products and services for the coin.

this is why namecoin (offering domain names etc) and litecoin (offering a multitude of services on the same scale as bitcoin did in lets say late 2011) are what i would consider proper alt-crypto-currencies. and dare i say it, XRP (used as the stamped envelope/chequebook analogies for exchanging other currencies.)*

i wish to highlight and emphasise the difference between an alt-crypto-currency and an alt-crypto-coin.
an alt-crypto-currency is a item used as a medium of trade of products or services(has a function)
an alt-crypto-coin is just another coin offering nothing more, but speculation.(has no function)

i personally try not to use the term scam-coin as that is a social term used in the chatrooms of BTC-E and IRC for all coins that are not the top 3 alt-currency coins. There are obviously scam coins out there which never intend to offer use as a currency, that have been pre-mined and are only on an exchange as a temporary contract deal.  but they should only be called scam coins after the fact(after being dropped off the exchange). but highlighted as either a future currency tool or just a coin whilst active (based on who is involved and information on projects that are actually going on).

as a comparison, crypto-coins VS the internet. many people in the 1990s created websites, not to provide legitimate services for customers, but to be designed in such a way that gave websites value, such as domain name parking of popular keywords and submitting the domain to every search engine to show a high volume of visitors. purely to sell on for profit.
alt-crypto-coins is just the next generation to what was referred to as the internet bubble of domain parking.

overall opinion is that alt-coins are not necessarily scams if used right and have a proper purpose/function to fill. But i do find that having such a variety of them does dilute the perceived value of bitcoin as being a limited resource, due to the fact that anyone can replicate the bitcoin featuresmaking the hard code 21mill coins. not so hard because people can just flip to a new chain after the 21million is nearing.. which is why natural diamonds do not have the same investment scarcity as gold, because diamonds can be replicated using carbon.

with bitcoin's 6c transaction fee(0.0005btc) to be guaranteed a place in the next block, i can see the bitcoin being easily replaced by a identical coin code and rules. minus the transaction fee's(block reward being the only reward). which would take over the main-streaming projects. due to the fact star bucks wont take on bitcoin for 6c per transaction + 1% bitpay fee. and attempting to buy a candy bar or a loaf of bread is next to impossible now due to the transaction fee, as well as gavin andressens satoshi dust ignore feature in the latest client.

after all would you honestly pay $1 worth of BTC instead of just using 85c FIAT for a 85c candy, knowing that andressens 'feature' plus fee's are pricing small item's 'out of the game'?

---

*xrp is slightly different to crypto-coins as it was never intended to itself hold value purely for trading XRP direct, it was to be a tool such as a stamped envelope to transmit transactions. but even stamps in the real world have value and people trade/hoard for a value, not for the purpose of posting letters through postal services.

lol is this insurance thread still trrying to promote its money making scheme with promises to protect you but having so many clauses to protect itself that it never has to pay out.

everyone with half a brain knows that the cost of 'contents' insurance for homes is not worth the paper it is printed on. most smart people know that a $20 lock on the door is better insurance to protect their $500 TV then an insurance premium of $10 a month would ever be.. and here is why

chances of your house being broken into is less 1 chance in 5 years. so the $10 premium is not a cost saving compared to just buying a new TV.

if you did infact get a theif in your home, the insurance company will do 3 things.
1. charge you an excess fee which reduces the potential payout of $500 for a TV to be maybe $450.
2. use smart sells pitch words such as "valuation figures" "wear and tear value" "age of equipment" to imply that the Tv is worth alot less now due to age and they will maybe take another $100 off of the bill.
3. they will ask questions such as what security your house has, if none they will not pay because you have not done any preventative tasks to avoid the theft. and if you do have their recommended security to meet all the clauses the cost of the security would outweigh the $350 they would have finally offered.

its the same with banks. the whole financial compensation schemes if banks go bankrupt, which is an insurance policy. but tell me honestly, with all the legality that these financial insurance companies have. how many individual hard workers have actually had a proper reimbursment for losses, which did NOT involve getting the the money back from the theif (chargeback)

securing your home/bitcoin is cheaper and more of a guarantee of loss prevention compared to having an insurance policy.

i was having this very discussion myself with my bank manager this week. Banks love their fiat, and its not a impossibility that they wont take on bitcoin in the future, much like they offer services for foreign exchange. but right now their business is sticking to the legal tenders of their own country and of partnering countries.

everyone says the bank notes are just as tainted with drug residue as the bitcoin is. but right now legal tender is a product owned by government and licensed to be used by its citizens, with a 99.9% usage from retail and employment legally and a small percentage actually used in crimes.

bitcoin has not reached an acceptable mainstreaming level to counter out the silk road taint.

i know some one will reply with their youtube researched *cough* facts *cough* that bank notes have a much higher drug residue taint then 0.1%. but those facts have to be put into perspective.

EG a university full of students experimenting with drugs will always be shaking hands, sharing meals etc making the pool of cash flow in a university campus have alot higher residue count compared to bank notes found in the purses of soccer moms that have husbands that work on wall street that get money straight from an ATM and spend it at high end retailers.

so take the university residue results into perspective.

banks see bitcoin as a higher legal risk still. my bank manager loves bitcoin and loves the fact that i offer it to customers because i have been honest about taking customer details and knowing roughly the intended destination of the bitcoin, based on the business model and advertising i do, which grabs customers from more of the tourist/mining/retail community instead of strangers on the darkweb. but until bitcoin becomes proper mainstream, used more publicly for every day items. banks wont see much benefit in offering it as a service, due to the risks

right now with 25bitcoin reward equalling $3000 (£2000) for 10 minutes work makes the transaction fee's not yet an essential thing, especially when the workers hardly ever see the fee as extra income. it is usually the pool owners that keep this as their incentive to continue managing the pools. (whilst the pool owners also take a cut of the workers income out of the reward aswell.)

i think that the fee's are too high right nowand not esential. too many people think the only way to make money in bitcoin is by mining it. yet in reality of the fiat world more profit is made by retailers selling products instead of mining gold for investments.

0.0005 fee is 4p(UK) 6c(US) which is kind of ridiculous when you go back and watch the original bitcoin videos on weusebitcoins stating virtually free money transfer.

in the UK banks have a service called "faster payment" which all UK banks customers can send money to each other for FREE near on instantly, so trying to convince anyone in the UK that bitcoin is better is a tough thing to sell.

i know shops like poundland (UK equivalent to the dollar store) would never take on bitcoin with a 6% network fee for a £$1 dollar item and then a 1% bitpay fee just to convert the bitcoin into fiat.

bitcoin is becoming too greedy to be used for every day items. buying a simple coffee at starbucks or a loaf of bread has now been priced out of bitcoin due to a atleast 6% mark-up.

transaction fee's should be added in i would say a decade, once the 10 minute income per block reward equals less then $3000 or a set amount.

using some maths of for example BTCGuild
20000 workers right now have 35% of the network. meaning they roughly get 2out of 6 block rewards an hour. this equates each worker getting over $0.3 an hour.
and going by the averages of a few blocks. the transaction fee's add up to roughly $25 per block so that makes btcguild owner keeps $50 per hour for its pplns workers pool.

alot of people will argue that miners are getting ripped off for doing all this hard work and blah blah blah. but $3 an hour is alot more then the electrical costs for just having a pc turned on. which as i say above is taking away all of the possibilities of retailer adoption of bitcoin.

at the expense of the greed of mining pools and miners. mainstreaming is not happening. all because of the transaction fee's.

a better business model is for instance.. just taking the worker numbers of btcGuild as an example of a third of the mining population.
instead of having 20,000 workers shooting themselves in the foot mining for profit causing the difficulty to rise. have just 5,000 miners and then 15,000 workers be entrepreneurs opening retail businesses to make profit per hour instead of mining. that is where bitcoin would survive. then you wil see mining be more profitable for the 5,000 miners due to less competition. and then transaction fee's can be removed to allow higher profit and mainstreaming abilities for entrepreneurs

rant over

yea that is amir taaki, the guy behind intersango before it went all wrong. and another guy that just writes a few editorials now and again for the bitcoin magazine.
amir seems to be more of the "occupy wallstreet/anonymous" clan of bitcoin users, as oppose to the mainstream regular folk

they try to act like they are to the same standard as gavin andressen. which i just facepalm at every quote of their expertise.

i think they are trying to live their whole life on bitcoin.. to me i just think they dont know how to budget and plan things to cover all the costs to live and function in a normal life. which explains why his exchange failed, due to lack of understanding of basic requirements to function in the world lol

atleast i personally can function in a fully rented and council taxed home, paying all the bills and what not via bitcoin. hopefully one day we all will be able to do this without resorting to squatting in vacant office buildings.

so the learning experience of this is. don't do a "amir" or ull end up not only having ur bank account closed for simply not having FSA licences. but also squatting.. learn the law, follow it. and realise bitcoin is only freedom when not used in combination with the pound coin.
if you handle the pound coin then expect the laws of the pound coin to handle you

search bitcoin100

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52543.0

do not click the link. it is a hijacker.. instead check the posts of the person instead . he wrote a reply in the noob section that browser mining is useless.. but the post above it in the noob section has the link and the sentance "Let me know what you think!"

so it looks like the OP clicked the clink in noob section yesterday, fell for the trap and now its posting on his behalf..

i recommend getting all posts with that link deleted before we have 5 noobs clicking on it, causing 5 random posts which will multiply.

gotta admit cpu mining, browser mining and those mini miners the size of usb pen drives are out of date techniques..

it has to be high end GPU, FPGA, ASIC if you want to stand a chance of "making an income"

3 hours work for a penny, even the sweat shops in asia would refuse to work for that low price. so the only reason i would see anyone even bother advertising something like this is normally a dodgy trojan...

don't worry its just yet another guy proposing that you give him your coins and if you die he promises to give them to your next of kin.

where the reality is a standard Will and testiment and self-storing the coins in a location your next of kin can find would be the best solution.

after all once your dead you cant really track the guy down and slap him with a wet fish if he breaks the promise.

exactly.. kind of a paradox question.

what if true crypto currency wasn't invented until 2020.. but then research historians of the year 2020 revealed that a guy named satoshi invented it in 2009...

theres no reason to ask why, who. or when.... just be happy its here

no one realy cares that they cannot talk to alexander hamilton about why or how he came up with the idea of paper money. we just know he did. there is no reason to talk about what if alex hamilton didnt invent it but it was around before that.

just be happy about the reality we live in and don't exert your energy thinking about the what if's that cannot be changed after the fact.

the main point of that talk which is what we all should really take on board. is to stop comparing bitcoin to FIAt price. but a direct Bitcoin to product price.

maybe setting up a bread, milk and veg valuation/commodity pricing index would help

EG work out the amount of miners online and divide that by 3600 to get a daily income value per person (much like minimum wage). then use that number to know that is the equivalent of 50 loaves of bread or milk.

much like how governments use the "cost of living" value to work out a minimum wage.. but in reverse

the story is about banks restricting movement of FIAT. has nothing to do with restricting movement of bitcoin.

yet again bitcoin remains unaffected while governments try tightening the reigns on peoples abilities and choices involving how to spend fiat.

the OP seems to want a decentralised exchange, yet wants it to be a decentralised platform like mtgox....

seriously. if there is 1 single website used as the order book.. its then centralised.

how about set up regular meetups and have people do local face to face cash in hand exchanging. that way its not centralised for the masses, not reliant on bank transfers (causing banking regulation issues) the prices can vary dependant on local value as oppose to mass agreement on a single website (again centralised pricing).

i just think the OP is missing the point of what he/she really wants. the closest thing to a decentralised place where there is no central pot(account) of FIAT and there is still a order list of buys and sells. would be localbitcoins.com.

anything else would be cash in hand meet ups as a full decentralised peer-to-peer exchange or mtgox as a fully centralised exchange.

so where abouts in the spectrum between face-to face 1-on-1 exchange or mtgox fully centralised exchange does the OP envision his ideal plan bet put.