I don't know much about US tax code, but my guess is that you should pay taxes only if you ever sell your earned bitcoins into US dollars.

Please, keep in mind that bitcoin is less than two years old.  And though it has reached quite a success despite the fact that it is not supported by any government.  No wonder it is not accepted in local stores yet.

Give it time.

I confirm.  If it wasn't free I'd use the marketplace bitcoin forum.

Exactly.  Also, there is no way you can prevent this usage from happening, with any money.

You challenged me to explain to a local marchant what a bitcoin bank note would be.  I answered you.  The fact that dollars are defined differently is an other matter.  On a bitcoin bank note we would write :  "This note can be redeemed against [XX] bitcoins in [some place]".

Easy.  It will be written on it.  A bank note usually clearly states what it is.

True.  Especially since that's what a bank note is supposed to be after all :  an IOU.  It could easily be backed by bitcoins.  A bank note is not a currency.  It's a method of payment.

The ability for a currency to be transfered physically with no electricity, no computer, just "from hand to hand", is very good indeed.  And indeed you can't do that with bitcoins.

But the thing is that the ability to be transfered instantanously in very long distance with almost no cost is just about as good.   You can't do that with physical bank notes.

There are things you can do with bitcoins, that you can't with bank notes, and reciprocally.  Both currencies are "portable", but in different spaces :  physical space for bank notes, cyberspace for bitcoins.

Now you can deny cyberspace has as big an economic importance than physical space if you want.  I don't.

I think you are talking about liquidity here.

I'm not sure about the meaning of the word portability in english, but from what I understand of it, bitcoin does very well apply.  In a different manner than cash though, but it does apply.

I didn't know this guy but I like the way he speaks.

Check out what he says about money in this video for instance :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2690Fy0sM8


He makes a good sum up of characteristics for good money :

* durability
* divisibility
* recognisibility
* portability
* scarcity


Notice that bitcoin fullfills all of them.

By the way BiddingPond, I kind of got used to pick a block number as a deadline for auctions.

It might be cool if sellers could chose this as an option.

Normal.  There is no magic :  you can't use key pair cryptography properly if you don't physically own the machine where your private key is stored.

Hopefully this will change in a few years when Smartcard readers will be on most computers and/or smartphones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP_card

He hasn't shown any life sign since december 15th.  We have good reasons to worry.

Has anyone heard from him recently ?

PS.  I also have to point out that his disappearance occured only a few days after the wikileaks article mentionning bitcoin ...

Oh, please, you can't get rid of the observer here, otherwise it doesn't make any sense.  The concept of value doesn't mean anything if there is not at least one human being involved.  Same for colors, sounds, and so on.  If you want to think things like this then it's a bit like the old lame debate about a tree falling in a forest where there's noone to hear it.   I doubt anybody has ever tried to suggest a notion of value as intrinsic as the atoms the ice-cream is made of.  I'm pretty sure people mean intrinsic value as opposed to trade value.

If you deny the existence of at least one observer, then the world itself doesn't exist.

One day left.

Bah c'est vrai que bash peut être un peu dûr à lire quand on connait pas.  Il est un peu comme perl, de ce coté là.

On a tendance à ignorer bash vu qu'il est dispo d'office en ligne de commande et que du coup on peut croire qu'il ne sert qu'à ça.  Mais mine de rien c'est un excellent langage de programmation.

Maybe we should make him take a Turing test.

Yes it can.  I can enjoy a tasty ice-cream.  It has some value for me.  This value is due to chemical and nutritic properties of the ice-cream, which are intrinsic to the ice-cream.   It's a subjective intrinsic value.

Now I can desire cigarettes.  Not because I could smoke them .  I don't smoke.  But I can desire to own some, because I know that a lot people smoke and would do many things for cigarettes in dark times.  It's extrinsic value.

But if I was to reformulate my initial question in order to avoid this debate, I would ask :

"Should money have value other than trade value ?"

Why doesn't he just title his article "the fallacy of objective value" ??

Good.  I hope your friends generate with their graphic card as you do.