These prices are pretty good, compared to what they usually go for at auction. 
Is this an offer just to bitcointalk folks for bitcoin only sale? 
I am going to pass it to some collectors who aren't yet using bitcoin, maybe this will get them to start.

Gold is more anonymous than bitcoin.  Switzerland will have to ban that first.

+1

The t-shirt and banana scenario may even be LESS legal than doing it any other way.
By taking willful steps to hide regulated transactions, you may demonstrate your intent to evade and may thereby lose your legal defenses of innocent and harmless mistakes.  The fines may be discretionary and up to the judge, so if they smell a rat they can do more or less accordingly.
http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/definitions/penalties_A.html
Willful intent may encourage a criminal charge.  Without intent, you aren't going to see the prison time.

As always, law is a matter of geography.  Things vary by jurisdiction.

No.  Anonymity is not the issue "they" pretend that it is. 
Why?

1) Gold is more anonymous than Bitcoin.

2) Bitcoin has uniquely identifiable serial numbers, just like paper currency.

3) In fact Bitcoin is less anonymous than paper currency because every transaction is publicly recorded, forever.

Then again... even if you could pay your taxes in bitcoin rather than fiat... would you be patriotic enough to do so?

Why would either bigger or more expensive be better?
From either a cost perspective, or intimacy with the facts perspective, those attributes would both seem worse rather than better.

It would also be a nice feature to not pay it when it isn't needed rather than have it continuously drum up business for itself.

If there were some evidence of early release, it would be valuable, as it would point to malfeasance.  Though it is very unlikely to find that in the clear anywhere.


No problem with these as written, just that they don't lead to a meaningful conclusion in this context without a #3.
Trading something public with inside knowledge, or disclosing that knowledge to someone that trades is what brings the trouble for them.

I asked the bank manager at my local branch today what he was doing to hedge his dollars.

Yes, proving what they knew and when they knew it...and then drawing the connection between someone who knew, and a trade.
Others at the Fed knew certainly...  But who traded with inside knowledge?
Without that, its "objection conjecture, your honor".

I'm with you on this.  It looks dirty.  But its a goose chase.  Even with a time stamp, calling foul on early trades without either evidence of communication or a confession doesn't get us anywhere.  The reason for the trade is not going to be in evidence.  It is one thing to believe it, yet another to prove it forensically.

The trader could have decided to sell dollars against stocks and gold because Bernanke walked at 40 paces a minute instead of 45 and decided that was because he was reluctant to be seen as wavering.  There are fed-watching analysts that really do monitor such minutia and base trading decisions on it, and even if they don't, it gives them "plausible deniability".  (Or his briefcase looked heavier, or his shoes weren't recently polished.)

Martha Stewart went to jail for it because she doesn't have the criminal mind that your professional inside trader has cultivated.  They are going to have a bunch of other "reasons for trade" and less of an identifiable communication nexus.

Production minting started today.  First ordered pieces should start shipping after the weekend!
Thank you for your patience.  Giving birth to these has been a wonderful adventure so far and I am grateful for your sharing it with me.

I am also still busy at this time shoring up the web part of these.  A lot has changed since I was cobbling HTML using vi on Sun Micros in the dungeons of Disney in the early 90's (apologies to you EMACS lovers).  I am more than a little rusty, and the CSS bits are giving me headaches because of juggling a lot of things and trying to remember to sneak in some rest when the brain stops working the way it is supposed to.  I am starting to think that all-nighters are for the younger folks.

...but, it is all starting to come together, and some dear friends are offering to help and that is making a huge difference.  (Thanks Mike, doing this is WAY better than shoveling code into the Citibank machine ever was, isn't it?)

Line 1: Venezuela asks London for its gold back (repatriation of 99 tons).
Line 2: Germany asks New York and Paris for its gold back (repatriation of 674 tons).

Normal trading activity would generally cause prices to rise following these events as leased gold would be called back for delivery, but these countries are told to sit on their thumbs for years instead.

Then there is this:



Which looks like a steep drop in physical inventory, yes?

But wait...Lets step back a bit for some perspective...



So it is not just a drop, it is a precipitous drop, unprecedented (it only rose until Germany's demand, then only fell).

But... lets step back just a bit more and add the ETFs into the picture.  The ETFs are the general price setting metric as they are more liquid.  But they are really just paper, and unless you are a bullion bank, it might as well be just fiat, and well, a picture speaks volumes.



There you have the price falling, but massive redemption of the paper for the physical.  Intuitively redemption SHOULD cause the price to rise as the underlying asset becomes bought and also depleted through redemption.  It is becoming increasingly scarce.  So unless something weird is happening...

Consider that maybe the price is being driven down so that the redemption can be more affordable?  The central banks have it within their charter to manipulate currencies.  Gold (and bitcoin) fall into that category.  They can legally manipulate the price and not suffer the teeth of the CFTC.
I'm no conspiracy buff, but this seems consistent with the evidence at hand.

So tell me... am I crazy to be redeeming bitcoin for physical gold and silver?  Is it crazy to sell the oldest form of money for the digital/virtual/ephemeral at a time when the world is scrambling for the physical?  Maybe I am, but I am having fun doing it, and I like inflation-proof asset diversity.  More than anything, the opportunity to craft the best of its kind Bitcoin Specie has me giddy.  It is the most significant contribution I can make to the community at this time as a designer of numismatic physical money, to back the worlds best virtual currency with the worlds most durable asset.  Others may also do this, so the challenge of setting a higher standard, is exhilarating.

The production minting is starting TODAY (yay, at last), first with the Quarter Bitcoin one troy ounce silver, and soon also in gold, and I am very excited.  My team and I have been working on this for quite a while, and we are pretty happy with the result and hopeful that others will be also.  Sorry if this feels like advertising to you, it is personally exciting and so hard for me to avoid talking about it... but I will stop now.

Nods, as clearly evidenced by the market movement in everything except bitcoin.

Yes, no, but definitely maybe...

We still have not left the land of speculation on what it all means.  The guidance is new.  It has yet to be enforced anywhere, and the enforcement has yet to be litigated, adjudicated, appealed, heard and made into case law precedent.

We may get our first taste of it from the Bitcoin Foundation vs California, which frankly suits me much better than the Feds going after some tiny miner without the patience and perspicuity to defend a Federal case.

Folks used to trade the Fed expectation based on what Greenspan had for breakfast and the heft of his briefcase.
http://money.cnn.com/1999/06/29/economy/fed_briefcase/

Bots scan news feeds and public data of all types and use algorithmic trading faster than any human can read.

Hi Stefan,
Email sent.
Looking forward to meeting the folks there, and giving this thread a little bump.

His answer appears honest (at least so far as we've been able to check), rather than arguing from authority as you claimed.  He admits what he doesn't know, and why.  He made reasonable guesses at some points and stated they were such.

I agree that the answer is not perfect nor complete, but neither was your characterization of it accurate.  Keep in mind that it didn't take a FOIA request to get this, it was given freely and without lawyers in a friendly, informal and collegian manner.

It might look different were it a submission to a peer reviewed journal and meant to withstand critical review, instead it was a VERY swift and candid response at no benefit to himself.  Gratitude is warranted.

What you are seeking (a justification of values along with the path taken to calculate) may yet come, but that will take them some research and effort.  Just our asking for this may stimulate such an effort.  We are helping to guide them to do more meaningful work in light of the current reports and questions raised.

The title question presumes incentives for a country to fully adopt Bitcoin.  This question of "How" skips over quite a bit of what is discussed here. (Lots of why, whether, which, and when discussions).

To put an answer to the OP question, the howto, is by the people fully adopting it.  The government is just made up of some people (albeit people paid in fiat).  
This is the method of the modern revolution:  The model works when the leaders, at some point, call out the armed forces to "create peace" in their nation, and those armed forces instead do not take up arms against their fellows, this (or its monetary analog) can lead to full adoption.

But Bitcoin is not much a threat to any nations as it may be to some few institutions and national endeavors (such as central banking vs decentral banking, or wars of conquest funded by monetary easing).  Nations can do quite well without these institutions and endeavors as evidenced by the peaceful and prosperous period between the 2nd and 3rd central banks in the US.

In the mean time, Bitcoin is beneficial to people and businesses regardless of any greater purpose it may hold.  Focusing on those benefits, rather than what ends these means may bring, is the way to attain both.

So, your experiences are something like this?