I will write an article on this soon, with both Finnish and English info. This is the first dentist office in the world to accept bitcoins for payment. Our joint program with Bitpay is just getting started.
Looking forward to that. Was this someone you had talked to personally (and persuaded to take bitcoin as payment)? |
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A wide variety of laws regulates banks, money transmitters, currencies, and securities—but none of these categories are a good fit for bitcoins. - http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/why-bitcoin-lives-in-a-legal-gray-area/Because at U.S. border crossings and at customs you must disclose if you are carrying $10K or more in cash outside the country, prepaid cards were used to transfer greater amounts and because they weren't "cash" they didn't need to be declared. That was described as a hole and then it took over ten years before any regulations imposed any restrictions. (The difference now is that prepaid cards sold are for domestic use only, and a separate product line of cards are sold for use internationally requires AML/KYC.) |
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we'll be prioritizing importing private keys after this. From a cursory glance, I think it really shouldn't be that hard, and empowering bitcoin notes would be a huge benefit!
Any chance that is coming anytime soon? |
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The SEC missed its second deadline for lifting the ban on general solicitation and has now postponed the meeting for a week. It makes one wonder if the JOBS Act (and the jobs that could be created through it) will be tangled in a sea of red tape.
- http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/22/crowdfunding-delayed-again-blasted-as-a-top-danger/The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) today released its annual list of financial products and practices that threaten to trap unwary investors.
New Threats
Crowdfunding and Internet Offers.
The 2012 JOBS Act makes significant changes to the methods startup businesses and entrepreneurs may employ to bring their ventures to the investing market, and investors must be wary of the attendant risks. Also, many more rules and mechanisms must be put into place for those changes to actually take effect. For example, the relaxed rules governing registration of relatively small securities deals, public solicitation for private funds, and disclosure of information to investors over the Internet are not yet written. So, the JOBS Act provisions related to crowdfunding, a much-publicized method for startups seeking capital, are not yet available – and will not be until sometime in 2013 – to legitimate businesses. Even when the relaxed rules and registration exemptions are effective, they will not make investments in small businesses less risky – just more prevalent. And the JOBS Act provisions do not eliminate fraud, an unfortunate common feature of Internet securities activity.
Many states and provinces report a recent increase in active investigations or recent enforcement actions involving Internet fraud, and JOBS Act-triggered activity is likely to elongate this trend. Investors must remember that small startups are among the riskiest of investment categories under the best of situations. The crowdfunding and Internet investing marketplaces in North America will develop and undergo major changes in the next year, and investors should monitor this emerging capital formation community with a wary eye.
- http://www.nasaa.org/14679/laws-provide-con-artists-with-personal-economic-growth-plan/That first article was written by Jason Best and Sherwood Neiss (who together helped write the House bill that was passed in March, before it become part of the JOBS act that was signed into law in April.). In June I had the opportunity to talk with Jason. What he knew of Bitcoin was what was the general overall message fed by the online media so he was a little surprised to learn that there already was equity crowdfunding using bitcoins. I got to describe briefly GLBSE and how it uses bitcoin as the trading currency, such that neither the exchange nor the asset issuer necessarily know who the investor is, including from which country the investor hails. When I explained that the cost to IPO was about $50 (BTC/USD was $6 at the time), he appeared to be amused. When I then explained that there are even assets issued where the issuer is psuedonymous, that's when it even went past incredulity into annoyance. I had purposely mentioned how this space had already moved well beyond what the JOBS Act (U.S. Equity-based Crowdfunding law) would permit. I pointed out some contrasts. With the equity crowdfunding law, Shares purchased are locked up for one year (except for sale back to the issuer or to an accredited investor). Those investors cannot trade the equities they own on a secondary market during that lockup. Another contrast is that the with the JOBS Act, equities offered via crowdfunding in the U.S. can only be purchased by those from the U.S. I pressed Jason as to why foreigners were ineligible to buy crowdfunded shares and his response was something to the effect that it was already nearly too much of risk trying to get the congress members and staff to grasp the crowdfunding concept. If the bill were to include secondary markets and foreign ownership, they might not have been able to get it passed. So the earliest you are going to be able realize the gain on an equity that was crowdfunded is no earlier than when you can first sell it ... in 2014 at the earliest. There wasn't much of a response then when I had stated that this online cyberequities system with no phsyical presence in any country wasn't something waiting on U.S. rulemaking to reach completion nor was it going to be getting altered once the rules come out so that it is compliant. In hindsight, perhaps the reason I didn't get much of a response was because it really doesn't matter. Really. These aren't shares of ownership of incorporated entities, nonetheless even U.S. entities. You aren't at risk of little old ladies investing in them. This is not real equity and not real money. I think as long as it is kept out of FarmVille where anyone would notice it wil be left alone. |
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i think we've all been duped. NASAA says it best:
The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) today released its annual list of financial products and practices that threaten to trap unwary investors.
[...]
Persistent Threats
Gold and Precious Metals.
The hype surrounding gold, silver and other precious metals continues despite both the fact that these investments are just as vulnerable to risk as others, and signs that some precious metal markets are declining or increasingly turbulent. The promise of continuing increases in value pitched by high-profile celebrities on television, radio or the Internet too often lure unsuspecting investors into any number of scams. Often, scams begin with an unsolicited communication such as an email or telephone call offering to sell investors gold coins, bullion, bars or other forms of the precious metal that the promoter will hold in safekeeping for the investor. Far too often, the gold simply does not exist.
Increases in the value of precious metals during the recession have led unwary consumers to believe that the value will perpetually increase. Like any risky investment, there are no guarantees. In fact, gold declined by 15 percent between March and June of 2012 (a drop in value of more than $200 per ounce), settling at its lowest point since July of 2011.
- http://www.nasaa.org/14679/laws-provide-con-artists-with-personal-economic-growth-plan/  |
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I think if bitcoin is to take off into the mainstream - solutions to lost coins need to be found.
Are you are making the assumption that if coins are lost, there will be price deflation (due to there being less coins). Price deflation means hoarding. Hoarding means less spending. Thus Bitcoin fail. Is that your line of thinking on the lost coins topic? |
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Normal. Especially if you are using an encrypted filesystem. Yep, I am. What I do is have a nonencrypted filesystem for the blockchain and index, and thyen have a symlink for them in my ~/.bitcoin It is a bit faster. |
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Anything out there like this?
You can create the contract in whatever manner you want. Now whether anything that doesn't pay any dividends whatsoever would garner a decent price for you, I don't know. I'ld bet not though. |
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This will happen sometime after pirate finishes paying back the loans.
Until this week I didn't know Silk Road even offered this service, then someone mentioned it and suddenly it all makes sense. I wanted to get this prediction out there before it went away. That is all.
Ah, so you suspect those previously hedged coins are delivered in dollars at future dates? Still unlikely it could have covered the 1% daily interest cost. |
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Hello everyone. My bitcoin client is currently synchronizing and has 191762 / 195388 = 98.15% of the blocks downloaded. It is going really slowly, maybe only 4 blocks a minute. At this rate it will take about a day to finish. Is this normal?
Normal. Especially if you are using an encrypted filesystem. Obviously it could not have taken this long on the earlier blocks. Is it because of higher transaction volume as of late or what?
Yup, - http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?timespan=allThe most recent release of the client, v0.6.3, performs better than older versions. Upcoming versions (w/ LevelDB, Ultraprune) will make this much less of an issue. Electrum is a good alternative that requires no blockchain download. The keys are kept local/private. |
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A couple weeks ago, I dusted off the wallet on my VPS that picked up 50 BTC from mining about a year and a half ago. (It's no longer on my VPS, BTW.) I figured I'd do some small transactions to see if it'd work...started with .0001 BTC to a Blockchain wallet on the 9th, followed by a .01 BTC transaction to the same wallet on the 15th or so. It took until the 22nd for both to be included in a block.
Almost no transactions will take more than a day or two. If you are sending a "spam-like" transaction and then exiting (closing your client), chances are the nodes you were connected to didn't choose to relay your transaction. This normally isn't a problem as the client will re-broadcast your transaction to the network (say , ... something it might do once every half hour), and eventually a node will relay it and it will go from there. When these transactions finally did get included it was probably then because you had left your client running long enough for it to get rebroadcasted until it does get included in a block. The other possibility is that it had actually been included in a block just that your client wasn't caught up to synchronizing blocks and thus wasn't showing the confirmations that existed on the network. There is a way that a transaction with newer coins could get lower priority and take longer, but after coins are a few days old, the age of the coins is no longer a factor. |
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question as topic: Is technocashier.com scam or legit?
You know, it isn't like there aren't enough scams around here, but can't this question be asked in a less accusatory way? [Edit: Apparently not in this instance, as there are numerous reports of it being a scam.] Like ...
"Does anyone have any experience with Technocashier.com?"
When you walk by a bank... do they have signs in the window "No scams here!" ?
No, of course not.
So why pollute our forum this way?
Now if you actually have a reason to call scam, ... then there's an appropriate place for that.
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I only have it in ePub format but will making a PDF as well to sell on CoinDL soon.
Does the ePub version have Digital Rights Management (DRM) enabled? |
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I think this is the same thing as direct deposit.
I will buy one and try a transfer and let people know.
Ah .. not so fast. It looks like non of the prepaid reloadable cards I can find in Canada allow direct deposit. The direct deposit that FastCash4Bitcoins.com and others offers uses ACH, which is (mostly) for domestic U.S. bank transfer. Canada has their own (EFT). Would I be able to go to Seattle for the day and buy one and get it activated? Is it possible for someone in the US to send one to Canada without opening the package and getting the numbers?
They require you to register the card before it can be loaded with additional funds (reloaded). I don't think you'ld be able to buy a card in the U.S. and then register a Canadian address for it -- even if the card is one that can be used internationally. I'm not sure though. The Canada Post visa allows "bill payment" reloads, but I don't think it is the same thing. I believe the Canadian bitcoin exchange CA VirtEx offers bill payment as a withdawal method, perhaps that will work to reload the card. - https://www.cavirtex.com/methods - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/VirtEx |
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With this card you fund are held as BTC. As far as im aware anyway.
That's something that the details are still being worked out on it seems. Most likely no, there will be a USD debit balance for the card. But BitInstant will make it easy to convert bitcoins into USDs (1.5% fee) and either no confirmation or 1 confirmation, which hasn't been determined yet either. The problem I've seen up until this point from elsewhere is that this transfer can be done, but not in real time. But perhaps this specific issuer is able to offer real-time transfer, and then it is just moving the USD credit from BitInstant's account with the issuer to the cardholder's account. It sounds like it would be so simple to do this but for some reason it just isn't offered that way (real-time) anywhere, as far as I know. The other part that was left unanswered was if a card swipe (authorization) is attempted for more than the USD balance, could the authorization trigger the conversion of a sufficient amount of Bitcoins so that the authorization would have sufficient funds and be approved. That would allow you to never have to manually transfer from your bitcoin account with BitInstant to your USD account. I'm thinking this is like way down the road, at best, but if they can do that, you never need to carry a USD balance, the bitcoins are converted with each purchase. We know there is demand for this. Anyone who has a reloadable debit card that accepts Direct Debit (ACH) is able to convert their bitcoins and withdraw to their debit card now -- it just takes a day or three for the funds to get added. This can be done from BitFloor, Camp BX, FastCash4Bitcoins, and others -- today. And there is also a growing number of people cashing out to PayPal, which, can have tied to the account a debit card. Those account-to-account (A2A) transfers are spendable immediately. Or you can convert Bitcoins to MoneyPak and load your card that way -- another method that is essentially instant. So this movement from bitcoin into debit cards is already happening, just that what BitInstant is saying makes it the easiest, fastest (and in most instances, cheapest) method for this. |
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Needless to say I am not at that location in the ocean.
The Bitcoin network does not record any IP addresses. The only way that Blockchain.info shows an IP address with a transaction is if your Bitcoin.org client node is connected to one of Blockchain.info's nodes or Blockchain.info has a connection directly to your node. The very first node that they see broadcast or relay a transaction is the one they list for the "Relayed by ip" field. If you sent a transaction, this "first to relay" value may be from your node or it might be one that you were connected to. For those wishing to not have this informated revealed, Bitcoin can be used with the Tor network or they can specifically have their client connect to a specific node for relaying. Blockchain do have my correct IP when I log into their wallet to send bitcoins. Wow, if Blockchain.info is using the web client's IP address and publishing it, that would be disturbing. I'm going to right now go make transaction to verify myself that this is not happening. [Update: I just sent a transaction and an IP different from mine displayed for the "Relayed by ip" field, which is good. If you were seeing your own IP address be shown by Blockchain.info for a transaction you sent, then it must have just been coincidence -- something which technically could happen if you also happened to be running a node and blockchain sees your node as the first relay (presuming Blockchain.info excludes its own host for this when broadcasting transactions). That would be unlikely to happen twice though as there are several hundred nodes that Blockchain.info connects to.] |
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WU isn't the only provider for these types of cards. There are at least a couple dozen and most have an option for ACH or Direct Deposit.
Right. The reason these two (Western Union prepaid, American Express Prepaid) stand out is because they have no monthly fee. And reasonable (e.g. one free per month) costs for withdrawal at ATMs. |
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