Or not.  Anyone with $10M can easily manipulate the Bitcoin market.  That won't change until the markets are much deeper and much bigger.  It hardly takes the resources of a nation state and certainly not the United States.  Somolia central bank would have the resources to push the Bitcoin market around.

Simple answer ... you can't.

Mining isn't some game where you get free coniz.  It serves a purpose.  Miners validate transactions and then hash them into blocks thus forming an irrevocable history of spends.  Miners prevent double spends and help the network acheive consensus when nodes are conflicted on what is the correct version of a transaction.  This is simply impossible without a full copy of the blockchain.  

It has been reported that having the blockchain on an SSD (for faster reads/writes) and having a decent amount of memory (to avoid need to pull UXTO from disk) improves bootsrapping performance.  Given memory and SSD are relatively cheap now anyone looking to run a full node should at least consider those upgrades.  Bootstrapping the blockchain from the genesis block takes a while (about 13 hours in the last test using a highly connected server with both SSD and lots of RAM) but once updated if you keep your node running 24/7 the memory, bandwidth, and I/O requirements are modest.

So your paper company with absolutely nothing more than the idea to build an exchange is valued at 1,200 / 20% = 6000 BTC or >$500K USD.

It depends on who's definition.  Generally speaking well written statutes will define key terms but there are a lot of horribly written laws on the books.  At the federal level it is defines as:


http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?c=ecfr&SID=1874ed9b8ba25f5cf9527e5e39a28df8&rgn=div5&view=text&node=31:3.1.6.1.2&idno=31#31:3.1.6.1.2.1.3.1

FinCEN guidance in April states that it is their interpretation that the conversion of virtual currency into real currency or real currency into virtual currency meets this definition.

In WA (for the purpose of state laws/regs/licensing) however it is defined simply as this:

Hmm.  Well that doesn't tell us a whole lot.  Lets see if money transmission is defined.


Does exchanging BTC for USD meets this definition.  Well it depends on what "money" is doesn't it.  Luckily that is defined as well.


So is Bitcoin "money" under WA law?  Well a case could be made that it isn't as no government, international body, intergovernmental organization has stated Bitcoin is "money".   Virtual currency yes but money no.  Still WA is one of those states that likely it won't be decided until either it ends up in court or the law is ammended to be more explicit.

Lets look at another example state, Utah:


Key word is "for the purpose of payments to third parties.  If there is no third party then is there a money transmitter?  This isn't legal advice but a credible case could be made that a company (the first party) buying Bitcoins from you (the second party) and paying the proceeds in USD to the same party (you) would not meet the definition of money transmitter under UT law.  

Some states are just mute on the entire topic.  In Alaska's general code for example the words "money transmitter" simply don't exist.  Under Alaskan law there is no such thing as a money transmitter any more then there is a flux capacitor repairman.

TL/DR:  So the answer really depends on "according to who" and in what context.  The important thing is that no two states define "money transmitter", "money transmission", or even "money" the same.  Some definitions are very specific and exclude Bitcoin by omission, some definitions like WA are vague and really can only be definitively decided in court.  Some definitions are so asininely broad that "money transmission" could include just about anything including the buying, selling, or exchanging of bennie babies ... if a prosecutor so wanted.  
    
    
DISCLAIMER:  I AM NOT A LAWYER.  IF YOU NEED LEGAL ADVICE ON YOUR PARTICULAR SITUATION THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE SOLUTION IS TO RETAIN INDEPENDENT LEGAL COUNSEL.  PERIOD.  The above post is just intended to be educational and highlight that context matters. 

A currency dealer buys and sells foreign currency.  Are they a money transmitter?
A precious metals dealer buyers and sells precious metals.  Are they are money transmitter?
A money order issuers, buys and sells (issues and redeems) money orders.  Are they a money transmitter?
A stock broker buys and sells financial instruments.  Are they a money transmitter?

(The answer for all four of these is no).

Well Federal Regs ALWAYS apply no matter what state you are in unless the activity is limited to intrastate and I am sure the feds will even argue that point (banking networks are interstate, national banks are interstate, etc).  On the state level it is far more complex.  Many states regulate out of state entities which provide services to the resident of the state.  Some don't and only regulate entities within a physical presence in the state.  The two states above don't have any regs on MTs.  The definitions of every state are slightly different meaning an activity could fall within the definition in one state and not in another.  The US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and DC also license MTs so although 2 states don't there are 51 licenses total  (plus finCEN registration).  For lack of a better term it is a giant mess because the Feds "shouldn't" regulate economic activity inside a state and states shouldn't regulate activity between the states however both do so you end up with up to 55 different agencies all regulating the same thing.

So honestly this is why most entities just take 2 years, spend $10M and get a license in all states which have one regardless of it they need to or not.  

Bitcoin is simply too new for any locality to be "friendly".  Banks consider Bitcoin to be high "risk" even if the entity/company has absolutely no cases of fraud, customer complaints, etc.

Among least Bitcoin friendly I would put USA, UK, and to a lesser extent Australia.
Among Bitcoin "friendly" I would put Canada.  Probably more accurately is that Canada is Bitcoin neutral.*  

The bigger issue is that most Bitcoin related enterprises (this doesn't mean companies buying or selling goods for Bitcoins) need to interface with the existing financial networks in some fashion.  Banks however are private property and in most countries an account can be denied or closed for any reason or even a lack of reason as long as the Bank doesn't violate some protected class (race, religion, etc).  Banks are highly risk prone (unless it has high rewards) and most startups aren't going to generate meaningful amounts of revenue for any major bank.  Hence the default option is close the account.  The account has unusual activity, no reason to investigate, close it.  The account scores as high risk, don't negotiate contingencies just close it.  The account is involved in business the bank has little knowledge or understanding of, don't ask the owner for information just close it.  To overcome this on a large scale may require chartering a national bank or credit union that is at least Bitcoin neutral.



* Canada at least respects the rule of law.  Canada has stated their EXISTING laws/regulations on MSB and Money Transmitters doesn't cover virtual currencies.  This isn't to say Canada doesn't want to regulate Bitcoin related enterprises or that they won't pass new laws in the future however unlike the US they are honest enough to say "hey look Bitcoin likely should be regulated but current statutes don't give us that authority, to do so we need new ones".  FinCEN on the other hand did a bunch of mental gymnastics (hint: if you need to define 18 new terms which don't exist in current law in your "guidance" in order for current law to "fit" you have just defacto written new law), to force Bitcoin a square peg into the MT round hole because it was the only one which was even sorta close.   This has a whole range of unintended consequences and creates additional vagueness in compliance because some of the MT requirements simply don't even make sense when not dealing with a third party (i.e. MT regs are built around the concept of   PERSON-A ----> Money Transmitter (regulated) ----> PERSON B).

No. Looks like high priority tax to me. MANDATORY fees are only imposed on low priority txs.  Although you can always OPTIONALLY add a fee to any tax.

You never will be able to pay your taxes in Bitcoins.  Fiat sucks.  It is horrible as a medium of exchange and worse as a store of wealth.  People only use it because they are coerced into doing so by things like legal tender laws and requirements that your taxes must be paid in legal tender.  Period.   That creates "demand".  It isn't going away.  Modern nation states would implode without the financial games they can play (like the US dollar "safe haven" currency has only lost 96.2% of purchasing power since the FED took over).

Maybe (and this is a stretch) someday there may be a service which allows you to "pay your taxes with Bitcoins" where the money transmitter having a license with IRS to act as a payment processor exchanges your BTC for USD and pays the IRS.

He filed it June 2nd.  These things move at the speed of government.   Bookmark it and check back in 60-90 days.  30 days for a response would be an a amazing feat of hyper efficiency for a regulator.

It is something we are considering.  Understand though that would essentially be us conceding the issue to the state of VA and we would then need to enforce mechanisms to block VA residents from using our service.  It is utterly baffling that MSB/MT regulations at state levels haven't be challenged on interstate commerce grounds but we haven't found any case law to suggest they have.  Of course it likely is only time before some other states move to "protect" their residents as well. 

Why use digits that provide no useful meaning.  Do you routinely price things in 1/10,000th of a US penny?

At current exchange rates 0.1 mBTC is worth 0.12 US cents.  Do you really need more precision than that.  I mean would you expect a retailer in a USD store to price something as $123.45678912 or maybe they would just round it to the nearest cent ($123.46).

In your example the following values have the following precision of purchasing power.

In most examples even the 1 mBTC precision = ~$0.11 is sufficient.  A merchant for example is unlikely to have a profit margin where rounding with $0.06 gain or loss on a $110 product materially affects balances.   For all other scenarios 0.1 mBTC is probably sufficient.  The rest of the decimal
places simply add noise without any value no matter how you write them.

So as a merchant I would just write it as 1.001 BTC or 1,0001 mBTC.  

As a practical example I don't find constraining my prices to 1mBTC precision to be a problem.

See here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=227532.0

Price widget.    Is that hard to read or understand?  I don't feel that adding more digits materially changes things.  If the price keeps rising I could see going to 4 digits (0.1 mBTC precision) at around the $200 exchange rate but not 5,6,7, or 8 digits.


I really think prices will move to mBTC because people do generally dislike extended decimal places.  If you want to get some marketing effect maybe "On Sale Only 999 mBTC.  Buy Now!".

New Mexico & South Carolina.

High resolution photo of actual lot:
http://i.minus.com/ix25JimlH2lu3.JPG

Selling 18 (eighteen) 1oz Canadian Maple Leaf Rounds as a single lot.  Includes high quality air-tite protector for each round (the good kind with foam insert).  Rounds transferred from sealed mint tube into airtites with cloth gloves. Selling as a full lot of 18 coins.  If I don't get a buyer I will look to part them out but for now I prefer a single sale.

Stock photos (will upload actual photos in next post):



Stats (per round, 18 rounds total)
Year:         2012
Grade:       Brilliant Uncirculated
Content:    1 toz Silver
Diameter:   38 mm
Thickness:  3.29 mm
Fineness:    .9999 fine

Price $460 equivalent in Bitcoins @MtGox last
I reserve the right to adjust price if spot price of silver is rises to more than $22.15

Shipping:
USPS Priority Mail:
USPS Express Mail:

Third party Insurance (required showing ID and signing for delivery by addressee or agent):

Package is too heavy for first class mail and standard mail is almost $9 and take forever so I didn't list it as an option.  Insurance includes the cost of restricted (signature) delivery.   Personally I think the odds of lost/stolen shipment are less than 2% (cost of insurance) but I leave it as an option.  If you opt not to take insurance you assume liability for the shipment.  I can get a quote for FedEx or UPS but it is going to be more, probably a lot more.


Escrow:
Honestly I don't think you need escrow given my trading history both (personally and running TC, LLC) but then again I guess that is what a scammer would say.

If one wants to escrow the terms are:
* Sale price is 1% higher due to my risk.  You cover all escrow fees.
* Shipment must be sent by registered mail OR adult restricted signature (you will need ID to sign).
* Escrow agent must be someone I trust.  Off the top of my head that is only John K.

Other:
Please no low balls offers.  I am not desperate to sell.  Thanks.

You probably are going to have to ask coinbase.  I doubt anyone outside of the company can tell you how/why they believe they are not a money transmitter.

For what it is worth Coinase registered as a type 409 and 499 MSB which is Money Transmitter and "Other" respectively.  Registration was last updated 04/23 after FinCEN guidance came out.
http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/msb.registration.letter.html?ID=3928810

Trying to add $1,500 to my namecheap account. 

Namecheap's add funds form for Bitcoins (screen prior to being directed to Bitpay) indicates:


Entering any amount up to $500 works as expected.  Click continue and bitpay order form shows.
Entering any amount >$500 (but less than $10,000) results in form being reset without error.

It looks like the issue is on namecheap's side but in chat they indicated it must be a problem with their payment processor.
If anyone from bitpay sees this you may want to reach out to someone who knows on namecheap's side.

No.  The timestamp in Bitcoin is "loose".  Other nodes will accept a block as long as the timestamp is within 2 hours of average network time.  No mining software discards work just because the clock has incremented a second before the work was complete.

There is no difference between small miners and large miners in respect to efficiency (hashes per solved block).

Well ASICs are "brand new" for miners so expect hashing power to increase by a factor of 10x or more over next year or so.  The efficiencies of ASIC all but ensure that it is only a question of how long.  Suddenly $200M (if realistic which I doubt because $200M operation has a lot of overhead) is more of hit to a bank's annual profits.  

Still banks or government could destroy Bitcoin.  Then in about a day a developer could take the last block prior to the attack create a snapshot of current balances, encode that in a genesis block, change the hashing algorithm and launch a drop in replacement "Bitcoin2".

So banks spent $200M and developer spent what $1,000.  Kind of like trying to kill your enemies by using bombers to dumps mountains of cash on them.   So what is next spend $1B to makes some scrypt ASICs to kill Bitcoin2.  Ok drop in replacement Bitcoin3.

Note: this doesn't mean you as an individual can't lose money.  The system will recover, adapt, evolve but a 99%+ drop in the fiat exchange rates in a panic is certainly not impossible and so is selling at the bottom.  Killing the system by outspending it though?  It can't be done.

(Just a random guys reflection on Bitcoin four years later and the vanity of needing to make the 10,000 post important)

If you have been involved in the Bitcoin community for any period of time you likely have heard the phrase "Bitcoin is the most disruptive technology since the internet" or something similar at least once.  Have you ever thought deeply about what that means?  Bitcoin is disruptive because it doesn't need the blessing or support of established interests.  In that respect Bitcoin was successful as soon as people voluntarily began using it. It only requires voluntary association to grow and flourish and that is a powerful thing. The future is unknown and the growth of Bitcoin is almost certainly going to be painful.  Certain actions taken by established interests can slow adoption, degrade the value of the network, and even destroy the Bitcoin protocol.  Well at least the form of the protocol we call "Bitcoin" today.  Bitcoin however will route around damaged parts of the system and make no mistake, our financial and political systems are horribly damaged.  Bitcoin interfaces at the edges with those systems and that will make things chaotic for a while.  If states adopt punitive legislation then wealth, innovation, employment, and yes even tax revenue will flow to states that don't.  If banks are reactionary they will lose to banks that are forward looking.  Today the amount loss is negligible but what about in a decade or two?  Like water of electricity Bitcoin will organically find the path of least resistance.

The concept of cryptocurrency is now unstoppable.   Today Bitcoin is the dominant system but regardless of the success or failure of Bitcoin, the thing of far greater note is the larger concept of decentralized currencies have been proven viable.  Economic systems secured by math and logic not fallible humans and political will.  People will never stops improving it.  Even if established entities succeed in crippling the Bitcoin network, future cryptocurrencies will evolve from the lessons learned in Bitcoin's destruction.  It has always been a possibility that Bitcoin will be the Napster of cryptocurrencies.  Innovative, new, and ultimately fatally vulnerable from the day it launched.  The media industry struck the Napster network at the vulnerable point and for a short time they enjoyed success, but the concept had already taken root.  People were already thinking, creating, evolving the concept.  What spawned from the death of Napster wasn't carbon copies, that would have been futile.  Instead it was a technological petri dish, with various new forms of file sharing being created, competing, and mutating into forms that were increasingly more resilient to control and censorship.  The same will happen to Bitcoin, there is no need for a replacement to start from scratch.  A future protocol could start from a snapshot of the Bitcoin blockchain at a point in time before it was attacked, gaining at launch stakeholders who have a vested interest in the success of this alternative.  Will the process be chaotic, scary, unmanageable?  Of course.  A cacophony of competing ideas, networks, and participants.  However like file sharing the genie is now out of the bottle.  We may in twenty years look back and find cryptocurrencies are very similar to what exists today or they may be so radically different as to be unrecognizable.  Nobody know if Bitcoin will remain viable and resilient over an extended time frame.  If someone says they know, they are lying, either to you or themselves.  Of one thing that I have no doubt, is that  cryptocurrencies in some form will exist in the future.

We should take a look at how far we have already come.  The very fact that you even have people talking about cryptocurrency all over the world, a word which didn't even exist a few short years ago, is profound.  Even when people are criticizing Bitcoin for its flaws or limitations they are still talking about it as a functional network, not an abstract idea which maybe could happen someday.  Compare that to the reaction Satoshi would have received, if he appeared on CNBC to discuss the still theoretical concept of decentralized currencies.   It would have been painful.  From an idea that many self proclaimed experts wrote off as impossible or unworkable, to a money supply valued at over a billion dollars in less than five years.  All that growth occurring in a chaotic, organic and at times dysfunctional fashion, open to anyone with an idea and a drive.  Unlike fiat currencies nobody is forced to accept Bitcoins, nobody is locked into keeping the coins they already hold.  Fiat currencies coerce populations through the use of legal tender laws and even with that advantage Bitcoin is already larger than the money supplies of dozens of nations.

Cryptocurrencies have breathed new life to a very old concept.  Private money has existed for at least as long as currency issued by the force of the state, but it has been held back by the seemingly insurmountable limitation of a trusted central authority.  The concept of decentralized currencies breaks that limitation and will enable the usage of private money on a scale that has never before been seen in the history of mankind.  The nature of Bitcoin makes any attempt to control the "Bitcoin proper" as futile as attempts to stop peer to peer file sharing.  At best the state can exert influence on the periphery, the edge where the crypto and fiat worlds meet; however this influence will wane with time.  As a circle expands the area inside the circle grows exponentially relative to the circumference.  In the same respect, even if states around the world clamp down, their influence and power is directed at periphery, an area of shrinking importance as more of the voluntary transactions occur inside the network.

On a personal note I don't know the exact future of Tangible Cryptography, we have been discussing various plans and contingencies.  Over the last week I have switched back and forth many times between disillusionment and defiance.  After deep reflection I am as energized as I have ever been.  Regardless of what happens we will remain involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.  In the modern age defiance doesn't necessarily require one to violate the laws of the state.  If the state says X is unlawful, well I can do Y instead. Individuals and companies can route around the damaged parts of the system just like Bitcoin does. Tangible Cryptography employees citizens at a time when jobs are scarce, it pays a substantial amount in taxes at a time when shortfalls are never ending.  Our government should be thankful for the prosperity that our company has brought.  If they don't, well there are other ways to do Bitcoin related commerce, and there are other states.  The power of collocation, virtualization, private networks, and telecommuting makes the world smaller and will allow a marketplace for governance.  The states just haven't realized it yet.

P.S. I hear Canada is nice this time of year.