On the merchant's side, if they always reported the revenue, this change requiring the merchant account processer to file a 1099-K shouldn't affect things at all. :-) There's nothing saying the processor won't send out a 1099-K for every merchant either, regardless of how many transactions or what amount those transactions added up to. That reporting requirement begins for transactions occurring January 1, 2011 and later. This may be a catalyst that drives some sellers to request payment in Bitcoin. But does that mean each Bitcoin recipient in the U.S., being P2P, is a "processor"? Let's say Ubitious were U.S.-based, and I send them 0.02 BTC each day in 2012 for Kiba's art http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1929.0. Does Ubitio.us then need to send me a 1099-K? Ha..., I hope not. There are exemptions for "Single retailer, private cards", so I would surely hope Bitcoin is exempted. Additionally, there is a separate 1099 issue. As part of the health reform (Afordable Care) legislation there's yet another requirement that goes into effect for transactions beginning January 1, 2011. At the end of the year, a business will be required to file a 1099-Misc for every individual and business to whom they've paid $600 or more, in total, during the year. [This requirement is likely to get pushed back or repealed, however.] I don't believe it matters any differently whether those payments were in USD or BTC. If the value was $600 worth in a year -- you gotta file. I wonder which accounting software will be the first to include the currency symbol BTC. |
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Ha, well today's activity answers that.
About $5K in sell transactions took out all bids down to $.2151
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Cryptoman, > Is there a premium? Here is my "system": Safeway / Von's has a kiosk for GiftCardMall.com gift cards with the retailers and denominations that I listed on that BiddingPond listing. The special offer from Safeway was $15 voucher for the next grocery purchase if you buy $150 of gift cards. So, if you already plan to buy groceries at Von's, ... then the gift cards are, in effect, 90 cents on the dollar. I then purchase using my PayPal debit card (signature method) and get 1.5% rebate from PayPal as well. So that leaves the cards costing me $0.885 for each $1 face value. Selling costs are the 2 BTC for the BiddingPond Listing (PayNow listing price), plus the postage (USPS First Class Mail Parcel, w/delivery confirmation ... about $1.60). Plus the time (and gas) for the short trip to Vons. So, ... basically breaking even. My objective was to see if this was a feasible method that provided me a way to exchange USD for BTC without going much over market price. For that purpose, there is now BiddingGateway.com as an option. I'll keep the listings up though, to see what level of interest there is for them. As far as Visa cards specifically -- the $15-off deal specifically excluded some retailers cards, e.g., mobile phone prepaid cards, reloadable cards, and prepaid VISA / MC cards. So I could do them but I would pay face value (well, less PayPal's 1.5% rebate). And Madhatter ( http://www.bitcoin2cc.com ) already provides a Visa prepaid solution. |
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If there was a malicious takeover, you could opt to hold your BTC until a solution is figured out. Maybe something like coming up with new client software that accepts as valid only Bitcoin that was held pre-freeze (i.e, only as-of a certain block, ... anything traded after was ignored).
If that is a solution, then maybe this same tactic is like an insurance policy against a massive theft. Lets say somehow mtgox loses their entire store of BTC holdings. Lots of unhappy folks I presume. Build a new client so that blocks occuring after the theft are ignored. Put out a call to the general public to use the new client so that 50% + 1 of node hashing is on the good side, and Bitcoin is back in business.
But you are right. Could become a new type of arms escalation.
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If nobody claims it, ... I'm from L.A., ... and mysterious.
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I sent a 1 BTC payment to MyBitcoin. At about 10 minutes later I got the Payment Notification email acknowledging the transfer. But my own client still showed unconfirmed.
When I logged into MyBitcoin ..., my Balance showed the 1.0 BTC.
Is the number of blocks needed before "confirming" a transaction something that is subjective? I.e., why does the Bitcoin client wait until a different number .. (6 confirmations, I think ... ) to change to Confirmed, than what MyBitcoin uses?
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Linking an unencrypted wallet.dat to Dropbox? You might want to consider doing that.
I have Dropbox on both my desktop and laptop. I don't want my desktop's wallet.dat anywhere near my laptop.
Occasionally I'll log into my Dropbox from someone else's computer, to pull a saved document. With my wallet on dropbox I would be even more worried about them having pasword-capturing spyware.
And even assuming I trust everything is secure on my end, I must then trust that staff (and contractors ?) at Dropbox who have at least read-only access to storage won't scan for all wallet.dat files?
Now instead of linking to the wallet.dat, I would periodically create an encrypted copy of the wallet (wish that were automatic or part of the client) and then copy that to Dropbox. Then, to get that to Dropbox on Windows I'd use something ike MS SyncToy.
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"Pay and Get Paid Instantly" "Trackable Transactions Without Sharing Your Financial Information" "No bank, account, credit card or cheque required" At first I thought the BC meant this was some Bitcoin-related endeavor. http://www.thebc.com/instantpayTrying to understand what it was (or will be, launches in January, per a Wikipedia comment), I started to think it was some type of myspace clone that requires you to pay to see images and listen to music ("collect royalty for every download", it says). I guess without a bank or credit card, the "Send Money Instantly" part would be from what you earned for your content. But then I see "Pay utility bills online at your convenience", ? ? ? Anyways, ... hadn't seen this before, thought I'd share it. |
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Looking at today's transactions on Mt Gox shows 17,159 BTC traded over 22 trades at the same time. That's about $5K USD ... presumably in a single buy. The spread between the lowest and highest paid is 2.5% though most of the trade executed at the upper end, $0.2890. http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.htmlIs there anything that this transaction tells us? I was wondering how much a buy of this size would affect the price. This one transaction represents 0.3% of all bitcoin in existence today. This one transaction was over half of all today's volume. Does this say that today there is a fairly efficient market? |
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Thank you nelisky, that clears up the part that I wasn't understanding -- as long as my addresses get backed up, I won't lose any incoming Bitcoin sent to those addresses. So if the first 100 Bitcoin addresses are generated when the Bitcoin client is created, how do I know when more are generated, and thus need to make another backup of my wallet.dat?
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I still have the address and key, so shouldn't the transaction be replayed when I parse all blocks again? Due to a bug or an attack on the network, blocks might be rewritten. Honest generators will rebroadcast your transaction for you if this happens, but this system might break down as well. It's very unlikely, of course, but you might want to account for this in situations requiring very high security. I wouldn't bother with it if I were you; I just wanted to mention the possibility. The means by which transactions get transported are the blocks, right? There's no out of band communicating of transactions between clients? That's right. I'm still struggling to understand what happens in a fairly typical scenario: Day 1: New Bitcoin install and wallet.dat created No transactions Day 2: Incoming 10 BTC Day 3: Wallet.dat backed up to flash drive, stored in safe. Day 4: Outgoing 4 BTC Day 5: Incoming 5 BTC Day 6: Hard drive crashed Day 7: New hard drive, new install of Bitcoin ------------------------------------- So ..., what steps are next, and is there anything that I lose? |
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Bitcoin is the perfect agorist currency.
I lean the same way, though this is far from proven. Some limitations I can think of: - A substantial majority of humans lack computers and/or internet access.
- Bitcoin might be out-competed by something else in the works (Truledger, Loom)
- Bitcoin might be out-competed by something not yet invented
- The entire model might be flawed
- Space aliens could destroy the intertube
- etc...
Why won't Bitcon be cloned be anyone else? New genesis block, ... voila, another competing currency,right? |
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So if I want to be able to identify the payor, what's the harm in having a single bitcoin address for each of my customers rather than for each transaction?
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I plan to run the Bitcoin client on an underutilized server at an off-site location. I cannot remote into it and won't be back to that location for at least a couple of months from now. Thus I won't know if it generated any Bitcoin, nor would I be able to transfer it before my next visit. Should any Bitcoin be generated for it, will the address that the Bitcoin is sent to be the address that was initially generated for the client? If so, then as long as I record that address, I can then periodically check the status here: http://theymos.ath.cx:64150/bbe/address/xxxxxxx [xxxx = address] Additionally, if I created a backup of the wallet and have it with me, I should be able to fire up another client here, restore the wallet and be able to transfer the Bitcoin away, correct? |
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First, the purpose of my new page at http://bitcoinaddress.com is to create a master directory of public bitcoin addresses of people and organizations which accept donations via bitcoin. This is a bad idea. Agreed. For many reasons. Maybe it makes sense to keep a list of organisations which accept bitcoin donations. But such a list should consist in organisation names and website links. Nothing more, and certainly not the actual bitcoin addresses. For the purpose of accepting a donation, why is this a bad idea? Since it is a donation, the organization doesn't need to know who it came from. It isn't like your address is secret, right? If I give you a Bitcoin address, and you then do send to that address, I now know what your Bitcoin address is. Additionally, because that data has value, the recipient will likely store it in a database. Then let's say the recipient's server gets hacked and that stored data with your Bitcoin address tied to your name winds up on some publicly shared torrent data file. What's the risk? Won't the payment processors, retailers, etc. do the same with Bitcoin that they do with credit card transaction data? Once Bitcoin reaches visibility of higher levels of organizations, anonymity (for the average Bitcoin consumer) will be gone in 5, 4, 3, 2, ... Fortunately, if I wish, I can create another wallet with a separate Bitcoin address, fairly easily. |
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Just want to make sure I understand this correctly.
The next hash that the Bitcoin client running on my old single-core laptop has just as much chance of solving the block as does the next hash performed by a miner running on the most souped up GPU-aided hardware out there, right?
The only difference is that the number of attempts by the miner is an order of magnitude or greater than the number of attempts by me.
Is my understanding of this correct?
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