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1  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Why switching to mBTC won't increase Bitcoin price. on: December 23, 2013, 11:14:48 AM
The only thing I have ever agreed with "revans" about is the scarcity illusion with Bitcion.  Something that is "infinitely" divisible is not scarce.

What you are saying about scarcity is in contradiction with its very meaning. Scarcity is about quantity, not divisibility. If there was only one kilogram of rice on earth, the ability to divide it between everyone on the planet would not magically make it abundant : everyone would have some rice, but a quantity so infinitesimal that they better find something else if they don't want to starve to death.
2  Economy / Economics / Re: Why Bitcoin will collapse in price. on: December 08, 2013, 12:47:13 PM
Governments have already effectively made it impossible for people to use bitcoin as a medium of exchange, as they expect taxes to be paid on bitcoin gains. Thus it cant function as a medium of exchange (same goes for gold btw.). Unless Government loses its control on its money monopoly this law wont be altered.

I didn't get that point. If you buy something for dollars and then sell it for dollars, you still have to pay taxes. What am I missing here and what is the difference between dollars and bitcoins then?

The difference is that the "medium of exchange" is taxed.

For example: If the merchant accepts dollars and holds onto them and eventually uses them to buy new supply (i.e. sells dollars), he doesnt have to pay capital gains taxes on a possible increase in the dollars value. If the dollar trades higher versus the euro, the government does not force you to pay taxes on these exchange rate "gains".

However if the merchant accepts bitcoin and holds on them and eventually uses them to buy new supply (i.e. sells bitcoins), he will have to pay capital gains taxes.

The same is true for your average bitcoin holder. If he buys one bitcoin for 100 dollars and eventually buys products with the same bitcoin (which is now worth 500 dollars) he will have to pay capital gains taxes on the 400 dollar increase. He wont have to do this if dollars increase in value in comparison to bitcoins, euros or any other currency.

My (layman) understanding of capital gain tax laws is that you have to pay capital gain taxes only if you buy the asset for a certain amount of dollars, then sell it for a bigger amount of dollars. In the example above it is not the case since the asset (bitcoins) is not sold for dollars but spent directly for buying goods. If this understanding is wrong, I am interested by sourced rebuttals.
3  Bitcoin / Bitcoin Discussion / Re: Jessica Irvine "Trust me" (But I don't have a clue what I am talking about) on: November 24, 2013, 10:47:16 AM
First, scarcity. While the number of bitcoins is supposed to stop at 21 million, whose to say that will happen? The whole point is that it is user generated and not policed by a middle man.


I hope she is trolling.

I'm an investor. I know absolutely nothing about programming. But it took me about 1 second of research into bitcoin to understand that the number of coins would stop at 21M. Surely if you just google "bitcoin" there will be a couple links on the first page that cover this.

Either she is trolling, or she thinks bitcoins are actually magic beans that can deny the laws of math.

Technically a network consensus to a hard fork could keep the currency flow going, correct?

Exactly, people often falsely claim or believe that 'cryptography' some how creates the 21 million cap (people who 'know nothing about programming' seem to be very likely to hold this belief as our friend above dose), nothing could be further from the truth.  

It is only the honesty of the mining network (and by that we mean literally just the handful of major pool operators) that enforces the cap.  Obviously the high visibility of breaking the cap and the fact that many miners hold many coins that would crash (And I mean a Hyper crash the likes of which would make all prior crashes look like hiccups) provides a huge disincentive, but it's nothing more then an incentive structure, one that gets weaker all the time as mining becomes more of a cartel and margins become thinner.
It is true that cryptography has nothing to do with the 21 million cap, however its enforcement is (fortunately) not solely based on the honesty of the mining network : you can have as much mining pools as you want who would change the rules (remove the 21 million cap) and mine blocks according to these new rules, all the other nodes of the network would reject theses blocks. And these pools could represent 99% of the hashing power, their blocks would be rejected nonetheless.

It is also important to point out that pool operators control as much hashing power as their users are willing to give them : if individual miners realize that their pool operator does things they disagree with, they can leave the pool, leaving the operator powerless.
4  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: The Official "First Word that Pops Into Your Head" Thread™ | Get Out of Jail! on: June 23, 2013, 06:40:32 PM
wing
5  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: The Official "First Word that Pops Into Your Head" Thread™ | Get Out of Jail! on: June 23, 2013, 02:34:56 PM
egg
6  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: The Official "First Word that Pops Into Your Head" Thread™ | Get Out of Jail! on: June 23, 2013, 12:50:23 PM
oral
7  Other / Beginners & Help / Re: The Official "First Word that Pops Into Your Head" Thread™ | Get Out of Jail! on: June 22, 2013, 10:16:06 AM
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