Oh, nice! BTC-e was the exchange I was thinking of using but I had misread it as 2% rather than 0.2%. Big difference! Also BTC-e allows you to trade LTC, which I might be interested in. Got 1 LTC just for fun.

I never saw Bitcoin-24 before but am checking it out now. You're right about the volume. USD looks quiet but EUR has some decent movement. Definitely worth trying out for the zero transaction fees!

VertEx charges a full 3% on every trade in either direction. Where are you getting the 0.2% rate? Is that what mtgox charges? That's less than 10% of the rate I'm paying at VertEx!

I agree that it may be an attempt to reduce volume due to capacity limits on the servers, etc...   However, VertEx just did a big upgrade on their servers less than a week ago.

I agree. It makes day-trading a lot more risky. The more people day trading, the more fees can be collected by the exchange and they can make up the difference in volume. As mentioned by honeybadger, CaVertEx charges 3% on every trade (it reduces to 2.5% if you move 100 BTC within 120 days.) In this case, if I sell 1 BTC at $100 CAD, it becomes $97 CAD. If I wanted to buy back at a profit, I would have to wait for the price to drop back down to below $94. Sometimes it happens kinda fast but mostly it can take days or never at all. Is it worth the risk for the tiny increase in Bitcoin you'd get?

I've actually decided to discontinue my use of CaVertEx altogether because of the high fees. It's a simple matter for a Canadian to open a true US Bank account based in Florida. You can do this at any RBC branch. The flat fee to wire transfer money to the USA from Canada is usually around $55 but with an RBC USA account there is no fee at all. This opens up the door to getting money into and out of the system using other, less expensive ways. I am also going to move the BTC balance I have in my CaVertEx account into another exchange that has lower trading fees. It really doesn't matter so much if I am trading against the Canadian dollar or the American dollar or any other currency for that matter.

Canadians do have a choice and if the fees continue to be higher than other exchanges around the world CaVertEx will likely see more people like me deciding to take advantage of their other options.

VertEx is the exchange that I do the most trading with because I live in Canada. They have been very reliable and I spoke with someone at their customer support phone line who was able to help me quickly. There were some slow-downs yesterday because of the crazy volatility BTC experienced. They are upgrading their servers today. They seem to be very forward thinking and I hope they continue to grow. The more solid, reliable bitcoin exchanges out there the better for everyone.

I'm looking into verifying my account on okpay but can't seem to find details on how much the monthly limits go up. I want to know that giving them my personal information is going to be worth it. The unverified limit is really low. I need like 10x that much.

If I had any extra money I would put it all into Bitcoin now. Anyone telling you to sell now is hoping to drive the price lower so they can buy at a discount.

I saw this as a great time to buy some discounted Bitcoin. I just spent all my spare money buying bitcoin a few days ago so I wasn't able to take advantage to get more today. As far as day trading, I tried it earlier this month when I thought it was at a temp peak but it didn't go back down as far as I hoped. The difference between my sell price and my re-buy price wasn't big enough to cover the service fees. I am still up overall in terms of how much I have invested and how much it is currently worth, but I would have made more money if I had just held onto it. Even though you can see the top 20 buy and sell orders pending on the exchange I use, it is still difficult to predict if there is going to be a valley big enough to justify selling and rebuying. However, it is a good idea to time your new buys. There are always these little dips every day that if you are patient enough you can take advantage of.

I just joined! My username is Lucifer. Now I just need some friends on there.

I also noticed a huge dip and then slow recovery in the Canadian exchange (cavertex.com) in the past 24 hours as well. There wasn't a particularly large volume traded today, but of course all the exchanges influence one another and there are some who trade in benefit in price differences between exchanges.

My advice is to just buy some. Even just a small amount. Get your feet wet. If you can handle the ups and downs it goes through in a day, go ahead and buy some more. My personal opinion is that the long term value of bitcoin will at least be maintained and more likely will continue to appreciate in relation to centralized national fiat currencies. I'm holding and using bitcoin myself and if I were to sell today I would have made more than any other investment, but will continue to have bitcoin even if the value drops.

I agree with bitsil. It's the fiat currencies that are losing value in relation to bitcoin.

Think of it the same as cash. If you are a business owner and accept cash for the goods/services you provide, you are required to report these sales and pay taxes on them. It's exactly the same if you accept Bitcoin. To some extent, it's based on the honor system. There are ways people get caught failing to report or under-reporting income but of course there are ways to hide unreported income. I'm not advocating it, of course. Just stating the reality of it.

If you are making money speculating in Bitcoin as a currency, then you wouldn't be expected to report or pay income tax on any capital gains until you cashed it out. Instead of "cashing out" by exchanging your Bitcoin back into your local currency, you could roll it over into silver. There are at least two websites I've found that accept Bitcoin for silver and gold.

If you are making a couple hundred dollars a month or less you can probably claim it is just a hobby and not have to worry about it impacting your taxes. But I'm no expert.

Hey everyone,

I go by the name Lucifer because I like to look in the dark places to find the hidden truth behind things. Just found out about bitcoin a few weeks ago. I put $100 CAD into the Canadian VirtEx system yesterday so I could start playing around with it. I'm not into mining at this point and probably won't be getting involved in that aspect.

Glad to be here!
Lucifer