I have a couple of questions I needed clarity on wrt to tax. Say an individual had bought crypto a long time back (2013-2015 period) and had barely sold any crypto for cash. This would obviously mean substantial sums in todays INR value if converted.

1) a) Is the person required to declare our crypto holdings in the Income Tax returns ?
    b) If answer to a is YES - What if a person has not declared any crypto holdings so far in any of the previous returns ?

2) How do people deal with exchanges doing down/missing records ?

3) Are crypto to crypto transactions taxable ? If so - how ?

Any other general advice that one needs to know for such individuals ? Trying to help a friend.

As the topic says. Looking into the legal aspect of things. Have things been worked out ? I reckon converting INR to USD and back on a foreign exchange is the root of the issue. If we can do it, which services allow it with a credit card ? (Not asking for unocoin,coinsecure type with KYC taking a while)

3x R9-280x Dual-X Sapphire GPUs purchased in mid-December 2013 with Bill and warranty.

The original cards were RMA-ed (basically replaced by a brand new card) by the company for new replacements. 2 of the cards were replaced by new ones around March 2014 and one card was RMA-ed on 2nd Aug,2014.

The cards have hardly been used. 2 of the cards were used for only 10 days of mining. Remaining 1 card still in brand new condition (with plastic stickers not removed).

In case someone wants it shipped they will have to bear the shipping cost.

[does not involve fixing the malleability problem]

So this suggestion does not involve fixing the malleability problem but rather an attempt to find out who is doing it (if at all intentionally) :

Theory : The "malleated" tx only goes through if it reaches the node (or set of nodes) that solved the block. So we should, in theory, be able to identify if one of the major/small pools is causing this problem (coz it did not cause so much of a problem earlier so it appears to be intentional).

Make very small transactions (to save money of course) with BTC and submit them to well known pools (since https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/IP_Transactions is no longer turned on we might need volunteers  or miners who could try this out from various pools or maybe even with a custom implementation). I believe (yea assumption) that some pool is doing this on purpose, and it may very well be (yea 2nd assumption) that it is being done by some of the seed nodes (due to connectivity).

The transactions above can (or some custom implementation - see Difficulty below) be done using something similar to bitcoind because it will give the original txid which will be of help to track down later and see if it has been changed.

For every transaction we do above, check if the amount has been credited to your own second address with the same txid. If it is credited with a different txid then that is most probably your culprit(s/pool) that is causing the problem.

I say most probably because the wiki https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability says that it is uncommon but possible. There are well known causes of malleability, so we can't be certain at first. Repeat the above process more and more to say with some degree of certainty that the given pool is the culprit. Just as in a court of law.

Difficulty : maybe that whichever implementation of the client you use could try will connect to many peers as in the protocol. Maybe we will need a custom implementation of the code to just connect to the seeds of well known pools. Basically the idea of only connecting to the seed nodes of one particular pool at one given time. Then do the same with other pools' seed nodes sequentially.

Action : And if we so happen to find the culprit then maybe the lead developer could use use https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts for all to stay (stop mining) away from the pool (if we happen to identify it with some degree of confidence). This way the network propagation power of the pool goes low (not all out though) and consequently,so will the number of "malleated" txs, hopefully returning to as it was before this problem surfaced.

This is a very rough idea, but I feel it can be tried, so feel free to shoot me or correct me as it seems appropriate.

Something that could perhaps be of use conceptwise (im not a programmer so maybe irrelevant links but did help me with the above idea)
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/3403
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/IP_Transactions

I never imagined in my life I would title a post as such but I'm glad Bing finally incorporated it :

http://www.bing.com/search?q=1000+usd+in+btc&go=&qs=n&form=QBRE&filt=all&pq=1000+usd+in+btc&sc=0-15&sp=-1&sk=

I hereby propose the following scheme for an attack against an exchange/organisation using txid to track payments :

So if I was the attacker then this is how I would go :

1) Buy some btc with cash from the exchange
2) Try to withdraw it using malleable transactions (for this I would need to make some arrangements)
3) Claim I have not received it and try to get them to send it again
4) Repeat steps 1-3 using different ips and accounts using small amounts so as to make the trace hard to detect.

Attack successful. If not get more than the amount of BTC I should get, it will at least bring the exchange/processor to a halt.

Win win win !!

Or am I missing something ? Would like to know if this is possible from the core devs/experts ?

PS : Obviously this would be successful with an exchange/processor who is using txid for his system. Otherwise the above fails.

UPDATE : For a network level attack against such entities relying on txid see response below https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=458608.msg5063789#msg5063789

UPDATE 2 : I think this is the same situation described by the update above : http://www.coindesk.com/massive-concerted-attack-launched-bitcoin-exchanges/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoinDesk+%28CoinDesk+-+The+Voice+of+Digital+Currency%29 . I'd really like to know if they are not the same. So basically the exchanges are/were delaying to counter such an attack, if I'm not mistaken. I'd really like to know if I am making a logical jump here, since of the devs (not gonna name him for ethical reasons/was a pvt conversation) would keep saying that this is far from the issue. I'd just like to know how.

No seriously.

With the transaction malleability problem that has come up with BTC withdrawals, will it force people to stop transacting at least for the time being ?

Specially given that now its well known, I am sure there would be a lot of people who would change the hashes of their transactions and send them to well known pools, resulting in what I think more aptly describes the problem as - "double(or more) withdrawals".

Will things (the withdrawals from exchanges) be put on hold till this is patched by the core devs ? Of course financially it is going to cause mayhem as it already is.

I love this video ... Apple deserves it !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuQZTAJ2KLk

This is supposed to be a pool for mining Maxcoins (crazy as some people get i know )http://max.1gh.com/

Since this is a cpu mining coin only I see some of the miners are showing like 100s of MHps .. a normal cpu would only give a few hundred khps ... do you guys think those are botnets (specially the one showing > 1 Ghps) ?

[Long story short get your funds out of BTC-e.]

Guys BTC-e is supposedly under some investigation : check this link http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1wwwnv/btce_under_investigation_by_russia_for_money/

The admin there says its under cyprus law but apparently the people who run it are russians. You guys know how the scene is with BTC-e ... its far from transparent .. even though its been one of the better exchanges to trade on. Long story short get your funds out of BTC-e.

I for one don't have enough trust on anything run by russians.

PS : this may turn out to be entirely FUD stuff but i'm not taking any chances. You guys can decide for yourselves.

These days its soo boring observing the markets. No more wild swings, no more panic buy, no more panic sell, no more to the moon !! Dam I'm missing the days of December .. still remember that China rally .. what fun that was .... i miss the swings :-(

Hi,

I believe there was a press conference held in Mumbai on the 4th of Jan and some people made a group called BAI (Bitcoin Alliance of India). I also have read that there was a "decent" amount paid to the lawyer firm for having done the legal analysis.

So far I know of 2 reports that have tried to interpret laws in the context of bitcoin.

One being CIS guys who did a wonderful job with a very detailed analysis.

Other being Vijayshanker Na who also published some articles about bitcoin (although I disagree with his some of his views and like the CIS interpretation more .. dont know if they conflict each other).

Now the question is this : What was the technical analysis done by Nitin Desai and Associates (NDA in short) ? Is there a paper available for the same ?

I believe since this was done at the behest of BAI who claim to represent the Indian community of bitcoiners (and I fundamentally disagree with such associations representing a bitcoiners), we at least should have a copy of this legal analysis.

Did I miss it somewhere ? Or can someone point me to the legal analysis done by NDA ?

Cause it would seem a shame that even after paying a certain "decent" amount they just did a press conference and even failed to produce a paper on the subject.

TLDR : A paper on the subject from NDA is required about the legal analysis they did. Or were they just paid for the conference ?

How does one take advantage of a spread in the prices ? say hypothetically  :

BTC ask = 800   BTC sell = 900 (just so its easier to do calculations here )

Are there any strategies one can use to take advantage of the situation ?

Now Robert Schiller jumps onto the Krugman brigade ... why to these fu*ktard nobel laureate economists dismiss Bitcoin as a "bubble" !! I just don't get it !!

http://www.businessinsider.in/ROBERT-SHILLER-Bitcoin-Is-An-Amazing-Example-Of-A-Bubble/articleshow/29298318.cms

We need atleast one nobel prize winner on our side ... or even a turing award winner would do

About satoshi's identity :

1) Did this site not keep logs of ips logged in from to trace/lead to(wards) satoshi ?

2) If so then suppose the govt sends a request for the ips of a particular member then will this site be obligated to give it ?

3) Also satoshi was subscribed to various crypto groups .. would none of them be keeping logs of any sort ? In fact he even sent emails to Adam Back, Hal Finney and others when the first version of bitcoin was released... not sure why no clue was found.

4) Of course there have been many attempts to find his identity but what is the dead end they have reached till they finally gave up ? I mean ip logs or isp level , etc.

PS: Pardon the questions if they are old and also of the usage of "he" cause "it" (lol) could be anything.

Just wondering at the possibility .... anybody thought of doing this ?

LTC has of late been falling quite drastically compared to earlier values ... even the hashrate went down earlier by 30-40% ... anyone has any explanation or reasoning for it ? I can't seem to figure it out (not that I have been able to in the past lol)

Also LTC/BTC ratio seems more skewed than ever.

Hey guys,

Had a nice time attending the Bombay Bitcoin meetup. Was awesome interacting with people from all walks interested in BTC. Although we did not get into much detail, hope the next meetup will be more focused on certain aspects which we can decide beforehand.

Vishal thanks for the introducing most of the newcomers to BTC.

Tarun thanks for the place and ambience . For all those who do not know Tarun's place is the first in India to offer food/beverages for BTC. Make sure you visit it guys whenever in Mumbai.

Was just wonderful to see journos, music people, students, banking people, etc.

Hope we can stay in touch and hope to see more for the next meetup. Don't forget to stay in touch here.

Cheers

I bought mine fairly late at about $213 on Gox ..... just curious about others .. im sure many here would have bought much much lower.

Lets say one wants to sell a BTC on Gox :
1) How long does the verification take ?
2) If one sells then does the money come to your linked bank account or does one need to do something extra for that ?
3) Do local bank officials ask/do things which might get a person into trouble after money is received from Gox (foriegn entity so maybe something/law applies) ?
4) How long does the wire transfer from Gox take to reach your bank account ?