When this comes up it is sort of double edged sword news for me.

I want to pay for nothing with Bitcoin. Maybe 12-18 months after a halving I would not mind paying for something in bitcoin, but screw paying for things with it, especially say right now for example. Ten dollars in btc could turn into 1000 bucks really easily.

Being able to pay for things in bitcoin is good for business owners. It is also good for bitcoin and legitimacy. It's not good for bitcoin holders though.

Options are good but people have to understand, what is going on with bitcoin right now is smart money is starting to wake up and do all they can to extract btc from the people.

How would the fees and exchange rate be at Blockfi vs Coinbase for buying Bitcoin?

I find it difficult to figure this stuff out. It seems like you have to have an account and go through KYC just to know what the Blockfi rate would be.

What I see in the chart is they are highly correlated except for recently, which was due to the Paypal news if I see the timing right.

I think things are fairly correlated for now, but of course today is a good example where they are not, meaning dow jones is down while bitcoin is rising. I think we will see this more in the future because bitcoin is so unique and also people will gain confidence in it.

The other tough part though is I know there are many people who will sell bitcoin when they see large drops in stocks, but they do it to buy stocks, so the correlation is not a "true" correlation. This is probably what happened in March I would think, people just wanted to have cash.

I also wonder how on earth a govt tax authority could respond if it was proven you bought $xyz amount of bitcoin, and you stated to them that you had lost the key. How can you prove or document that you lost something? You can't, so I suppose in the irs case they would just assume you spent it and tax you on it.

No kyc would be best for me. I used coinbase for my first small purchase but was not crazy about it as you mention. I have a larger purchase or two coming up and just want the best rates and lowest fees.

Thanks to all I will check out the suggestions.

I am in Thailand. I just have a hard time figuring out all the fees and exchange rates for buying and wondered which was best.

I have a fair amount of gold bullion built up and have been seriously thinking of putting some of it into Bitcoin.

I am new to Bitcoin so don't have the fluctuation patterns down. From what I can tell it seems to tightly correlate with gold. Under what circumstances may bitcoin, ideally for me, go down while gold goes up? Any conjecture on this? Thanks.

Thanks. Would they tend to be the best option in terms of fees as well?

Thanks. I am not trying to get out of anything, just want to understand it.

So, one last example, let's say I have two wallets, one with 0.5 bitcoin that has been in there a year, and the other with 0.5 bitcoin that has been in there less than a year.

If I spend 0.5 bitcoin from the wallet that has the bitcoin in there less than a year, can I then legally claim come tax time that I spent the other 0.5 bitcoin from the other wallet for tax purposes?

So if I have a wallet full of bitcoin, and only 0.5 of the bitcoin has been in the wallet over a year, I can spend up to 0.5 bitcoin at the long term capital gain level (in other words, you can apply the best case scenario for yourself)?

It just seems to me it would matter which exact bitcoin you are spending, but that is impossible to know.

I know this will depend on where you are, but where do you get the best rate for buying and selling bitcoin?

I take it pure peer to peer would be the best.

In general, are places like localbitcoin better than the large exchanges like Coinbase?

If you buy Bitcoin on two different dates, and one of the dates you have held for more than a year, for USA tax purposes you can spend the bitcoin you have held for over a year at the long term capital gains tax rate, is that right? Because it seems like it would matter which exact bitcoin you spent, but if it is all in the same wallet I am not sure how this works.

Thanks.