http://www.bitcoinblogger.com/2011/05/bitbillscom-review.htmlI recently ordered some bitbill.com cards in the mail and they have arrived! Wahoo! I ordered each type of bitbill (1, 5, 10, and 20 BTC) but they all didn't arrive yet so hopefully the rest will arrive soon. I only got the 1 BTC bitbills as of now. So what did I think of them? Well, they looked just like what I had ordered, however, the cards themselves don't have the feel of credit cards. The material is not as strong as a conventional credit card. There seems to be a thin piece of plastic sandwiched between two sheets of clear plastic. When you rub your thumb over the hologram it is raised so there is definitely something under there. The private-key-QR-Code is an actual piece of paper under the hologram. The larger public-key-QR-Code looks like it was printed on the card since I could not feel the bump using my thumb. The circular hologram on the front is some type of metal foil that rests on top of the QR Code. The rectangular hologram on the back is also raised. The hologram on the back says "AUTHENTIC", "GENUINE", "VALID", and "SECURITY", and the front hologram has a globe that has the words, "SECURE". The edges of the bitbill look like they have been cut with minute fraying on the edges. The cards still look pretty cool though, and it does say "beta" on it. I expect bitbills.com to make the cards even better in the near future, but this is a good beta. I have an Android smart phone and I used an app named Google Googles to take a picture of the public-key-QR-code on the back of the card. Google Googles was able to successfully convert the public-key-QR-Code into a bitcoin address. I entered the key into blockexplorer.com to verify if there was 1 BTC on the card, and I am happy to say there was. :-) I do not think it is possible to remove the hologram on top of the private key QR Code without significantly destroying the card. In the next few days I will be attempting to remove the private key QR Code without destroying the card. This is just a test of the card and I do not have malicious intent. :-)
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What if bitcoins are not produced for sale but as a long term investment?
What if the bitcoins are destroyed? Are you burning legal or illegal tender? |
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without commenting on this particular case, much of what people are saying about united states taxes in bitcoin-forum discussions is wrong. in the united states, you owe income taxes on property you acquire from any source (except gifts and a small number of other exclusions). you don't get to wait until you convert it into cash. people who say that are confusing capital-gain-realization rules for income rules. for example, if you find treasure in your backyard, you have taxable income. if you mine gold, you have taxable income, unless there are special mining laws that tax it differently. if you install linux for someone and they pay you in sdram, you have taxable income. taxes are computed at the fair market value (in dollars) at the time you acquire the property. you don't have to sell it in any of these cases to have federal income tax. see http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.htmlstates in the us often have transfer taxes for business sales, and the transfer taxes may depend on the fair market value of the assets. I think you're confusing the acquisition of assets vs the purchasing of a business (which is what, I believe, knightmb did). http://www.unclefed.com/AuthorsRow/Daily/fwdbuybusiness.htmlWhile there is no federal tax on the purchase of a business, states and localities may impose transfer taxes. Check it out before you make the deal, especially if real estate is part of the deal. Either way, both parties seem to be acknowledging that bitcoins is, indeed, real. At least there is a positive in all of this. :-P |
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For your own sake knightmb, I hope you spent roughly triple that on iron-tight mutual indemnifications. If not, here is my advice (I'm not a lawyer, btw):
1. Get a lawyer, right now
2. On review, figure out if you need to get a settlement in place which covers all mutual indemnifications.
3. Get those things locked down. You will likely have to pay some of your $3m USD in earnings to get that sorted.
When you have a technical partner knowingly buying assets from non-technical partners for pennies on the dollar, there may well be significant repercussions. And, as someone here mentioned, it's also just kind of shitty.
Food for thought.
For those mentioning taxes -- unless he's selling his BTC, he likely doesn't have a requirement to mark his BTC to market; this is no doubt a gray area in the tax law right now. I wouldn't say he owes right now unless he's liquidating.
Good point on the knowingly buying assets without revealing information. I believe there are laws against doing this, which would mean that knightmb is kind of screwed if/when the other company partners find out. Bitcoins were also worth a lot less in Feb when knightmb did the deal. I hope everything works out for everyone. |
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Good news for me anyway  , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time. For legal reasons I can't blurt out who the investors were or the banks, companies, etc. they were representing basically (unless I won't to land in court forever), but I think I made a wise investment. It's still going to take a while to get my wife on board as she still doesn't understand the whole BTC concept, but everyone here knows and I know what it means. She was really skeptical about my purchase this week. I'll probably take some of the backup advise here too, why have a few backup copies when you can have many on different media types spread around everywhere (all encrypted of course this time). Thanks for the advise everyone! Michael Brown (knightmb), you have not told the full story here, and this is not the first time you have screwed an employer. If you do not do the right thing now, this will come back to haunt you. You are also in over your head. Has it occurred to you that you owe $850,000 of federal income tax on this "deal"? Fortunately for you, we do not have state tax in Tennessee, but you will still owe business taxes, and you haven't even applied for the right licenses. You have one chance to do the right thing here. You know what it is. Beacon, is a newbie with one post. Could be fake. Beacon, do you know the full story? Sounds like knightmb just pulled off a Louisiana Purchase. The U.S. did it to France and I don't see what knightmb did wrong...unless there is more to the story... |
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Far out. So let me get this straight. You have just secured the ownership of the keys to 371k btc for USD$5k because the initial investors wanted out and can't be bothered to check current trading value of BTC .... and your wife is skeptical!?
That's epic.
As I said earlier, if you need to move large amounts contact me ... or have your wife contact me if she is still skeptical.
The initial investors never got the concept really. When I first started, when 1 BTC was basically $0.0001, the idea was to generate/buy as many as possible, then use it for payments. So if someone wanted a credit card that could buy $100 worth of stuff, they would insert X number of bitcoins to get that value loaded on the card. To keep the bank current, the credit card would be backed by Bitcoins at the bank basically. They initially though that 1 BTC would never get above maybe $0.20 per BTC, at least that's what I go from them. So they invested about $12k to either generated or buy bitcoins for the first part of 2010. My part was to simply compile some versions of bitcoin that could run on the Amazon cloud service. They rented a ton of CPU time and basically generated BTC non-stop for a while. At the same time, I was buying from members here (they probably remember me buying a ton from them) and then funnel everything into one massive wallet file. After funds ran out, so did the Amazon CPU time and me bugging members to buy what they had generated from the start. Then things sat in limbo for a while, long while. The project went bust and the people I was working with really still had no idea how BTC worked really. Soon, the project turned into zombie status and the initial investors (remember these aren't technical people in the least) though it was worthless or maybe just a fade that was dieing a quick death. Who am I to argue? That's when I offered a buy out back in Feb of this year and they took it finally. I think after a few more stories make it in the news about the BTC value, they will kick themselves for sure. Either way, I'm keeping my BTC in several secure places and the wallet files I'll make sure never touch my PC for security reasons. I look at it as a retirement fund, when I finally get tired of working the 9 to 5 grind, I can tell my boss to shove it with a smile  knightmb, this is an amazing story...can I post this in my blog? |
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I think I disagree with this decision and here is my reasoning:
Mining is comparable to mining for gold. Personally, I am a gold miner and have access to gold claims. I started mining for gold with a gold pan. I remember going to rivers and panning for gold but I didn't find any gold. The gold pan was what I started off with and it sort of gave me "gold fever". In fact, many gold miners start off with basic tools but when one tool was not sufficient then upgrades were necessary.
So because of personal nostalgic memories of panning for gold and not finding any, therefore keep "Generate Coins" option. I think the "Generate Coins" in the menu is similar to the basic plastic gold pan because it give people a glimpse of what mining is. It is what starts off the "gold fever" (aka "bitcoin fever"). Gold fever is real and I believe bitcoin fever is very similar. Just Google "gold fever" and you will see thousands and thousands of hits.
So in order to encourage unrealistic optimism about a newbies' CPU mining capabilities, keep "Generate Coins" option. The "Generate Coins" may frustrate people but it gives more value to bitcoins by introducing people to mining. The reason why you guys want to get rid of it is because you are already old timers and have upgraded all your equipment to sluice boxes, dump trucks, and heavy machinery. For the newbies it gives them a chance to have the same feeling and thus attract more people to the bitcoin community.
So in order to perpetuate the belief that the point of bitcoin is mining (not trading), keep "Generate Coins" option. I think satoshi tried to emulate the aspects of gold. He did compare gold mining and bitcoin mining. Bitcoin is worth as much as people think it is worth. If people understand that it is hard to make bitcoins then it will give value to bitcoins. |
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I was just thinking...maybe we can re-add the "Generate Coins" in the menu but also put in "Estimated Time to find coins" somewhere so people don't get as frustrated.
Don't take out "Generate Coins"!
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I think I disagree with this decision and here is my reasoning:
Mining is comparable to mining for gold. Personally, I am a gold miner and have access to gold claims. I started mining for gold with a gold pan. I remember going to rivers and panning for gold but I didn't find any gold. The gold pan was what I started off with and it sort of gave me "gold fever". In fact, many gold miners start off with basic tools but when one tool was not sufficient then upgrades were necessary.
I think the "Generate Coins" in the menu is similar to the basic plastic gold pan because it give people a glimpse of what mining is. It is what starts off the "gold fever" (aka "bitcoin fever"). Gold fever is real and I believe bitcoin fever is very similar. Just Google "gold fever" and you will see thousands and thousands of hits.
The "Generate Coins" may frustrate people but it gives more value to bitcoins by introducing people to mining. The reason why you guys want to get rid of it is because you are already old timers and have upgraded all your equipment to sluice boxes, dump trucks, and heavy machinery. For the newbies it gives them a chance to have the same feeling and thus attract more people to the bitcoin community.
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Last week was slush's pool that succumbed to an as yet unidentified failure ... and now deepbit gets hacked for a measly 150 BTC. I'm not sure yet how the attacker got the passwords, but some of his data was not correct. May be he sniffed the mining traffic and tried to log in with same credentials, may be he used some other kind of exploit. I'll look into it after finishing with confirmation system. Password cracking have been used successfully a while back at mtgox until mtgox changed their login process. Has this been ruled out? |
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This is why I redesigned my website as a market. Instead of trying to match buyers and sellers using my own money and running all these extra risks, I just hold on to the money and let the buyers and sellers sort things out. It's much more transparent and leaves everyone more satisfied in the long run. I hope you'll consider using my service if/when you get your issues resolved.
Seems like bitcoin2cash wins this round over bitcoin4cash . . . I've used both bitcoin4cash and bitcoin2cash's services...sent my money, did some trades, and got my bitcoins. I worked with bitcoin4cash six months ago and everything was still affordable with less risk. Now that bitcoins are worth a lot, more is at stake and people's reputation are on the line. I will most likely use bitcoin2cash's service again over bitcoin4cash only because my letter does not have to cross borders. If you live in the U.S. your letter will reach its destination faster since bitcoin2cash is based in the U.S. and does not have to pass through customs. I will also be mailing small increments of money so there is less risk. bitcoin2cash's openid system is a little tricky and you have to make sure you remember your openid url exactly. Otherwise you will not be able to login. There is always a risk so be careful! |
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Ask Deepbit about IP of people who logged on your account.
+1 agreed Any decent site keeps a record of IP addresses accessing each account. And do not store bitcoins at a pool server, store them in your own, secure wallet! If you have a dynamic IP don't forget to log the IP of you own machine before it changes. |
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do u use the same password for any other website? that website could use it against u.
I was also concerned with that when I first set up deepbit, so I chose a password that was unique to only that website. Also, if you are using 'MemoryDealers' as your user name or your email address that you display publicly then I suggest you use a non-well-known email address. |
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UPDATE: Most first run orders have been shipped! We will begin accepting preorders for the next round of Bitbills tonight!  Is it insured shipping? Can you explain your manufacturing process and how it is secure? During the manufacturing process who sees the QR Code? |
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"Money doesn't grow on trees, it grows in bitcoin rigs."
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TravelEx is a currency exchange with a physical location that has branches throughout the world. In fact they have over 200 stores in the U.S. and more around the world. TravelEx is a store that essentially exhanges currency.
I believe Bitcoin is a good opportunity for TravelEx. I have been thinking about this a lot and here is how it would work.
Forum members contact TravelEx headquarters. We tell them that there is a high demand to convert cash to Bitcoins and there is an opportunity for them to get rich. (Who doesn't want to get rich?)
Then we have bitbills.com create thousands of bitbills to be shipped to all the TravelExs around the world. People come into the store, buy bitbills with their cash using the current exchange rate. TravelEx takes some profit, bitbills.com takes some profit, the bitcoin economy booms, and the new bitcoin owner is happy with his/her purchase. Everyone wins.
TravelEx could also send the bitcoins electronically but I think bitbills will be easier for them to understand and it will be easier to handle since it is physical and TravelEx is a physical location.
I don't see any holes with this idea and it is TravelEx's for the taking. So who wants to contact TravelEx/Bitbills.com on this idea?
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I'd tweak the formula to be: max block size = 1000000 + (int64)(difficulty)
... just to avoid "if block number is < X max block size = 1000000 else..." logic. Adding in the current 1MB max limit means all the old blocks are valid under the new rule.
I like Mike's point that difficulty and transaction volume aren't necessarily related. Maybe a better formula for miners would be something like:
max block size = 1000000 + (average size of last N blocks in the best chain)
... where N is maybe 144 (smooth over 24-hours of transactions)
Anybody have access to what Visa daily transaction volume looks like in the days around Christmas? Are there huge, sudden spikes that the above formula wouldn't handle?
I think averaging the "last N blocks in the best chain" is good but there may be a better way. How about we try to predict the size of the next block? We take the last N blocks and determine if it is linear, exponential, or polynomial. Then we solve the linear or polynomial equation to determine the N+1 point. Basically, this method is attempting to predict the size of the next block. We can start of simple, and just use y=mx+b. How does this do anything but grow? Not sure if I am answering your question but y=mx + b is a high school algebra equation for a line on a graph. Using this equation or some other polynomial equation to predict the size of the next block shouldn't be too hard. Just plug in values for m, x, and b and solve for y. http://www.math.com/school/subject2/lessons/S2U4L2DP.htmlI think Gavin is right in that we need some data, maybe plot it on a graph, and determine which method/equation can best fit that graph. Just my two millicoins. |
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Silicon Valley represent!
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I would like to hear the bitcoin community's thoughts on ways to improve the effectiveness of this ad.
The carrot-orange-reddish color of text looks weird. It's not the color of the coin, neither any of the predominant colors of your website/logo. I would advise you to stick to the exact colors of your logo (gray, light orange). Here is a version made by me:  Very good! |
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