If you don't mind me asking, what part of the business is not going to be completely legit?

Excellent summary of what I feel is the US government's current stance on Bitcoin. In the US, at least, Bitcoin is not big enough of a "problem" for them to waste time and resources on. My hope is that Bitcoin will have shed most of the misconception surrounding its use by the time that it does become big enough for them to deal with. Maybe it'll see acceptance instead of condemnation. Or, at the least, apathy on their part.

I've paid a couple of people who did work for me with Bitcoin. One of them was already using the currency. The other learned of it through me. Both were satisfied.

The problem with consistent payroll via Bitcoin is the fluctuation of the price. Easiest way would be to pay someone a value in fiat converted to Bitcoin: if you paid someone $100 a week, you'd pay them with $100 worth of Bitcoin. Then you could just record that $100 as wages paid in your books without complicating your accounting process. You might be able to claim the fees you pay for converting the fiat to Bitcoin as a business expense. I haven't personally pursued that, so I can't say what kind of fight you might have to put up.

Using BTC exclusively makes the accounting process a pain in the ass. I personally keep a separate book for BTC expenses that I do with a custom Excel spreadsheet. I know there's an open source program that allows custom currencies that seems popular around the forum, but I haven't had the time to check it out.

I actually put up a thread about that in the meta earlier today.

So the catch is that it adds a $5 fee on top of the $3.95 charged by ZipZap? I guess that's the price to pay if you don't want to use cash.

Edit: So here's a question: when you go to bill pay, ZipZap comes up as cash payment only. Do you not use the bill pay option like you would do with a cash deposit?

No problemo, glad to help.

I agree. The media isn't concerned with the technical information. They want the practical application. If Bitcoin is going to catch on as a worldwide currency or payment option (however you want to view it), it needs to connect with the casual consumer. And the casual consumer wants pizza and coffee, not ASICs and mining securities.

Go to profile, then click on "Forum Profile Information" in the box on the left hand side. The first box of profile options will have your avatar information.

snapsunny did an amazing job on my portrait. I love it, and I'll be posting here again if I ever need more artwork done! +1

Muchas gracias

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I've never seen an email address with a space in it. Hell, I didn't know it was possible. Learn something new every day, I suppose.

Muchas gracias!

I do agree that some first time scammers may not be as put-off by these ideas. But if they do successfully scam someone, I think they'll see that the reward didn't really match the effort, which will prevent repeat scammers from coming back again. There's still the chance that first-time scammers will give up during the wait, and it could also stop the scam before it happens if they don't have good post content to build trust with lenders.

Another point I forgot to mention is that it could help prevent the creation of sock-puppet accounts, since the scammer would have to keep up the requirements for two accounts at the same time.

For one, I doubt any single lender either has or is willing to lend an amount as large as BTC13,500 (which is over $300,000). For another, you're going to have to provide more than you're offering to potential lenders before they invest (which is really what this probably is). For example: what kind of guarantee do you have that your business will be profitable in six months? Do you have a business plan put together? If not, can you create one that can convince lenders to support your business? If you're secretive about your project, people are not going to risk their money on it.

It seems to me like there has been growing concern for lending and currency exchange scams from new members jumping straight out of the newbie section and into those forums. And from what I've seen, most of these scammers are repeat customers: they get a scammer tag, so they create a new account and try it again. This is a process that takes little effort to achieve with the current restrictions on new members. I have two ideas of changes that can be made that will increase the effort needed for scams without imposing a heavy burden on honest new members.

1: I think that the current requirements for new members to post outside of the Newbie forum could stand to be increased. Five posts and four hours of browsing the forum are easy things for scammers to accomplish. To that end, I propose the following changes:

• Changing the new member posting requirement from 5 posts to at least 10; possibly around 15-20.
• Changing the browsing hours from 4 hours to 5-6.

The posting requirement is the easiest change, as well as what I feel to be the most immediate need: five posts are incredibly easy to make. Increasing the requirement to 15-20 would not be a major annoyance to legitimate members. However, I believe the waiting hours have a bigger affect on scam reduction. Five posts can be done in ten minutes, but that still leaves a four hour wait that scammers may be too impatient to deal with. An increase of an hour or two wouldn't change things too badly, and it could be the extra step that turns a scammer away.

2: I also think that, whether hand-in-hand with the above changes or as alternative to them, the forum could implement posting requirements to access forum sections that are prone to scamming (lending in particular). An investment in the forum is a fair exchange to request loans from the members of the forum. My proposal:

• Implement a posting requirement of 100 to 150 posts to access high-risk forum sections.

I see two benefits to this kind of requirement. For one, it puts another step of time in the way of potential scammers. Even if it doesn't prevent a patient scammer from claiming a victim, it will strongly dissuade repeat scammers from creating new accounts and starting over from scratch. They probably will not see a return that's worth the effort; on another note, they may feel the need to pursue more expensive scams that are not as successful (i.e; asking for BTC10+, which lenders are wary of, instead of BTC1-3 scams that are usually more successful).

The second benefit is that it helps legitimate members build a stronger web of trust. A 100 post requirement gives the member more time to provide positive contributions to the forum and to gain a history of successful trades of goods or services. It also gives potential lenders more history to review before they commit to lending.

Edit: To add in a third benefit to this requirement: it could help prevent the creation of sock-puppet accounts used to build false trading histories.


I'm not claiming that these changes will completely prevent scams: dedicated scammers are going to jump through whatever hoops they have to. I do believe that these changes will reduce successful forum scams without turning away honest new members. And while I agree that forum members need to apply their own reasoning and common sense when it comes to trusting others, I also believe that we can better protect forum members in a non-intrusive way.

ID scans are good for confirming your identity as well as knowing who to point out to authorities if a scam takes place. They aren't considered collateral though. It needs to be something you physically own (like danieldaniel said) that you would send to the lender. The lender would then send it back once the loan is paid off.

For example, say I needed a $100 loan from a lender who requests collateral. I could send them my iPhone as collateral. They would then lend me the $100. Once I pay back that $100 to the lender, they would send me the iPhone back. If I were to not repay the loan, they could sell my iPhone to recoup the $100 loss.

BTC14 is what, around $300 roughly? If someone is going to lend you $300 worth of Bitcoin, they may want something as collateral worth the same. Whether or not someone will accept an online item as collateral depends on the lender, but if a lender were to accept an online item as collateral, it would have to be equal (or close) in value to the amount of the loan.

Collateral is something a borrower offers in exchange for a loan in the event that he cannot repay the lender. Like a mortgage that has the home as collateral: if the borrower does not make his payments, the lender gets ownership of the house to recoup his losses.

For a loan as big as BTC14, a lender is going to want collateral as insurance. You need to offer something of equal value to the loan to the lender. The lender can hold on to that item until you repay the loan. If you don't repay the loan, they can use that item to recoup their loss.

I've gotten one of the two bets I made back, but it's been 30 minutes since I got it. Not sure what happened to the other one.

Same here. I just went back to my SDICE wallet after about a week to send in a bet or two and it hasn't taken my first bet yet. It's been 10 minutes on a wait that's supposed to be a few seconds. Major bummer.

I haven't looked through your other topic yet, so I apologize for any ignorance in my response here. I'm also in the States, so I don't have a lot of tax knowledge related to AU.


Based on this tax code you posted, BitCoin might qualify as a CGT asset. I'm looking at their examples of CGT assets that lists debts owed to you and foreign currency. Debt owed caught my attention since it could imply that something doesn't have to be a physical asset to qualify as a CGT asset. You brought up that BitCoin wouldn't be property since it's a digital file, but being a digital file may not disqualify it from being an asset. Debt owed is not a physical asset until payment has been received, but it's still an asset since it has a monetary value tied to it. BitCoin could, in essence, be the same thing: it's a digital representation of defined monetary value, which could mean it's an asset.

The foreign currency thing caught my attention since, like you said, the status of BitCoin as a currency could change. I don't know how AU would interpret it's current status, but it may try to argue it as a taxable currency when it comes to getting more tax revenue.