Hey Rodeo! It's February 2019 now :S almost a full year since I've even done anything on these forums. Has the bitcoin ever been found or was it finally moved? any news or updates? So sad that there's no story on how it was found or anything, I was definitely hoping to come back here and read something cool.

Hope all is well!

"to pay taxes when I do receive MY money into "my" bank account, to pay taxes to STORE MY money in "my" bank account, to pay taxes to use their terrible internet banking to operate with MY money, to pay additional taxes for various transactions, to pay ridiculous fees for every paypal transaction and/or withdrawal, to wait a week for approval on a large transactions.."

You don't pay taxes to receive money in your bank account, you pay on what you earned, if you sold a house for $500,000 and your profit was $74,000 you're paying taxes on $74,000 whether it's in bitcoin or in your bank account. That's income tax, not a bank tax.

You don't pay taxes to use their internet banking ( which is safer than bitcoin, if you get hacked and your money stolen, they will return it. Bitcoin won't )

You don't pay taxes for various transactions? what country do you live? you're an idiot.

PayPal withdrawal's are free to a bank account in the USA, PayPal Transactions are free to friends and family, bitcoin is not free, the fees are usually higher than PayPal's on amounts under $40

I think you're just talking out your a s s because you can.

Let's say you deposited $200,000 in your bank account back in January this year and it was ALL profit and you had to pay taxes on it. Let's say your taxes were 35 percent, that's $70,000. You'd have $130,000 in your account come tax time. Or you put $204,000 in bitcoin in January you'd have around $64,000 today. So I think you're making the wisest decision and you seem like a very responsible reasonable individual. Lol

Yeah, back when it was $11,xxx I was debating on traveling there, I looked at tickets and it was going to cost me around $1,500 and I was thinking if it remains in the 11k range I'd go because the flight would cost me $400 out of pocket after finding the btc, and I could enjoy an African vacation on the cheap and make awesome memories because I'd definitely do a lot of exploring around different countries, but since it's fallen to the $6,xxx levels I don't think it's as feasible right now but still loving this idea and I do hope someone finds it and has an awesome story to tell!

Rodeo I do think it's people like you that are trying to keep the community active that will help bitcoin in the long run, I think what you're trying to do now is the equivalent of what Gavin did in the early days with the first faucet that gave out 5 btc for free, getting people into it and new interest

Never hit $100... The low was around $200.

Thank you Rodeo! I appreciate it! Really great forum, good luck to everyone else!

Is it a Leopard?

How is it any different than what banks have been doing for over 20 years? same with Visa, Mastercard? nothing... it's nothing spectacular. It's just the same technology that's been around with a twist on it. How does that make it the future, please explain.

I literally have no idea what you just said.

Let's say you were the 2nd person to mine bitcoins besides Satoshi himself. Every time someone else mined bitcoins besides you and Satoshi you bought them. The going rate back in 2009 to January 2010 was $1 for 1400 so let's say you bought every bitcoin besides your own mined and Satoshi's from January 3rd 2009 ( the first mined bitcoin by Satoshi ) to February 2010 and then kept buying for the few months every time someone mined bitcoins you asked if you could buy them. Then when Laszlo did the pizza deal, you would've bought him a lot of pizzas, then when SmokeTooMuch tried to sell 10,000 for $50 and another guy tried to sell 22,000 bitcoins for like $70-$80 you would've bought that... basically every time it came available. You'd probably have about $500-$1000 into bitcoin by now... and you'd own like 5 million bitcoins... no one else would bother to mine them then, you'd own all the rest of the bitcoins besides Satoshi's who disappears in 2010 and then you disappear in 2011 with your 5 million, no one remembers what bitcoin is and you'd have a net worth of 0! yay

Governments control you, you do not control governments. They do not have a choice? they do have a choice. South Korean will be next probably, eventually other countries will come along and ban bitcoin. It's really not that important, bitcoin kinda sucks to be honest guys. Wake up.

This is to Jamal not the original poster.

1. I have no idea what you are saying or talking about. Your argument is ridiculous and literally makes no sense.

2. BTC is one of them.

3. It happens all the time, the person who posted this is most likely not a hacker. There are hackers that have hacked wallets and will continue to do so. Just because you haven't been hacked before doesn't make this any less true. I have never been in a car accident while driving, doesn't mean I can't be.

5. What does the personal net worth of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have to do with cryptocurrencies? lmao that's the most ridiculous thing I think I have ever heard, ever. You sir have no idea what you're talking about on anything.

6, 7, 8, 9, 10... what? lol

I've been in and out of the bitcoin community since early 2013 when prices were just $58 per coin and I own some btc as well as read about it daily. I'm an investor at heart and there are still too many obstacles for bitcoin to overcome to ever become anything besides speculation, and this is why the price will ultimately fall, I can easily see bitcoin falling to prices under $300 again or smaller. Why do I say that?

Bitcoin fees. As the blockchain reward gets smaller and smaller and more transactions keep coming in the fees will keep rising. Right now for me to send any amount of bitcoin on coinbase it's over $11.41 to do so, of course there are other wallets like blockchain with smaller fees. But right now the system is so back logged the main ones being sent through are priority. To break this down a bit better, there are very very few people using bitcoin at the moment compared to the world. I meet people on a daily basis that never heard of it, and I meet a few that have heard of it but have no idea what it really is. The majority of the people I do come across couldn't tell you the first thing about bitcoin. That's just the start of the issue, if bitcoin is having such a backlog right now, what if it was as widespread as Visa or mastercard? I read that bitcoin can barely do 12 transactions per second, while visa handles around 2,000 per second. Even if the 2mb segwitx2 came into play, it still couldn't handle a fraction of what Visa handles.

I personally run a business where I buy and sell products online. The warehouse that I purchase from luckily takes credit cards for online payments, which brings me to my next point. I have a travel rewards card, and I earn over $150-$180 a month buying items for my business. Not only do I use this for my business, but I use it for my day to day needs from groceries, gas, everything. There are many times when I am at the store and my bill will come to $110 for example, even if I have $200 in cash in my wallet, I won't touch it. I'll get my rewards card and then use the cash to pay the rewards card down. Why would I make a purchase at all using cash when I have a rewards card that actually gives me money back and free traveling? Bitcoin can never offer this. I've already earned over $850 dollars, which will pay for my plane ticket to Asia early next year. All this because I was shopping.

Fees and wait time. Let's say I decided I will stop trying to earn free rewards and I am going to just go ahead and start buying my items in bitcoin because free traveling doesn't sound appealing anymore. Let's say I am at Walmart and I want to check out immediately, I transfer my money to Walmarts wallet, now not only am I losing any rewards, but now I am the one responsible for paying the fee to transfer to them, and if there is a delay in the system I may be asked to wait for an hour... or two... or three? until my transaction is confirmed? no thanks, why are we speculating on this for our future?

So what if the roles are we reversed and we asked Walmart to pay our transfer fees to them to make transactions. First, we have to truly understand how retail works. If you were to go to a big company like Pepsi or Nabisco and say "hey I have a great new design for the oreo's you sell but it costs 0.05 cents more than what you're paying now" you'll be leaving without a sale. Because in retail half a cent in production means everything, you're talking billions of costumers and 0.05 cents adds up, quick. Walmart would never agree to pay the fees associated with bitcoin, they must come down to match the fees of visa and mastercard, and frankly, that is never going to happen. They could not even come close. Not only is Visa destroying Bitcoin on a transaction speed level, but their fees are very very small compared to bitcoin, even if a transaction fee was reduced to say 45 cents, it is still less on average than what it costs to take a debt/credit card. And the sad reality is, the opposite is going to happen as miners need to make up more money by charging higher fees as the mining reward gets cut in half again. The thing is with bitcoin is everyone is looking to get rich, and they're looking to get rich in USD ( or their fiat currency ) not in bitcoin, and human greed is a funny thing. It can't be controlled. People always want more. Companies are the same way but governments control that they are not price gouging and have set max fees allowable to be charged to the retailer to avoid that greed. Something governments couldn't put in place on decentralized human greed.

So now you have higher fees, longer wait times, no customer service if an issue occurs, loss of money if you are hacked, or if another exchange closes down... let's look at the scale of bitcoin and we can see that it is not a currency and never will be used as one. People will always use cash, or rewards credit cards. Plus the people that can't even figure it out, I mentioned in my last article how my dad can't even turn on a computer much less figure out how to actually buy a bitcoin and use it. That's a good portion of adults 50+

Environment concerns. As most of us read recently Bitcoin uses more electricity in mining, than the entire country of Nigeria, and puts out more carbon dioxide than Ecuador. Again, we look at how small bitcoin actually is, and we must see if it does keep growing, there will be environmentalist going crazy over the actual harm it is doing to our planet. Even on this small level of bitcoin, we're probably removing years off our planet as it is. When you think we're using more energy than entire countries just to mine what? bitcoin? what is it and is it really worth hurting our planet over? our planet is probably already going to be destroyed in the next 1000 years, are we not thinking about our future generations and just worrying about getting some fake internet currency that we're willing to risk our future generations over it by destroying our planet sooner than we already are? Something has to be done, and something will be done. If bitcoin keeps growing, if governments aren't worried about bitcoin taking over their currency as it is, they will see it as hurting our planet and stop it so it stops the carbon footprint.

Many say governments have no control over bitcoin, and the reality is they do. Most people are law abiding citizens and won't want to risk going to jail or being fined for dealing in cryptocurrencies. I have heard the argument many times that if a country bans it, it will only fuel the fire more. But the case is not true, I personally would not be holding bitcoins at all if it were illegal, and many others wouldn't either. There are tons of ways to make money, and if the speculation is gone that this is the way of the future, so goes the price as well. Retailers would never accept it, and you could truly do nothing with it, and at the end of the day you're holding a piece of air that doesn't even give you dividends.

Last piece of this article - Jamie Dimon and others are not "scared" of bitcoin and it doesn't mean you're onto something when a high financial person disses it. I will say Jamie came on a little too strong by calling it a fraud. I don't think bitcoin is a fraud or a ponzi-scheme, but there is really no threat to the financial system with bitcoin. The fact is, we're a regulated world, bitcoin is not regulated, therefore there are no employees, no one to help you with when you have questions, and no help, period. Meaning you and your wife want to buy a house, but the banks are all gone because of bitcoin (let's pretend) where do you go to get a mortgage to buy this house? or car? you see, banks make a good portion of their money on the interest you pay on your loans. The majority of people will not accept bitcoin for their homes, assuming you own enough bitcoin to even buy a house without getting a mortgage. ( which isn't most of you ) So now this automatically brings banks back into the picture, because the reality is, we need loans. Personal loans, mortgages, car loans, etc. The average person just doesn't make enough money to buy a house, and while a few did get rich enough to buy homes off of bitcoin, that reality will come to an end eventually. ( if it hasn't already ) So Jamie probably isn't fearing bitcoin because he knows people will always need loans. I don't see the bitcoin bank loaning me any money. But if anyone gets a hold of Satoshi and finds out how I can apply for a loan, please reply

In this article, I'm trying not to mention all the downsides to bitcoin, like all the criminals it inspired and all the other things that are bad with bitcoin I mentioned in my last article. I'm just trying to be realistic. I want people to open their eyes and realize that this is not going to be revolutionary, it's interesting, I also find some of the things interesting like who really is Satoshi and Laszlo doing 10,000 bitcoin pizza deals. The old days were interesting and I've read over all the old articles just for fun. But as interesting as it is, it's not revolutionary, it's not the next big currency and it's definitely not an investment tool.

Thanks for reading. Your comments and opinions will all be read and highly appreciated.

Someone logical for once. Agreed 100%

You're the type of people that Satoshi Nakamoto would hate if he was still around. Everyone thinks they get Bitcoin but in reality they know nothing. It's a joke. Most people that love bitcoin are millennials and know nothing about investing and only know that they made a few bucks on bitcoin and now they're in love due to the sheer fact they're making REAL money ( government backed money, not bitcoin )

I also make huge profits from real estate and stocks. Albeit Bitcoin has risen a lot more than any of my real estate and stock transactions, but that's because it's in a bubble fueled by dreams of investor's jumping in as mentioned in my last post. The technology isn't as innovative as you think, and it's definitely not going to help poor people. The only thing Bitcoin would help in a scenario where it keeps propelling endlessly, is the people that jump on the bandwagon now ( or when prices were lower ) some poor person that never heard of Bitcoin until 2021 and tries to jump in at say a valuation of $20,000 ( again assuming it keeps propelling out of control ) they are only receiving a portion of bitcoin, this isn't going to change their life. They will spend say, $100 on bitcoin, and if it's widespread at the time, they'll buy $100 in groceries and then they'll be back to where they were in the beginning had they just went to the store and spent $100 USD on groceries. Same outcome. It would have no effect for them other than the fact of the risk. They might buy in at $100 thinking that it'll keep jumping in price like it has done in the past and then it drops to $15,000 overnight because Mark Cuban calls it a bubble again, or there are problems within the bitcoin community, another MtGox? Someone hacks the system? Attacks, etc and now they are left with $75 to buy groceries for their family. Remember this is a poor family, so now they lost $25 that they could've used to buy more food for their family. And Remember with higher prices comes higher volatility, not more stable. BRKA was trading at $247k 3 months ago and today it's $267k and trust me, BRKA is a lot more stable than BTC, yet a $20,000 change is still pretty dramatic.

Sure the scenario is quite silly, but you said poor people, so I used a poor person scenario, I know plenty of poor people that have issues coming up with $25 dollars, no less $100... I see no affect Btc will ever have on poor. It's an investment, not a currency... and an iffy investment at that. If I was Mark Cuban and I said all this, I am sure you'd see prices in the $3,500 or less right now, but I have no say since I'm not a billionaire investor.

I think I have really said all I can say about Bitcoin at this time, I don't see many reasons for me to reply to this thread much anymore. I have said how I feel about it, maybe I am wrong, maybe I'm right. I feel this is a very high risky investment, I wish anyone that invests in it long term luck. I know the average person will not hodl their investment and will cash out. If too many cash out at once too it'll fall. Especially if/when the Winklevoss brothers decide it's time. It's been an investment for a long time and I think that's all people will ever view it as.

I really do hope that people can use my opinions to make wise decisions, I wish no harm on anyone. I wish everyone could become rich and profitable, I wish everyone could have a house, food, and so much money they could buy whatever they wanted. There are going to be losers in bitcoin, and winners. I just hope that my opinions made some people think a bit more about bitcoin as a whole. I never came here to disrespect anyone, but I did come here to educate from the things I've learned over the years. I'm sure many of you know more about Btc than I do, but I also have different a perspective that I think might also be helpful in making decisions in the future before investing in Bitcoin and where it could be heading.

Thank you all for reading and for your responses.

My only point of posting is not whether it can go on without me, is that it should not go on with or without me. It's not real money. As I quoted earlier about what Warren Buffett said - "Stay away from it. It's a mirage, basically...The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is a joke in my view."
 
I only posted to show all the flaws it has in reality and that it should cease to exist, or at least go back to realistic levels ( under $100 per coin ) right now the bubble is beyond ridiculous and all these crazy people every few days saying it'll be $10,000 by this date and that date. They're only saying that because they own lots of Bitcoins, like that 18 year old bitcoin millionaire that owns 403. Sure he'll say it because he owns it. He cares about his own net worth. I know people that invest in west Dayton and put $5,000 in their house that they bought for $5,000 and claim they could easily sell it for $80,000 now that they did work. They got a "steal" no... you bought in west Dayton, you wasted $5,000 rehabbing it. You're lucky to get more than $7,500 even in this economy. People always like to dream what they invested in is great even if the reality is that it isn't great. "he psychology of bubbles fuels it. You just become more convinced that it's going to work. And the higher the price goes, the more convinced you become that you're right. But it's not going up because it's going to work. It's going up because of speculation." In other words, bitcoin’s upward momentum ­– even the price more than doubling within 90 days ­– may be a kind of self-fulfilling pipe dream."

That basically says it all.

I remember in 2006 and 2007 we were paying almost 4 dollars a gallon in South Florida, and the national average if I read correctly was $1.30 a gallon in 1999. I'm paying now $2.05 or so a gallon here in Ohio. If anything, gas got cheaper over the years. As did many things. The house I am closing on in Huber heights in a few weeks last sold in 1997 for $72,000, I'm purchasing the property now (albeit it needs some work) for $17,500. I used to pay $3.00-$3.50 for a gallon of milk, I now pay 0.98 cents. The house I live in now, I paid $21,000 cash for it, it last sold for over $55,000 in 2002. I grew up in a house in Florida, where the average house was $150,000 a house by 2002 and $230,000 a house by 2006 ( peak economy ) by 2008 they were worth $55,000-$75,000... there will always be inflation, but time and time again currencies and economies have properly corrected themselves. I do understand that over the years many things have gone up, and I have just shown you a few examples ( I have more ) but I also have some I can show you that are higher now too, as I'm sure anyone could. But with that also comes higher wages. So it makes up for the partial inflation, and when you have higher wages, and spend less on gas, milk, bread, buying a property, and even rent in some areas. It makes life a lot easier. I used to own a rental duplex in 2015 in Dayton, Ohio. The rent I charged was $475 per unit, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom. Albeit, it was Dayton and not Beverly Hills or SF. ( But then again, that goes back to the location rule of real estate.)

I used to live in Dayton in 2009 and rent down the same road where I ended up buying my duplex was $425 for a 1 bedroom 1 bathroom and $525 for 2 bedroom 1 bathroom. Rent did not increase at all, actually due to competition of other apartment buildings in the area, I had to lower my rent to $475 to get people because now I can find a 2b/1b there for $500 all utilities included ( I wasn't including utilities, I had to make some money lol )

My point is, the US seems kind of stable, maybe in Venezuela this could be great. I just don't see a need for it at the moment here in the USA. If you know about the genesis block that was first mined by Satoshi Nakamoto himself it had a hidden message "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" But in all reality the economy was just adjusting itself to a normal, natural level before it got out of hand. I admire his thinking that he wanted to create a currency that would not crash and could be used in times of turmoil like The Great Recession, but it's already been proven up to this point that it's an investment, not a currency. 99% of the people that invest in Bitcoin invest in hopes it goes up so they can sell out for USD, YEN, SGD, or whatever their currency is. They don't buy it in hopes of using it on their next grocery visit. Therefore, I don't see how Bitcoin protects anyone from inflation, if anything bitcoin itself is inflated right now with its crazy prices. I just think that this is not what Satoshi Nakamoto had in mind when he/they designed it. But then again he/they own around 1 million Bitcoins, so maybe this is what they want? That's to be determined.

- it’s not tied to geography and won’t be caught up in a trade war. If the world moves away from the USD as a global reserve currency (as nearly happened when the Euro came along) then the USD will tank. If you are in the U.K. holding pounds really sucks right now with brexit still reducing the value of every penny. Bitcoin, once its stable, allows for greater security than any one geographic currency. ----- That's yet to be proven.

Half the people in the world still don't have internet connection. Of course I get your point though, but it's still yet to be proven that Bitcoin can be mainstream as the internet, or even facebook for that matter. There's also always something that can and will come up that could replace Bitcoin. A good example of that is MySpace was king in 2004, they had many opportunities to buy Facebook but refused. Facebook took over and won, Facebook knows that this is a good possibility that someone will someday overtake them, so whenever they see a company coming up, they don't make the same mistake Rupert Murdoch did, they buy it no matter the cost. WhatsApp was 19 billion dollars. They bought Instagram, they tried more than once to buy SnapChat with Mark Zuckerberg even going to their house and knocking on their front door personally, they refused to sell and Facebook copied their features in hopes of killing out SnapChat knowing it could be some kind of competition to them.

So now there's where other issues come in, something better will always come up. Satoshi is nowhere to be found and there are no owners of the Bitcoin system, thus they can not keep buying competition as they come up and threaten them. I don't think they can compete when other currencies come up, especially if one is so much better. People say Bitcoin is the father, therefore it'll remain. LiveJournal was the father of Social media, then Xenga, then Friendster, Hi5, MySpace... how many of you on this forum use those on a daily basis? how many use Facebook?

Plus this is all even considering that the government doesn't decide to ban it outright. I read on this forum somewhere yesterday how if the government banned it, people would still use it. People use drugs and that too, is banned by the government. Drugs has a real effect behind it, you get high, you have a feeling of joy. There are reasons people use drugs, they want that feeling of not being sober. You don't get any kind of high from Bitcoins, it is supposed to be a currency, if the government did ban it, how would you use it? to buy a house? a car? go to the store and buy groceries? If the government does ban it and you continue to use Bitcoin, you're doing for hobby purposes only. There's no real investment behind it anymore as it could not be used anywhere publicly, which is what a currency is meant to be used for btw.

As long as there are files out there on the internet, hackers will exist. The sad truth about the internet. There's not much one can do about it. But that is one of the many reasons as mentioned I feel Bitcoin is too risky to invest a lot of capital in.

A. I can leave my cash in my house and wake up in 5 days and not worry that my USD is worthless. Bitcoin could crash at anytime, or it could go up thousands more. The point is we don't know. If we're comparing it to a cash currency it should be as stable as a cash currency, not in a bubble.  Plus you're kind of missing the point, cash is tangible. Bitcoin is not, if I lose anything on the internet, I should be able to get it back.

B. Who is to say that though? I get it's a program that someone made, but who is to say it is a currency? You can look at other altcoins like dogecoin and see they're almost worthless because there is no cap, but the thing is, it's all fake. Nothing is to say this is worth more or less except for people's feelings towards it. I think the article I quoted in my first post says it best ""There's certainly a lot of bullishness about bitcoin and cryptocurrency, and that's the case with bubbles in general. The psychology of bubbles fuels it. You just become more convinced that it's going to work. And the higher the price goes, the more convinced you become that you're right. But it's not going up because it's going to work. It's going up because of speculation." In other words, bitcoin’s upward momentum ­– even the price more than doubling within 90 days ­– may be a kind of self-fulfilling pipe dream."

In reality Bitcoin is only worth what you think it's worth and same goes with any cryptocurrency. They could all fail at any given time. This is a new technology.

Also everyone likes to point out the USD and the mint printing more and more each year, but no one takes into effect how much the government destroys each year. Here's a nice article on that: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/04/the-destruction-of-money-who-does-it-why-when-and-how/236990/ but in case you don't want to click the link - Think about money being created. A furiously spinning printing press might come to mind. Now imagine money being destroyed. Do you think of a three-story shredder, a bonfire, a wide blue recycling bin?

You might have noticed that it's pretty hard to find any cash printed much earlier than the 1990s in circulation. Just as more money is constantly being created, it's also constantly being destroyed. Who are the destroyers of money, and how do they do it?

In 2010, 2.6 billion $1 bills were destroyed. ( keep in mind that was only $1 dollar bills, not $5's, $10's, $20's, $50's and even $100's which also get destroyed )

So yes there is inflation with USD but there's also the government behind it keeping inflation down by destroying old money, something else that won't happen in Bitcoin. There is no one really behind it anymore keeping it anything more than a fun hobby because you very well could lose everything you have invested in it.

C. I highly doubt that most places will start taking Bitcoin for many reasons, if I owned a business the only way I'd dream of taking Bitcoin if I could quickly turn it into USD ( so my money would be safe and secure ) not in something that's fake. I read through a lot of these forums and most people are always talking about whether they should hodl their bitcoins or sell them to realize their profit. If bitcoin was a currency, there would be no need to sell to realize a profit. You already have your profit. Why sell? I don't go around trying to sell my USD for a profit, I use it to buy groceries, houses, etc... look around the forums and see how many people talk about the money they've made by investing in bitcoin. Not that the money was bitcoin.

Plus, there are only a handful of people that own a majority of bitcoins, early adopters and people like the Winklevoss twins. Most people own no bitcoin, and most people that do own very very little. The amount of people that believe in bitcoin on a mass scale is actually really low. Too many if's about the technology and I see nothing amazing about the blockchain, and how only 21 million coins will ever be produced. I don't see how that could ever stop inflation. If anything I think it could help fuel it, think about my Venezuelan example up there how 1 USD used to be under 2,000 BsF and now it's over 16k BsF... think in 200 years if Bitcoin is the only currency ( lol ) and it's split up among so many people that for a loaf of bread it costs 100 Satoshi, a gallon of milk 250 Satoshi... and they're making no more of it, the blockchain is done. People will get sick of that and a new technology will emerge saying you can now buy a loaf of bread for 1 Shanaynay because this blockchain technology is new. Keep in mind that all these new technology's are using the same blockchain technology as well. I don't get how or why that's important to it. I guess Satoshi wanted the people to feel like they were doing something productive by "mining"

I just see too many down sides to Bitcoin and too many upsides to government controlled money... and trust me, I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not a fan of the government and/or taxes, but I see more potential in it than I do in bitcoin... plus at the end of the day it's a lot easier to use by far.