Bitcoincard.org - bad start

[Come-from-Beyond]

Perhaps u've seen kewl video on http://bitcoincard.org/. It's exciting! Not only quality of the video but prospects too. I opened http://bitcoincard.org/movement.php to know more and saw:

You personal benefits from joining the bitcoin economy are:
1. Paying no transaction fees. Really and truly, zero fees;
2. Sufferng no inflation because bitcoin inflation is impossible;
3. Paying as much taxes as you actually will, beleive it or not;
4. Financial anonymity far beyond the best Cayman Islands can offer.

The very 1st point is a lie. Especially in the end-game when miners r supposed to earn money taking fees.
2nd point is quite exaggerated, inflation is possible. A few weeks ago 1 BTC was 15 USD, not 12 like right now.
3rd point... Anonymity in Bitcoin world is not easy to achieve and every transaction is stored in the blockchain, so if the state decides to get info how much bitcoins a particular person earns it will manage to do this. I don't even mention that without taxes the state will die so it will fight for taxes till death.
For 4th point look at 3rd one. Noone can stand against a beast with trillions of dollars.

What I'd like to say. Even the 1st point ruins the 1st impression about the project. I suspect it was created to scam non-bitcoiners...

[divergenta]

isn't gavin and other pretty trustworthy people behind that project?

[Come-from-Beyond]

isn't gavin and other pretty trustworthy people behind that project?

Who cares if it's started with a lie? Is Gavin an angel? I believe in St. Satoshi only.

[JMAHH]

I am finding the typo's more worrying...

[Elwar]

The very 1st point is a lie. Especially in the end-game when miners r supposed to earn money taking fees.

From the impression I got from the device, it will only interact with the Bitcoin network at the merchant nodes. One Bitcoin could be transferred back and forth among hundreds of these cards and then when it finally hits a merchant node it will register on the blockchain.

Kinda like using a casascius coin. You do not pay transaction fees for each exchange.

[Come-from-Beyond]

From the impression I got from the device, it will only interact with the Bitcoin network at the merchant nodes. One Bitcoin could be transferred back and forth among hundreds of these cards and then when it finally hits a merchant node it will register on the blockchain.

Kinda like using a casascius coin. You do not pay transaction fees for each exchange.

No. After a transaction is transfered from one card to another anyone of the parties will send the transaction to be processed after (s)he reaches any gateway. It's impossible to resend an unconfirmed transaction to someone else.

[caveden]

2nd point is quite exaggerated, inflation is possible. A few weeks ago 1 BTC was 15 USD, not 12 like right now.

Inflation != price rise.
But nevertheless, the point is not fully correct since there's nothing stopping people from doing fractional reserves or other forms of inflation that do not depend on an increase of the monetary base.

3rd point... Anonymity in Bitcoin world is not easy to achieve and every transaction is stored in the blockchain, so if the state decides to get info how much bitcoins a particular person earns it will manage to do this. I don't even mention that without taxes the state will die so it will fight for taxes till death.

Even if bitcoin provided perfect financial privacy, that alone is not enough to allow you to evade taxes at will. Remember that long ago people did have financial privacy, but that didn't stop states from taxing them. Property taxes and at some extent VAT are difficult to evade, even if you don't use banks at all.
And in what concerns income taxes, many states simply ignore the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" by forcing you to justify your means of living, and punishing you as a tax evader if you're not capable of doing so.

Even the 1st point ruins the 1st impression about the project. I suspect it was created to scam non-bitcoiners...

Why calling them scammers?

It's true that they should change their words. Not only because they are not accurate, but because it's not safe for yourself to say wide in the open "we can help you evade taxes!". But why this accusation out of nothing?

[Come-from-Beyond]

It's true that they should change their words. Not only because they are not accurate, but because it's not safe for yourself to say wide in the open "we can help you evade taxes!". But why this accusation out of nothing?

Maybe because I'm not so cold-blooded as u? Anyway I wrote "suspect", not "declare".

[MoonShadow]

No, Gavin is not directly involved in the development of the Bitcoincard.  And just because one person posting on the site in question doesn't fully understand how Bitcoin works, doesn't make him a scammer.  I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of members of this forum are wrong about how Bitcoin works on some technical level, and we are certainly the most educated population on the subject.  I was here months in the beginning, still being corrected on some minor misunderstanding of the subject.  I still won't claim to completely understand how the parts all fit together, and I expect that there are less than 50 people in the world who do, and of those 50 less than half could actually teach that knowledge to someone else.  Bitcoin is complex in so many technical fields, which is why I beleive that Satoshi was either a polymath or a group of skilled people.

[Gavin Andresen]

isn't gavin and other pretty trustworthy people behind that project?

Who cares if it's started with a lie? Is Gavin an angel?

Yes, I am an angel sent from God to deliver Justice to a world full of Sin!

But I'm not behind the bitcoincard project. I did meet with them in Vienna, along with other bitcoin folks. See http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/6/8/bitcoincard-in-vienna-day-1-coffee-missing-atms-and-some-tes.html for info/pictures.