rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)

[AnonyMint]

creekbore thanks for articulating what I would but can't at the moment.

Just want to add that I don't want you relegated to plant food. My intention is create a 3rd option, where we opt-out without needing the masses to opt-out. If we successfully opt out, then we prosper while their system dies, otherwise we die with it. I am working diligently on this technology, which is why I am lacking sleep. I believe there is a large and growing number of us who understand well enough. And once we are shown the light in detail, it will become much more clear.

Unfortunately I see Bitcoin is opting in because most users are and it doesn't have the technological mechanisms to allow partial opt-out.

I agree with everyone and Peter R that we are in an unstoppable movement, but what we need isn't yet on the market. Bitcoin isn't going to just magically reverse and become less centralized. It is already centralized. One pool just crossed the 50% threshold of the hash power. Actually due to selfish mining, one only needs 25% of the hash rate to take control. I added some links to my post on the prior page. Someone actually has to create the technology to make that centralization impossible. Just wishing it to be so won't accomplish anything.

[rjp55]

Risto said no more $500 coins ever.

If I can't trust his predictions who's can I trust?...

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

Risto said no more $500 coins ever.

If I can't trust his predictions who's can I trust?...

You can trust the omnipresent and trustworthy PBOC aka "People's Bank of China" 

[icey]

Risto said no more $500 coins ever.

If I can't trust his predictions who's can I trust?...

Hasn't hit 500.. yet. So technically he's still right (for how long I'm not sure)

[DieJohnny]

1.  The Average Joe will win.  He will be jealous of his friend who had the foresight to purchase coins at $10,000 / BTC, but he will see that a transition to bitcoin represents a jubilee for his unmanageable debt load.

2.  The already rich will win.  They will retain ownership of the productive capital they already control.  The will also read the writing on the wall before average Joe and possibly amplify their financial assets too.  

3.  The already politically-powerful will win.  Why fight to destroy bitcoin when you can stealthily work to make it grow and increase your independent power and wealth?

4.  Established institutions like the IRS, Fed, NSA, IMF will lose.  However, many of the talented individuals currently working in such institutions will win by hastening their demise and exploiting their insider knowledge.  

1. I generally disagree with this one. Never in the history of mankind has the average Joe won in mass, IMHO. Somehow I don't believe it will magically happen now that Bitcoin is around.
2. I agree
3. I agree
4. I disagree, the IRS, Fed, and NSA are the world's super powers of today, not countries or presidents. Nothing short of a revolution will remove them from power and they represent the biggest threat to Bitcoin period.

[rpietila]

1. I generally disagree with this one. Never in the history of mankind has the average Joe won in mass, IMHO. Somehow I don't believe it will magically happen now that Bitcoin is around.

Bitcoin is a technology. Most every time the benefits of a new technology, properly applied, have benefited the average Joe sooner or later.

Risto said no more $500 coins ever.

If I can't trust his predictions who's can I trust?...

Hasn't hit 500.. yet. So technically he's still right (for how long I'm not sure)

Yes, just wait until I am proven wrong. Before that it is just confusing. And if it happens, then remember that all I said that it was slightly more than 50% chance that we will not see it again. It is like, I would just have been willing to wager 1:1 on it.

Currently I think (based on the crash) that it is more probable than not that it will be broken. I typically don't have any magical or insider info. I am a mathematician, statistician and economist.

Just follow the exponential trendline. It is already like 900. By buying now it is very difficult to lose. Yes, I have spent countless of hours analysing it.

[nakaone]

Just follow the exponential trendline. It is already like 900. By buying now it is very difficult to lose. Yes, I have spent countless of hours analysing it.

do you share this? - would probably be interested in this for interest/scientific purposes

[sporket]

...
 Most every time the benefits of a new technology, properly applied, have benefited the average Joe sooner or later.
...

Count the qualifiers in that sentence

[rpietila]

Just follow the exponential trendline. It is already like 900. By buying now it is very difficult to lose. Yes, I have spent countless of hours analysing it.

do you share this? - would probably be interested in this for interest/scientific purposes

Here.

[AnonyMint]

After some sleep my legarthy has morphed into a slight migraine. Ah the wonders of neuropathy and auto-immunity.    Apologies creekbore now I realize you meant you are hoping the NWO if it comes will be after you are old and dead, not that a NWO would force you to choose to be plant food. The NWO is rapidly crystallizing within our lifetime.

1. I generally disagree with this one. Never in the history of mankind has the average Joe won in mass, IMHO. Somehow I don't believe it will magically happen now that Bitcoin is around.

Bitcoin is a technology. Most every time the benefits of a new technology, properly applied, have benefited the average Joe sooner or later.

Risto it appears you excel on "counting" games, but when it comes to logic it appears you over generalize (or choose the simplest understanding for efficiency) and this causes you to make mistakes. I suck at board games but I appear to excel at seeing all the conceptual issues in full range of depth and extracting the generative essence. Our brains appear to be wired differently. That appears to make you better at finding arbitrage opportunities than me (but gives you no advantage in timing market moves), but my skill appears to make me a superior visionary than you. I don't excel mentally with anything that requires me to interact with my external sensors. I excel with short I/O tape and then let my mind run on it, although normally my reading comprehension is very high but don't expect me to interact in parallelized real-time with my I/O i.e. that game you mentioned upthread (I tried while getting sleepy and only managed 16000 after several tries perhaps I would do better if I put some thought into how I should be calculating the move probabilities on that grid, but it appears to come naturally to you?).

I had the following insight before, but no one prompted me to share it. It is difficult for me to keep track of all my ideas.

Contemplate that the technologies which benefit the masses are those which have individual scope; whereas, those which subject the masses to greater extortion via the collective have collective scope. For example, washing machines have only individual scope and were rapidly (logistically) adopted across the breadth of the developed world. Whereas, nuclear power and nuclear weapons can't be individualized and have further enslaved us in the collective.

The internet (networking in general) is a mix of individual empowerment and collective enslavement.

What does anonymity do in theory? In theory it makes it possible to have all the individual empower without any (most) of the collective enslavement.

This is why I am so obsessed with making sure we have anonymity, not just in our money but in every aspect of the internet. The technology I am working on is not only applicable to crypto-currency. I want to change the entire internet to make it asymmetrically more of an individual empowerment.

Throughout history we had anonymity in our money because it was physical. Now Bitcoin comes along with a fully traceable public ledger and we give up asymmetric power to the collective. This alarmed the shit out of me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I said to myself a year ago, "hell no! not if I can do anything about it".

In geek speak, "you just don't get it".

The other asymmetric problem specific to Bitcoin is it uses ASICs thus mining is in the hands of the few, and also there is nothing in the design which economically discourages large pools thus one pool now controls more than 50% of the hash rate. Bitcoin has already fallen and can NEVER be a benefit to the individual. Sorry! Just wishing it to be not so is foolish. I don't have a vendetta against crypto-currency, rather I am logically analyzing the situation. And attempting to fix it. I was frankly initially shocked that you were so dismissive and uninterested (and others even attacked me for wanting to improve the situation), but then I realized it is because you guys don't think on a deep level as I do or you are blinded by your speculative fever and vested interests as owners of Bitcoins. And thus you walk right into the honey pot so designed to trap you. (And there are both technical and political reasons improvements to these issues can NEVER be back ported into Bitcoin. Sorry!)

P.S. the other fundamental driver of asymmetric power of the collective on the internet is the client-server model instead of P2P.

It is a fact that a physical multifurcating network is more efficient than a fully connected mesh topology, i.e. running a smaller pipe from the water district to each house increases the cost and back pressure than running a main line and then multifurcating branches off it (cross-sectional area reduces by the square of the proportional diameter decreases). However, the transfer of data on the internet does not obey that physical law because we don't charge for data according to the path it takes. However the challenge is the efficient, redundant DHT storage and serve of data for a purely P2P internet. That is a more difficult technical hurdle.

[Lowryder]

Risto said no more $500 coins ever.

If I can't trust his predictions who's can I trust?...

Hasn't hit 500.. yet. So technically he's still right (for how long I'm not sure)

By 2100 NY time tonight < 500

[AnonyMint]

P.S.S. I predicted a couple of weeks ago the IRS ruling would be what it is and that it would cause the price to dive. The post is some where in my public archives on bitcointalk.

[Peter R]

Regarding AnonyMint's concern regarding concentration of mining power, something hit me this morning:

What the IRS issued recently was guidance.  It was their view of how the existing laws should be interpreted, given their knowledge of bitcoin.  However, the courts have the final say in the interpretation of law, and by making rulings they set precedent moving forward.  

From my discussions with various community members, I think the general feeling is that hashers are paid for the services they provide to a mining pool whereas miners create bitcoins based on their own initiatives and the acceptance of their efforts by their peers.  I think if the IRS had a deeper understanding of bitcoin, they would have used the word "hashers" rather than "miners" in their guidance.  

Based on existing laws, I believe miners (but not hashers) are free to recognize gains on any coins they create when a gain is realized, and a court challenge would rule in their favour.  But understand what this would mean: it would mean that mining on P2P pool imposes no reporting requirements on you, whereas mining at a pool like GHash.io does.    

It would mean there is a legal incentive to decentralize.  

This is my opinion and should not be construed as legal advice.  IANAL.  

[hdbuck]

meehhh. fuck the IRS. dont give them a single cent of our precious bitcoins.
central banks keeps on trying to drain our wealth whilst their shitty pieces of paper are becoming even more worthless as bitcoin rise.
game over bitches  

[Peter R]

dont give them a single cent of our precious bitcoins.

I believe miners (not hashers) would be legally justified to do exactly that. 

This is not legal advice.  IANAL.

[hdbuck]

dont give them a single cent of our precious bitcoins.

I believe miners (not hashers) would be legally justified to do exactly that. 

This is not legal advice.  IANAL.

this is civic advice.

[SlipperySlope]

Based on existing laws, I believe miners (but not hashers) are free to recognize gains on any coins they create when a gain is realized, and a court challenge would rule in their favour.  But understand what this would mean: it would mean that mining on P2P pool imposes no reporting requirements on you, whereas mining at a pool like GHash.io does.    

Yes, I agree with this observation. I have legacy coins that I CPU solo-mined back in 2010. I figure my tax basis is essentially zero dollars for these.

[AnonyMint]

...

From my discussions with various community members, I think the general feeling is that hashers are paid for the services they provide to a mining pool whereas miners create bitcoins based on their own initiatives and the acceptance of their efforts by their peers.

...

Based on existing laws, I believe miners (but not hashers) are free to recognize gains on any coins they create when a gain is realized, and a court challenge would rule in their favour.

Yes, I agree with this observation. I have legacy coins that I CPU solo-mined back in 2010. I figure my tax basis is essentially zero dollars for these.

I emphatically disagreed as follows and if you don't rush to report, you are just increasing your eventual pain. And thus selling pressure coming now before April 15 filing deadline as miners scramble to sell coins to raise revenues to pay taxes that are due immediately! What ever China news you all are referring to may be incidental.

The coinbase transaction sends you coins from the network, so this must be reported as income.

When you dispose the coins, you must report capital gains (or loss).

I saw my accountant long ago and discussed Bitcoin at length, and our assumptions based on existing law were pretty much exactly in line with this IRS guidance.  

Can you explain to me the logic behind the taxable event of block creation by miners? AFAIK, entities that mine physical gold don't have a taxable event when they pull it from the ground, do they? Isn't the taxable event when they sell the gold?

My rationale is the network of all users paid the coins to you in exchange for you providing a mining service.

Besides I wouldn't risk it on some flimsy interpretation you prefer, because fees and late penalties could be tacked on later. The IRS will always rule for the interpretation that nets them the most tax soonest. Good luck trying to defeat them in tax court.

Btw, I had this interpretation immediately upon learning of Bitcoin. It was obvious to me, well maybe that is because my sister and grandfather were both CPAs, my father is an attorney, and I self-taught myself double-entry cash and accrual accounting and tax accounting (when my sister and grandfather died).

it would mean that mining on P2P pool imposes no reporting requirements on you, whereas mining at a pool like GHash.io does.

Note my point above applies also to mining on a P2P pool. Also I hope you are aware that P2P pools are vulnerable to "share withhholding attack" (don't conflate that with my "transactions withholding attack") which was detailed in a whitepaper by Meni Rosenfeld in 2011 and Meni Rosenfeld's oblivious share fix couldn't be applied to P2P pools:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339902.msg3715641#msg3715641
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339902.msg3719385#msg3719385

So for an anonymous coin you can forget P2P pools, because they would surely be attacked by the governments.

[AnonyMint]

On the recent IRS ruling that BTC is property subject to capital gains on disposal of coins, and that miners must additionally pay income tax on the value of the BTC when mined, someone thinks being outside the USA will help but they are sorely mistaken...

The IRS has gotten it all wrong. All their statement will do is push onshore people to offshore services and companies where they cannot be taxed. I live and work in an offshore country where there are no capital gains taxes and cryptos aren't taxed in any shape or form. I'm already seeing a rise in what can best be described as "offshore crypto farms"...

As a former Treasury official was purported to have said, "we will burn the fingers of the goldbugs up to their armpits". And he also said, "its our dollar and your problem".

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/03/24/the-real-conspiracy-the-imf-tax-agenda/

Obama is on board fully with the IMF agenda to raise taxes substantially French style. The IMF has been behind the scenes going to every former tax shelter and threatening them to turn over data. They have hit the Caribbean islands right down to Panama. Obama has laced the Ukrainian aid with the IMF Poison Pill. The IMF wants a shit load of money to tear apart the global economy in search of unpaid taxes. The Obama Administration has conspired with the IMF behind closed doors and entirely out of the Congress to pursue this secret agenda. They are on the path to destroy Western Civilization as we know it. This is no joke.

...thus we headed into a crazy period where the governments will try to fund the $150223 trillion global debt bubble [4] by hunting down all private capital (G20 announced a database for this today, NSA will contribute and note this is the bankster business model for them to own everything), then as Bitcoin is taken over top-down then the alternative coin with the above features will take over and become the surviving private sector. For this new virtual economy...

I hope you also understand that FATCHA will compel the nations of the banks in all nations to comply and remember the developing world is short the dollar due to massive bond issues in dollars to the ZIRP carry trade. The USA is still in control of the world as we go into this implosion 2016ish.

My understanding is FATCHA does not require us to declare assets we hold overseas which are not in an "account", i.e. Nestmann said we probably do not need to report bullion that we hold in our homes, yet we would need to report (even allocated) bullion in any overseas account.

Are Bitcoins a private asset or an account? And where do they reside in our possession or in the public ledger? And where does the public ledger reside?

The problem is that governments (IRS in particular) invariably interprets laws in the way that brings them the most income. So I think they can argue (in their Kangaroo rigged courts) that since the public ledger resides in at least one computer overseas, then it is reportable under FATCHA.

Okay so no big deal right? Just report it. Well what about all of you who did not report on time already and held an account that was ever worth more than $10,000? You are already liable for 5X the maximum value of the unreported account in penalties plus 5 years jail time.

And reporting marks us in the IRS computers as "potential tax avoiders". The chance of audit drastically increases.

This is one of those issues that caused me to think it just isn't worth investing in Bitcoin without 100% reliable anonymity.

I am eager for someone to refute my analysis on this.

Disclaimer: consult your own tax attorney, I am not providing tax advice, merely discussing this issue.

Regarding the illuminati fears... superstitious is the end of reason.

Those who confuse superstition with exquisitely researched facts have lost rationality.

For those who think there is no global conspiracy, you are apparently not aware of Anthony Sutton:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVWXmZB1wc

See below on what the former IRS Commissioner told Aaron Russo when he was making the movie about there being no income tax law in the USA.

Martin Armstrong's position has been there is no proof of a global conspiracy, and he doesn't speculate. That is an acceptable position, except that he continues to assert there is no global conspiracy, which is thus speculation, since he doesn't have any proof to support that assertion. So I urge him to stop being disingenuous and appearing to be a tool of the elite towards a one world currency which he has proposed as a solution to this crisis.

As for proof of a global conspiracy, we got a big chunk of proof from Aaron Russo as follows.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279650.msg3497509#msg3497509

As a Treasury official said some decade ago about the time he also said, "we will burn the fingers of the goldbugs up to their armpits", it has always been the plan to go after the millionaires and steal back all their gains to the elite (skip to 36:35 min of the linked video) who run the fiat system. And Bitcoin is an amazingly great tracking tool to aid them in this coming global confiscation via taxation of the rich process. Note the elite super rich are always excluded from such gestapos.

Former (Jewish?) IRS Commissioner and the man who wrote much of the tax code law, said to (Jew) Aaron Russo (producer of Bette Midler, The Rose, Trading Places, etc) in Ashkenazi Jewish Yiddish language, "nothing will help you". Skip to the 37 min point in the linked video.

The elite know exactly what they are doing by launching Bitcoin via the fictitious anonymous identity "Satoshi".

Nick Rockefeller told Aaron Russo what the goal is.

P.S. The Ashkenazi Jews have a much higher average IQ of 117, and many elite are Ashkenazi Jews. The says nothing against all Jews however.

Also it is rather incredulous to discount the fact that all the transition to AML, KYC which is enabling this hunt for capital which Martin admits and writes about, was engineered starting with 9/11. And it pretty difficult to discount that 9/11 was not done by 16 guys on camels and was rather engineered by ... (much circumstantial evidence points to Dick Cheney as key cog in the wheel). They evidence that the buildings were not downed with airplanes is overwhelming, even 1000s of architects and engineers have signed a petition saying the government's story is implausible. And this terrorism false flag farce is being used to keep the world locked into a non-default increasing debt trajectory with a hunt for all capital. Precisely what is necessary to drive the world into a severe economic contagion which can usher in a one-world currency type result after destroying the nation-state concept.

I am not sure there is a global conspiracy. And it doesn't really affect my actions nor goals any way. So I don't really care. But I am skeptical of a guy (Armstrong) who says speaks against decentralized cryptocurrencies, speaks for a one-world currency solution (with national or regional currencies floating relative to it), and who speaks against the possibility of the global conspiracy without any proof.

Just because Armstrong is aware of manipulations at the lower-level echelon of the NY bankers club is not proof that the higher echelon doesn't exist. Logic 101 really.

Update: Armstrong writes today about the $2.3 trillion missing from Pentagon accounting and paperwork was conveniently destroyed at the Pentagon on 9/11.

[AnonyMint]

I had been pointing out this problem over the past weeks and months (remember upthread I pointed out that automating this computation was not realistic):

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/why-bitcoin-can-no-longer-work-as-a-virtual-currency-in-1-paragraph/359648/

If I have to figure out which particular Bitcoin in my wallet I want to spend and what the tax treatment will be, Bitcoin just doesn't work as a commercial medium of exchange.

But that article points out another problem with the fact that Bitcoin is not untaxable as legal tender:

The price at which a particular Bitcoin was acquired (and this is traceable) determines the capital gains on that particular Bitcoin when spent.  If I spend Bitcoin A, which I bought at $10, but is now worth $400, I’ve got a very different tax treatment than if I spend Bitcoin B, which I bought at $390. […] This means Bitcoins are not fungible, and that makes it unworkable as a currency.

The reason this destroys fungibility is that people will need to think about tax timing and implications when spending money, i.e. they have to bind their money to their total tax planning.

That is the antithesis of money, because you reduce the degrees-of-freedom and remember the entire point of money was to eliminate the gridlock of barter and make it easy to transact without the requirement to find matching scenarios.

This is major! This just destroyed Bitcoin. If you don't understand this, you really better take some deep thought time.

Actually I think I may have pointed this out last year in the thread by deisik in the Economics forum.

You are coming to my bandwagon whether you like it or not. Because I saw these problems early and began formulating the solutions many months ago. So am quite far along already.

Those who were friendly to me are now being rewarded and handed the resources to be leaders, because they showed that they were astute and possess a group-think filter so as to think out-of-the-box. And they now know something you don't.