We gonna talk about BitCoin?

The IRS has decided that a Bitcoin is not 'currency', it's property, like a share of stock.

If you are actively trading Bitcoin then you have a lot of paperwork to do. For example, if you pay an entity more than $600 for a service you have to get their taxpayer ID and send them a 1099.

You have to track the gain and loss on each Bitcoin transaction so you can calculate your capital gain or loss.

In other Bitcoin news the word is that there are very large institutional investors who are planning Bitcoin funds that could potentially pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the Bitcoin market.

Bitcoins: Virtual gold or virtual tulips? You decide.
 
The difference is, one is a protocol for transferring any information. It can adapt to whatever you find
valuable to transfer. The other is a protocol for trading specific information that may or may not be rendered worthless at any given time by a single stroke of a politician's pen.

For bitcoin to survive, the politicians will have to get their cut and their friends in the banking biz will also.

The better protocol analogy is bitcoin to MP3/digital music. It's a file protocol, not a networking protocol.

The politicians cracked the whip along with the RIAA until most folks were scared back to buying DRM'd music from "government approved" sources. Once the recording industry and the politicians had their mechanism to get their cut, heavy enforcement generally stopped on individuals, and they only go after the large download sites.

Obviously the sites are housed in other countries these days for that reason, and government has them well-monitored.

The changes in Net Neutrality lead to control of same on a larger scale. Carrier gets to play favorites, also makes back room deal with government to shut off the traffic to anywhere at any time, or make real-time copies of anything going to/from those addresses.

The whole scare tactic of building an "Internet Kill Switch" went over poorly with the constituents, so just give the carriers the ability and backing of government to throttle whatever they want, whenever they want, and don't treat them as a common carrier, even if they're the only game in town...

And you now have a pre-built selective Internet Kill Switch that the carriers built for themselves, but can be mandated to be used for government purposes with the stroke of a pen.

"Dear carriers. We allowed you to block and/or throttle whatever you decided you wanted to. Please see the attached Court Order mandating you stop all traffic from XYZ with your newfound and newly cost-justified traffic control systems."
 
As of January 1st, 2015, California now recognizes Bitcoin and other digital currencies as "lawful currency". I find it ironic that a currency primarily used by criminals and underworld networks is to be considered "lawful currency".
 
Dav8or said:
As of January 1st, 2015, California now recognizes Bitcoin and other digital currencies as "lawful currency". I find it ironic that a currency primarily used by criminals and underworld networks is to be considered "lawful currency".
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How does the State of California square that with Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution:
Section 10.

No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
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JeffDG said:
How does the State of California square that with Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution:
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Easy, Article VII-3/4: "Nothing in this Constitution shall inhibit any leftist from taking any action under auspices of the federal government and under the color of law, in any manner they shall see fit." Proposed, ratified and first implemented by His O'ness, the Emperor.
 
Dav8or said:
I find it ironic that a currency primarily used by criminals and underworld networks is to be considered "lawful currency".
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The state of california will fit right in.
 
Dav8or said:
As of January 1st, 2015, California now recognizes Bitcoin and other digital currencies as "lawful currency". I find it ironic that a currency primarily used by criminals and underworld networks is to be considered "lawful currency".
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They want to tax it. Don't steal; the government hates competition.
 
JeffDG said:
How does the State of California square that with Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution:
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I have no idea. I'm not a lawyer, or a legislator. I'm sure it will be challenged. I do know they are trying to classify it separate from the US dollar by calling it "lawful currency". The distinction as far as I can tell is, it can be excepted optionally. No one is required to take it in exchange for goods and services, but they can if they want to. I'm sure the bill AB129 was sponsored by the guys running this latest digital swindle, the guys in Silicon Valley.
 
Dav8or said:
The distinction as far as I can tell is, it can be excepted optionally. No one is required to take it in exchange for goods and services, but they can if they want to.
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Without any law, I can agree to accept sea shells or horse **** from you in exchange for goods and/or services.
 
JeffDG said:
Without any law, I can agree to accept sea shells or horse **** from you in exchange for goods and/or services.
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Make sure you mail the government their share of the horse **** :D
 
Dav8or said:
I have no idea. I'm not a lawyer, or a legislator. I'm sure it will be challenged. I do know they are trying to classify it separate from the US dollar by calling it "lawful currency". The distinction as far as I can tell is, it can be excepted optionally. No one is required to take it in exchange for goods and services, but they can if they want to.
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Exactly. By defining it as a "goods" it can be accepted and used to barter for products or services.
 
wsuffa said:
Exactly. By defining it as a "goods" it can be accepted and used to barter for products or services.
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I'm not sure it can withstand a legal test of being a good though. A Hydrogen Certificate backed by production, no worries, but I don't see how a Bitcoin qualifies.:dunno: Bitcoin always seemed like a Ponzi Scheme to me.
 
JeffDG said:
Without any law, I can agree to accept sea shells or horse **** from you in exchange for goods and/or services.
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As long as you declare the horse-**** on a 1099-B, the IRS is happy.
 
Henning said:
Of course it is, NSA has the encryption.
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I don't claim to know much about bitcoin, but if you can track it, how can it be stolen and used??:dunno::dunno:
I've read about people having their accounts raided for $$$ worth of bitcoins and it's just gone! :dunno:
 
N747JB said:
I don't claim to know much about bitcoin, but if you can track it, how can it be stolen and used??:dunno::dunno:
I've read about people having their accounts raided for $$$ worth of bitcoins and it's just gone! :dunno:
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The problem is with these exchanges which store the wallets in accessible areas. Bitcoin uses a paper wallet which has a key that cannot be hacked because it is not online. Usually it seems these thefts at these exchanges are inside jobs. My understanding is that it is pretty much untrackable and since the miners change the code pretty regularly I think this applies to the NSA also, but who knows. This was about a $5 million theft from what I read, small potatoes, unfortunately it undermines confidence in the currency. I'm not sure if Bitcoin will take hold or not for the mainstream, but the technology and concept is good and probably will stick around in some form or another.
 
N747JB said:
I don't claim to know much about bitcoin, but if you can track it, how can it be stolen and used??:dunno::dunno:
I've read about people having their accounts raided for $$$ worth of bitcoins and it's just gone! :dunno:
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NSA isn't there to secure a Ponzi scheme, they just collect the data. I never saw an upside into buying in and plenty of reasons not to.
 
PaulS said:
I'm not sure if Bitcoin will take hold or not for the mainstream, but the technology and concept is good and probably will stick around in some form or another.
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Other than for criminal intentions, why is Bitcoin such a good idea again? I can't remember. Why aren't all the financial devices we already have sufficient?
 
Dav8or said:
Other than for criminal intentions, why is Bitcoin such a good idea again? I can't remember. Why aren't all the financial devices we already have sufficient?
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BitCoin is around because no state controls it.
 
Dav8or said:
Other than for criminal intentions, why is Bitcoin such a good idea again? I can't remember. Why aren't all the financial devices we already have sufficient?
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You are going to laugh at this because of the press it's been getting, but used as it is intended it is pretty much impossible to steal. The problem lies in people want someone else to manage it for them which means you need to share your key on a server which makes it vulnerable, it's really not supposed to be used that way. You also eliminate all the overhead of a bank and the need to deal with a bank.
 
PaulS said:
You are going to laugh at this because of the press it's been getting, but used as it is intended it is pretty much impossible to steal. The problem lies in people want someone else to manage it for them which means you need to share your key on a server which makes it vulnerable, it's really not supposed to be used that way. You also eliminate all the overhead of a bank and the need to deal with a bank.
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You're right. I laugh at that. :rofl: There is no such thing as impossible to steal. I trust the digital "cloud", servers, hard drives and whatever less than the mattress.
 
Katamarino said:
Make sure you mail the government their share of the horse **** :D
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Ha. They already have plenty.

Henning said:
NSA isn't there to secure a Ponzi scheme, they just collect the data. I never saw an upside into buying in and plenty of reasons not to.
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Who's to say NSA isn't mining Bitcoin at their fancy new facility in Utah? ;) A few closed bid classified contracts for ASICs that look like they're for encryption decoding, sure wouldn't look strange on their budget, even to an inside auditor. :)

(That'll feed the conspiracy theorists for a while...)
 
Dav8or said:
You're right. I laugh at that. :rofl: There is no such thing as impossible to steal. I trust the digital "cloud", servers, hard drives and whatever less than the mattress.
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I said pretty much impossible to steal, not impossible, reading comprehension my friend, comprehension. The key, when used as intended, isn't stored on any hardware. It's nearly impossible to steal if you don't have the key. The problems so far have been with exchanges that store your key for you, if you use Bitcoin, don't do that, it's pretty simple.

There is a simplistic explanation of how it works in the link below, that page has links to more in depth explanations of the technology.

https://bitcoin.org/en/how-it-works
 
Henning said:
Regardless how it works, it still has nothing behind it.
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It's like most currencies these days, it's a bartering system, and it actually has quite a bit (no pun intended) behind it as long as it can maintain its integrity as a secure means of commerce.
 
PaulS said:
It's like most currencies these days, it's a bartering system, and it actually has quite a bit (no pun intended) behind it as long as it can maintain its integrity as a secure means of commerce.
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Yeah, exactly, it's just like everything else we use for currency, a commodity of imagined value. These don't work.
 
The value of any medium of exchange is in people's willingness to trust it. Once that's gone, poof, no value
 
Palmpilot said:
Here's what was repealed:
107. No corporation, social purpose corporation, association, or individual shall issue or put in circulation, as money, anything but the lawful money of the United States.​
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Given that bitcoin is property and not money, doesn't seem like this was necesary.
 
PaulS said:
I said pretty much impossible to steal, not impossible, reading comprehension my friend, comprehension. The key, when used as intended, isn't stored on any hardware. It's nearly impossible to steal if you don't have the key. The problems so far have been with exchanges that store your key for you, if you use Bitcoin, don't do that, it's pretty simple.[/URL]
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OK, but where do you store your key, if not on hardware? That's what I don't get. And while not storing it on the exchanges makes sense, it also seems to remove some flexibility. I could store all my (dollar) money at home, but it's a lot more convenient and safe in the bank. And the bank doesn't lose it like the Bitcoin exchanges do.
 
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