It is hilarious. I wonder how many of them actually paid money to buy coins instead of just mining/selling. At this stage, bitcoins should really only be used for a transaction. If you want to make an anonymous transaction: 1. Buy the exact amount of bitcoins needed for it 2. Make transaction immediately 3. Person on other end of transaction redeem for cash The only cash in the "system" should be what is needed to float those transactions.
"AmazonCoins"! As long as this internet-currency-thing is gonna happen, Amazon should be involved. A previous post stated that trading bitcoins was like pulling teeth. A big player would smooth out these wrinkles.
Absolutely. And if anyone wants to speculate in bitcoins and hopes they go up in value, the real key to it is making the process simple enough for a lay person to do it. Current steps for me are: 1. Mine bitcoins in a bitcoin pool (mining.bitcion.cz) so I can get 1-2 bitcoins per day instead of waiting for a random chance of getting 50 sometime in the next year. 2. Transfer bitcoins from there to my wallet 3. Transfer bitcoins from my wallet to mtgox.com 4. Sell bitcoins at mtgox (usually at a pace of 1 per day at market price) 5. Transfer my USD from mtgox to dwolla 6. Transfer from dwolla to my real bank account 7. Set aside 30% of that for income tax I just KNOW the feds are going to use tax code/tax evasion to go after the bitcoin network. Better have the money ready to pay uncle sam.
Correct. It would be against the law. Just like how we can't use Canadian dollars, pesos, gold, silver, etc. Federal reserve needs to require that we only use FRNs. Otherwise their monetary policies can't work.
Yes, you can use all of those. Happens millions of times a day, everyday. But BitCoins will *never* fill that function. These are high-tech baseball cards, and should be traded/avoided as such.
The impossible is happening. Within the link below, the second post down has a brick and mortar cafe accepting bitcoins: http://therealplato.com/ And a Manhattan eatery is accepting them: http://www.sercer.com/financial-news/the-clock-is-ticking-on-bitcoin-321180725/ BTW: The first link is to a blog named "Plato's Tumblr. A young man claims to be traveling across the country using nothing but bitcoins.
Where can you buy a cheeseburger with gold, silver, loonies, pesos, etc? I mean directly. I don't mean "Its in my bank account, I convert it, or my credit does it automagically etc": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender The US government has also explicitly banned use of gold for payments in contracts, also. "United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts. â31 U.S.C. "
Depends. If the owner of the business wants to have bitcoins anyway (because he thinks they go up in value) he might as well accept them, since it is easier to get them this way then trying to find a seller. If the dollar starts a high inflation phase, pretty much any other tender is going to be a better choice, so it might as well be bitcoins. So never say never. And as far as I know the government hasn't made a law that the dollar has to be the only legal tender acceptable between 2 private parties....