261–270 of 474 posts
Doesn't anyone find it odd that the price is quoted in USD and not BTC?
Nope. Click on the amount.
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Utterly incorrect. They did not transfer a single dollar. For them to turn those Bitcoins into dollars, they will have to pay more than $0.00. Possibly A LOT more. They may not even be able to turn those bitcoins into dollars for a while, and in all likelihood it will not be $150 million dollars.
This is the correct answer. People rave about how "cheap" it is to transfer bitcoin. What about actually buying anything with that 'money'? Sure, you might be able to buy some crap on the internet with bitcoin, but it won't put food in your table anytime soon without you having to pay a good % in fees to convert it to real currency.
The same is true of any foreign currency. I could send $150 million in Russian rubles to my sister, and she wouldn't be able to do jack with it until she finds someone willing to give her dollars for it. With the amount of money involved, getting it all converted at once would be extremely difficult.
That doesn't mean that what's transferred doesn't have real value. Just that the assets involved aren't terribly liquid.
Hardly. If you tried to sell 195,000 coins you'd wipe out all the exchanges and cause a crash. Talking numbers, you could sell them all on BTC-E right now, bagging you just $7M, and take the price down to ~$36. You can spread that around the exchanges of course, if you're quick, but you're still nowhere near $147M at current market depth.
Why do you seem to think that selling them all at once is the only way to sell them?
Most people with this level of wealth diversify their holdings, which makes the total amount less liquid, but much more secure, as well as providing protection from inflation or returns on investments. Real wealth often does not have perfect liquidity, and I would argue in these amounts, almost never does.
Selling 100s of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoins a year for USD would hardly put a dent in the markets, and is probably the most anyone would want to do. The purchase of an asset would instead be made directly with bitcoins in a transaction such as this.
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Call me crazy but if I am ever in a position to transfer $150M I'd probably also want a third party involved to make sure the transaction goes smoothly, like a bank. Like we do today. With wire transfers.
I may be ignorant here, but isn't the BTC system entirely based on 3rd party oversight?
In the meantime, the $150 million is in limbo.
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The government can tax anything it wants. For example, barter exchanges are taxable by the government, even if no actual money changed hands. They would just put a dollar figure on the barter, and then tax it accordingly. Bitcoin doesn't have to be a currency in order for the government to tax any gains made on its sale or transfer.
The IRS purposely keeps the definition of income loosely defined so that they can broadly apply it as new schemes and technologies arise. I am sure the IRS could bust you for income tax evasion if you didn't declare your bitcoin appreciation as income.
Just don't reveal your Bitcoin activities to the authorities, purposefully or accidentally, and they will never find any reason for their flagging algorithm to elevate your account to human scrutiny. Nor will they have evidence that could be used against you.
Anything passing through an exchange that follows state banking rules might get you into trouble, but you don't necessarily need to use an exchange to turn BTC into USD.
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And they received $0 worth of assurance that it would be successful. If it were my $150M I would not want to leave it up to the block chain and hope it works.
Huh, if you make a valid transaction there is no reason why it would fail.
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And they received $0 worth of assurance that it would be successful. If it were my $150M I would not want to leave it up to the block chain and hope it works.
They received a mathematical assurance that it would work. The relying nodes, blockchain, miners and priority rules are all well-known and straightforward to account for. If you pay enough fees given your transaction priority, it'll get into a block eventually. If you want it to be mined sooner, you can pay higher fees. And even if it won't be mined, the worst case scenario is that you would keep your Bitcoins and ca…
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The government can tax anything it wants. For example, barter exchanges are taxable by the government, even if no actual money changed hands. They would just put a dollar figure on the barter, and then tax it accordingly. Bitcoin doesn't have to be a currency in order for the government to tax any gains made on its sale or transfer.
Government can tax anything they want. Even the babysitter and making change from a stranger.
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Bitcoin is pseudonymous by default, not anonymous. Anonymity is a choice. CoinJoin [1] and other trustless mixing software projects are aiming to make anonymity a push of a button. This is being implemented into DarkWallet [2] where mixing happens automatically in the background. [1] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6630/ [2] http://www.indiegogo.com/at/darkwallet
Though I have every expectation of mixing falling afoul of AML laws, if not presently then soon.
Thing about mixing is, since any person (or autonomous process) can generate wallets and send BTC to those on the fly, how do you prove that you used a tumbling service and not that you gave coins to a guy who gave coins to a guy who split them up into separate wallets who each gave coins to a guy, etc etc etc.
As Bitcoin picks up steam, this problem only gets harder. Remember that the block chain only consists of hashes and signatures. Proving who owns those is a much more difficult process.
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I'm surprised that anybody visiting this site could still be so ignorant about Bitcoin.
I don't think there is a single topic that exists right now, that people are willing to debate while being completely ignorant of it, more than Bitcoin right now. That applies to HN/reddit, TV talking heads, and real life.