As I continue to explore BitCoin, I've starting to wonder @@ -34,11 +34,13 @@ without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin. If the Skolelinux foundation (SLX -Debian Labs) were to accept donations in BitCoin like EFF is -doing, how should this be accounted? What exchange rate should be -used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay income tax -if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in BitCoin? I -have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.
+Debian Labs) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to +normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted? +Given that it is impossible to know if money can cross the border or +not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate +should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay +income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in +BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to @@ -46,7 +48,7 @@ the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin, -so I wonder when my kind of show would start accepting BitCoins. I +so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby @@ -59,7 +61,7 @@ currencies.
The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles -to see which one get the next lump of cash. The "winner" get 50 +to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get 50 BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins, by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines @@ -67,4 +69,12 @@ and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50 BitCoins. Check out BitCoin Pool if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a -machine to participate there yet.
+machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones +own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining +yet. + +Update 2010-12-15: Found an interesting +criticism of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought +it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be +equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.