Bitcoin and tax

That's not what I claim. In fact, I do not claim anything - I just keep telling you that you are making invalid comparisons and then drawing invalid conclusions from that.

The right comparison is:

a) an offline wallet on a safe medium stored in a safe location

b) a physical bank note in a safe location

See the "safe location" part? That's exactly the same for both an offline wallet and a physical bank note. There is, literally, no difference. You can make the safe location a hole dug into your garden or a locker inside a bank-owned vault.

Once you bring in bank _accounts_, you bring in a whole different world:

a) once you "deposit" money on an account, it all starts with you actually making a loan to the bank (with all the risks that entails should the bank go into default!); you cannot do that with just your personal BTC wallet

b) once money is in a bank account, you typically make use of services and offerings to do something with the money - e.g. by using plastic (bank card) to pay; if you want to have the same "service" with BTC, you need to expose your wallet exactly the same way. If you want use your BTC at a point-of-sale, where does it come from? Well, either from your _online_ BTC wallet, or from a crypto chip on some plastic, or from a digital device (e.g. a smartphone) inside which you carry your BTC wallet sort-of offline.

The means how BTC and traditional currencies can be attacked are different - e.g. someone could simply induce strong electro-magnetic field fluctuation to your offline bitcoin wallet. Without a backup, your wallet would be lost. On the other hand, it is possible to even locally back up your wallet, so in the case of, say, an isolated failure of one storage medium you would retain your wallet. Try that with a bank note ("my dog ate my CHF 1000 bank note!" - expensive dog, huh?).

The one fundamental difference on currency "value" between traditional currency and crypto currency is that traditional currency tends to be backed by a "promise" by a central bank / a sovereign that it can be used for storing wealth and used as a transport medium of "value" in trade (fiat money - backing). There is no such player in crypto currency, so there is no such promise (and the crypto currencies are designed such that they do not need such a central player, either).

In closing, I have to reiterate one thing: Structurally, an offline BTC wallet can only be compared with a stack of physical currency notes or currency coins. Attack vectors on both exist, but are different in realization and risk.

_Bank accounts_ for traditional money are something completely different - they have many more contracts, implications, and services attached which go way beyond what is associated with a crypto currency wallet.

Alice has 100k in bitcoins

Bob has 100k in the bank

Alice and Bob live in the US and make a road trip. They have an accident and end up in a coma in the hospital.

Carol and Dave look after Alice and Bob.

Dave uses Bob's 100k to pay his medical fees and Bob gets better.

Carol doesn't know about the bitcoins and even if she did she couldn't access them.

Alice dies and the bitcoins are lost forever. Her children die penniless.

The End.

For other great MCR stories, please check amazon.co.uk.

I'm confused. Were Alice and Bob in one of those late-in-life happy relationships -- second or third marriage for each of them? Was Bob the father of Alice's children? I mean, he had no money left after the hospital stay, but he could have earned some afterwards to stave off pennilessness for the children, couldn't he? But if they were Alice's kids and not his, then maybe he just didn't care.

May I introduce you to Bob?

On the topic of bitcoin: as of July 1st, you'll be able to pay small fees (up to 200 CHF) to one cantonal office in Zug using Bitcoins.

http://www.stadtzug.ch/de/ueberzug/u...info_id=321666

Just looking at it form a pragmatic perspective (I'm no computer geek, just a regular Jane), Bitcoins may be very nice and safe but as long as they remain semi-official, I can see situations where you lose everything whereas money in the bank would remain. To use the example above, the probability of someone dying in an accident without having organised the transfer of BCs to family members is probably greater than my bank going bust and me losing all my money, as long as I make sure never to have more in a given bank than is guaranteed by national bank guarantee schemes.

In addition, usefulness is currently limited to the online world, while I live in the real world. I can't give a memory stick filled with BCs to the Troll and ask hin to run down to Bretzelkönig to buy us lunch. And if I could, what would happen if he got mugged on the way? For the time being, I think we're still not quite there in terms of utility.

As for what happens if/when the s..t hits the fan for real, if we want to plan for a for after a complete shutdown of the system, we should probably go survivalist and hoard useful stuff rather than bitcoins. Coz' following a real catastrophe people will want something they can eat or use to survive, not a memory stick filled with BC, money, or even gold.

At the end of the day, it's not the currency itself that is useful, it's what you can buy for it in order to live.

Then again, the computer guys probably understand something I don't.

OK. We use a shared Bitcoin vault. When we want to spend money on a BTC backed VISA debit card, we make a transfer from the vault to a wallet - 2 factor auth. My debit card is associated with my Paypal account and is also used for online purchases. The credit behind the debit card has doubled in a year due to the appreciation in value. If I die, the missus knows what to do. If we go together, the kids will know what to do. No plans beyond that . Getting verified (for transactions) was an unnecessarily process, however once done everything has operated the same way as you would expect of a traditional financial arrangement.

Which card are you using Joe?

No idea what Joe uses, but there are plenty of such >>Bitcoin 2 Plastic<< products out there.

I ́d (also) much appreciate feedback on any specific product though.

Unfortunately thats a false assumption, money in the bank belongs to the bank not the deposited , you the accounts holder are just an unsecured creditor of the bank.

I do everything through Xapo.com and they facilitate the debit card. The CEO recently joined the board at Paypal giving us an added degree of comfort.

Thanks for the feedback.

However, paypalsucks.com - so this part would make me run away !!!

BTC up 150% since this thread started, all of last year's Xmas presents and road trip cost in reality, nothing.

It's interesting to read this thread today.

1 BTC = 4700 USD

If you're planning to crack a bottle to celebrate, I recommend the Bollinger R.D. 2002. Heavenly stuff.

Pah, 4700 is so yesterday.

I bought it around 4 years ago, and have now forgotten the password.

Clever.

No Bolly for you then.

Was it the password to an encrypted Bitcoin wallet? If you can remember some aspects of the password, there are people who will number-crunch the rest of it for you (with varying degrees of success). If you can remember nothing or very little about it, then it's not really possible.

Tip for the future: put your important passwords in a password manager (Keepass, Password Safe, etc), backup the password file to multiple locations (on your PC, USB drives, online storage) and store the master password somewhere safe (e.g. a safe deposit box). You probably won't forget the master password if you're regularly using it, but you could always fall off your bike head first...

Yes I started using LastPass a year or so after I had forgotten about my BTCs (and the related word).

Lesson learned.

Will keep brainstorming though.

And in that cycle of fun which is crypto trading, so today .

Of course, if Goldman Sachs' well-publicised astrological prediction of Bitcoin's price becomes self-fulfilling (they didn't do so bad with their previous prediction), look forward to sub-3000 for a bit. Now, where's me shorting hat...?