Working for Bitcoin: Update | Hacker News Reader

Working for Bitcoin: Update

ncarlson.com

25 pointsncarlson16 comments

It would be kind of a cool experiment to try to get everything past the first $5000 in client work (or whatever covers living expenses, taxes, savings, and beers in your area) per month paid in Bitcoin.

There needs to be a really easy way to do it though for clients who don't understand the concept, maybe some kind of service where a client can pay with credit card and it converts to Bitcoin and sends it to the recipient's account.

Maybe an alternative would be to just make a policy to buy Bitcoin with whatever you get over your quota each month.

I think what's needed most at the moment is an easy way for US dollars to be exchanged for Bitcoin. This was easy enough when Mt Gox was accepting Paypal.

However, now that Paypal has suspended Mt Gox's account, anyone wanting to work with that exchange now has to jump through additional hoops by opening up a Dwolla or Liberty Reserve account. Personally, I found these sites to be rather shady looking.

Dwolla looks shady? Seriously? http://www.dwolla.com

Incidentally, they are FDIC and NCUA insured: http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-deposits-are-protected-by-...

> they are FDIC

My question would be, are individual Dwolla accounts protected on a per depositor basis? Or, is it just Dwolla Corp's own bank account which is protected under FDIC. Their website doesn't make that clear.

It's entirely possible that user funds are stored in a bank account, owned by Dwolla, and that bank account is FDIC insured. If that's the case, then that bank account is only insured up to $250,000 USD.

> My question would be, are individual Dwolla accounts protected on a per depositor basis? Or, is it just Dwolla Corp's own bank account which is protected under FDIC.

The former. If it were the latter, then writing "Dwolla Deposits Are Protected By The FDIC and NCUA" on their web page would be fraud.

I'm almost certain you are wrong about that. Dwolla is not listed in the FDIC database.

"Dwolla Deposits Are Protected By The FDIC and NCUA"

Yes, every dime you have in your account is protected by the FDIC and NCUA. The same way that amounts in your PayPal balance are protected.

http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-security-and-partner-overv...

OK, I'm glad that their banks are insured, but if Dwolla goes bankrupt are you sure I'll get my money back? I'm not.

PayPal does the same thing, but at least they're upfront about how it works: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=p/gen/travelers-ou...

And I don't keep money in my PayPal account either.

The website looks fine, but the service seems kinda shady.

They are "not a bank" so that FDIC insurance doesn't apply to you it applies to whatever bank account they are using to hold everyone's money. If they go bankrupt I am not confident I could get my money back.

I haven't checked out Liberty Reserve, but I have a Dwolla account and it is pretty non-shady.

A few weeks ago 1 bitcoin was only 0.8 US dollar. Now it's 8.

My 0.05 BTC is now worth 0.4.

Should've gotten more.

It's down to 6.5 now in the last couple of hours. Very little volume was required to drive it down so much (10s of thousands of USD). BTC isn't even vaguely stable, in either direction.

I gave away my last 10 BTC a month ago on HN. Oh, well.

I'm going to wait until BTC is proven to be government-proof before getting back into it, if ever.

If this becomes common, it will certainly be a test of bitcoin's legal status. Seeing how the IRS and Social Security calculate what taxes, if any, you have to pay will be interesting...

There is a good chance it would be treated as another foreign currency. So, you would file in USD using a current conversion rate.

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=130524,00....

What's the best way to exchange my bitcoins for USD?

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