Bitcoin-Central.net is now licensed to operate as a bank in Europe
bitcointalk.org
bitcointalk.org
You can't buy or sell bitcoins because it's not a recognized currency by the central bank. In fact, selling any foreign currency here (brazil) can be a crime under certain circumstances. You need to be a bank or a currency exchange backed by a national bank to do that. You are not allowed to buy more than 3000 dollars of foreign currency easily.
Bitcoins, unlike common currency, carry value and can be used by general public. It's like having gold coins. I'm not a complete believer in legal tenders being the future of payments. I see bitcoins as the storage of value, but not method of payment.
Bitcoins could replace gold.
But this matter is way too complex for my limited forex experience, take this as my 2 cents.
umm. no. central banks hold gold as a reserve asset. all other reserve assets are liabilities of foreign govt's. eg: USG. Central banks aren't about to replace the only unencumbered physical asset they have with a digital algorithm.
>> I see bitcoins as the storage of value, but not method of payment
I think you have it the wrong way around. Bitcoin could be a medium of exchange but not a store of value. It's too small isn't liquid enough to be credible as a SOV. If it got big enough to do so then govt would crush it.
Blocks can't be made outside the process of mining and any btc you hold come from a block that's been mined.
How that's represented in fiat is another problem :)
If this comes true, the bitcoin system is in trouble. Block reward is down to 25 bitcoins a block. It will half one more time then no more money for mining, it'll all be through transaction fees.
If people are just storing bitcoins and not using them, there wont be enough transaction fees and lots of miners will drop out, making the system more vulnerable to takeover by government or malicious miners.
Wrong, it will halve 31 more times until the reward is 0.00000001 (i.e. the smallest bitcoin fraction that you can currently have) around the year 2136. Only after that will it "halve" to nothing.
If they are a storage of value, you have to be able to buy and sell them. Therefore exchanging them has to be possible. I don't see big step from this to actually using them as a payment. Instead of exchanging traditional money with them, you just exchange the goods and services directly.
So I came to the idea that bitcoins are actually more useful as a way to store value (bank notes, bank money) than currency (dollars).
So, your bank would store your bitcoins for you and you will still using the miriad of payment methods. Example: you use your current visa debit card, pay with the promess that your bank will transfer the bitcoins to the merchant.
That way we could be using bitcoins today instead of next decade.
That said, I see bitcoins becoming the value (think of bills) but the current payment methods will remain the same, except that cashiers will type X bitcoins instead of X dollars.
(Sorry about typos, tablet..)
"We won't have limitations regarding the citizenship of our clients." Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129461.msg1382319#ms...
How does Bitcoin-Central square with those aims?
The designer may intended that bitcoin to combat governments and banks, but anybody can use bitcoins, including the governments and banks, agorists, drug cartels, heroes and villians alike.
Frankly, if bitcoin wants to dominate the world, it must be as useful as possible and non-discriminatory in who use it.
The most important goal right now is to get people to use Bitcoin, and for services to adopt Bitcoin as well, so it can have a real economy behind it. Once it has a large enough global economy behind it, it should be unstoppable.
Well, bitcoin-central is precisely that, an interface to the decentralized Bitcoin system.
- Converting to/from BTC will become easier
- Accepting Bitcoins as a merchant will be easier
This paradigm is present in so many innovations. It's simply tapping more readily accessible value as a way to construct a launching pad for further growth.
Could you explain what you mean by that.
This is clearly bollocks. Bitcoin is just a tool, like linux, and can be used for numerous different purposes in numerous different ways. There is no "point" in Bitcoin, it is open source software that everyone can use as they will.
Some people clearly seem to think that bitcoin is meant for something special, in bitcoin community and outside of it. The funny thing is that even they can't have any control over how bitcoin is used, except for their own usage of course.
I agree with you on simplifying payment processing, but what exactly is financial privacy good for except tax evasion? Is there an epidemic of Visa/Mastercard/AMEX selling purchase histories to advertisers or something? Isn't that illegal?
It helps protect the establishment and preserve the status quo. That's about it. It would be in most people's interest for these things to be public.
The main payment processors operate a mafia of sorts - it's a closed shop - tx fees are fixed and determined by them. One aspect of bitcoin is that is allows the person sending a payment & the person processing that payment (the mining pools) to negotiate the price. The theory being that transactions with a better tx fee will be included in blocks quicker than those that don't.
By freeing up these aspects of the systems we use to send & receive payment - you allow other forces to come into play.
Cash is anon as cryptocoins are.
If you could, I am sure few people would have bothered with crypto-currencies, or for that matter, paypal...
If you're sane and keep backups then your wallet is safe.. Your HD crashes and you don't have backup.. bye bye funds.
Bitcoin in many ways is equiv to cash - just electronic - it's an anon as cash is, as mutable as cash and prone to loss if you don't take care of it.
I like it - as a concept it has some nice attributes.
If you want to launder money, it's extremely stupid to use a form of digital cash in which all transactions are public and any amateur data miner can have a go at tracing the transactions.
By making a transaction with an address you're not just telling anybody who knows you own that address that you've made a transaction; you've allowed anyone who later discovers you owned that address to prove you made that transaction, for the rest of history.
But as someone pointed out in another HN thread, there is always a risk the tumbling service could be a legal risk if it's even taken over by a state entity, because they could technically know which wallets are being used.
In high inflation economies like Argentina for example where foreign currency is strictly controlled, people are starting to save in bitcoin to preserve their wealth. I've heard that one can get a very good exchange rate for bitcoins in Argentina.
Example 1
"We're buying your house (whether you like it or not), how many Bitcoins do you want for it?"
"10,000"
"Great. By the way, we just made a new law that says we can pay you in peanut shells as a substitute for Bitcoin, at the same rate."
Example 2
"We're buying your house (whether you like it or not), how many Bitcoins do you want for it?"
"10,000"
"Ok here's your 10,000 Bitcoins"
(10 minutes later...)
"By the way, under the PATRIOT act, we're ordering you to hand over all your encryption keys. Including the private key of your Bitcoin wallet. If you don't make a fuss, we'll be nice and let you keep 1%, and not throw you in jail."
This doesn't mean that something like this will never happen, but I don't think anyone's expecting a perfect solution.
Of course, there are people who believe that the existence of legal-tender laws is equivalent to jackbooted thugs breaking down their doors and holding guns to their heads. But those people probably aren't worth paying much attention to.
Crypto-anarchism to be exact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism
I can't speak for others, but both of those (particularly the former) make /accepting/ BC interesting to me. Although, admittedly, not so interesting that I'm seriously pursuing it yet.
The more traction BC gets, the higher it goes on my priority list.
From my (admittedly naive) viewpoint, the elephant in the room is the anonymity. Governments won't like this because it makes it harder for them to monitor and catch bad people, and to ensure I'm paying my taxes. So when governments become aware of bitcoin there is going to be huge pressure to shut it down. And they could do it, no matter how decentralised and trans-national bitcoin is. Imagine MAFIAA tactics but ten times worse, with constant media reports of how bitcoin is the currency of the terrorists and child pornographers.
But that's where this announcement is exciting. By tying your bitcoin address to a bank account, you lose anonymity but gain legitimacy. And governments then have the option to selectively legislate, instead of simply killing bitcoin completely.
Interesting times...
Point 4 is you will have a unique IBAN address to wire money too. Instead of wiring to Bitcoin-Central's bank account number, you will wire money to YOUR account (at Bitcoin-Central). IBAN wires are free when using SEPA.
Ultra-concise summary: Instead of an exchange having 1 eur account and 1 BTC, each customer has an individual account. This provides ease, security, and EUR insurance.