16
No, you can't prevent fractional reserve banking technically. For example, IOUs can circulate just like Bitcoins and there's no technical means to stop it. Essentially, anything worth X Bitcoins (once risk and the like are factored in) can act just like X Bitcoins, even if it's not X Bitcoins. And since it's not Bitcoins, nothing Bitcoins can do can stop it.
...
11
Well, all transaction between Bitcoin addresses are stored forever, and so are fully traceable. What this means in your case is indeed that the credit card company can trace the coins you bought from them.
However, there are a few things to note.
Bitcoin addresses don't have a name assigned. F.e. Bitstamp will not know that the Bitcoins are coming from the ...
9
The number of bitcoins in existence is limited to 21 million. This is the equivalent of M0, the monetary base. Whatever institutions do with it, creating M2, M3 etc. is not something that Bitcoin can or will control.
Here is some more info on the Bitcoin wiki: Controlled Currency Supply
8
Speaking as someone who has worked on a blockchain project for a bank, I can tell you that banks are interested for several reasons.
Banks know they are ripe for disruption
Due to a combination of heavy regulation and incumbency (mixed with a variable level of collusion), banks have remained relatively protected from the technological disruption that has ...
7
This is definitely a scam.
Even if an activation fee was a legitimate thing, they would just charge that amount out of the amount you were going to receive - if you were to receive $1000 and the fee was $5, they'd just give you $995. Beyond that, no bank I'm aware of charges fees in cryptocurrencies.
Don't send any money to these people.
6
See Mahin's answer below for http://BuySellBitco.in
If you want physical cash without going through a bank then you'll find many individual traders here:
https://localbitcoins.com/country/in
And there are offers to buy and sell posted in threads on the India board:
http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=89.0
But as of December, 2012 there are no market ...
6
If someone will want to sell bitcoins for Rupees, they might list it on LocalBitcoins. It's a good start.
6
In the U.S., the least expensive method is a Dwolla transfer to an exchange that accepts Dwolla (Mt. Gox, and Camp BX). Dwolla charges $0.25 per transaction when the amount transferred is over $10.
Quite simply, depositing cash at a bank or 7-11, Walmart, CVS is going to be the fastest and easiest way.
One method that was the least expensive, depositing ...
6
A nation State would never adopt Bitcoin willingly because the government would lose control over the ability to inflate the money supply. Inflation is nothing more than a tax. No government will ever willingly give up its primary means of stealing from the public. The inflation tax is the most insidious and the easiest for government to get away with. ...
6
You don't need anyone's permission to use it. Nobody can freeze your account or charge back a payment after you received it. It's accessible to anyone with Internet access regardless of what country they're in. No single company can dictate its policy. It is almost free to use with no proportional fees.
5
I think there are a few problems with your assumptions.
If you are depositing bitcoins in a bank, you certainly can determine whether the coins are being lent out, if the bank wants to support this feature - it simply assigns a specific address to you, and whatever is in that address is your balance. As long as the coins stay there you know they are not ...
5
As for Mt. Gox, they got their polish account when they bought up bitomat.pl, after it lost its private keys. They continue to support accounts from that other website, so they allow easy money transfers to that account (although it takes them a couple days to credit the account).
As for Intersango, I presume they might want to cater to that part of the ...
5
I think your premise is flawed - when trading on Mtgox or other exchanges, there will only be transfers between you and Mtgox. If you're a day trader most trades will be internal on Mtgox and not be settled by the banks at all.
Even if they do "send a notice to anti-laundering authorities", it doesn't mean the next day they will show up at your doorstep to ...
5
A Ripple gateway acts much like a bank. They compete based on trust, convenience, and cost. They hold other people's money. They promise to handle that money according to their customer's instructions.
One difference is that there's no formal barrier to entry to becoming a Ripple gateway. Someone can open a gateway anywhere in the world and have equal ...
5
Blockchains are best used when there are multiple entities that don't necessarily trust each other. So within one bank, a blockchain really isn't useful. However between bank transfers could use the blockchain. Right now, in order to send between banks, banks use centralized systems (ACH, SWIFT, etc) operated by a third party. With federated blockchains, ...
4
I think your question is based on the false assumption that there is some 100% safe way to store money that doesn't cost anything. Mt Gox can't stuff your money in their mattress, and even if they did someone could come along and steal the mattress. They have to sensibly balance risk and cost -- zero-risk is not a sensible or achievable goal and is not ...
4
Banks do lend out more money than they have. This concept is referred to as Fractional Reserve Banking. Government regulation is supposed to impose a minimum of reserves they need to keep, limiting the amount of money they may create.
The difference between Bitcoin users and banks is that banks can lend out more money than they have, because they can just ...
3
Unfortunately, it's not simple. The problem is that such a bank would be terribly vulnerable to fluctuating exchange rates.
For example, say the value of a Bitcoin doubled over three months. Suddenly, a large number of people who have loans will not be able to afford enough Bitcoins to pay them back. A large number of their loans would go bad all at once. ...
3
Saying people are hoarding bitcoins is out of focus: they are simply "not spending them" because there aren't enough ways to spend them.
Allowing loans wouldn't improve the situation, since there still wouldn't be many ways to spend those loaned bitcoins.
Finally, bitcoins already are a currency subject to deflation, and they are also (more or less) ...
3
Question: Cannot we build a currency that is decentralized like bitcoin, but that doesn't have the "mining" part of it?
No need to, one was already created years ago and is still up and running today. Bitcoin depends on currency creation to record transactions, you can't get around this because that is the design of it and how it works. The only one that ...
3
That would probably be either Bitcoin OTC or Local Bitcoins, as you are trading directly between people. This way you can barter for better rates and you don't have to pay a fee.
3
The important answer is on https://support.mtgox.com/entries/20568322-all-eur-transactions-will-be-temporarily-suspended-within-europe-with-immediate-effect
quote :
"While Bitcoin at a European level is so far not directly impacted by
this decision, the Bank de France (France's central bank) has
confirmed that because of European banking rules, ...
3
just some ideas:
Strategies could be attacking the trust structure of bitcoin:
Buying large quantities of bitcoins and dropping them on the market causes it value to fluctuate and make it appear weak
hacking peer sites (like mtgox), or bitcoin users directly (via trojans, etc.) leaves insecurities on where to use it
influencing media to emphasize about ...
3
You should first consult a lawyer in your country and discuss such topics as:
Money laundering laws
Whether Bitcoins are considered a currency, commodity or none of the above
Regulations considering money exchanges
In relationship to the law in your country. It would also be good to asking a legal representative of the government for an official statement ...
3
For currency in the form of Ripple IOUs, yes. Anyone can tell at any time the total outstanding value of all IOUs in a given currency for a given issuer. So a gateway could, if it wished to, provide provable reserves relative to its outstanding IOUs.
However, gateways typically also hold fiat that's not in the form of IOUs. Gateways currently use a two-step ...
3
If you can send an International wire transfer (USD) there will be fees charged by your own bank to convert from INR to USD, as well as a wire transfer fee. Then some fees charged by Mt. Gox exchange to receive the funds I believe, but a relatively small amount.
The conversion from INR to USD is probably the part that will be the most expensive as banks ...
3
Bitcoin-Central is to-date the only exchange to describe the capability of an exchange account being integrated with a bank account.
It will be a EUR account. There is no estimate on when this will be available.
Coinbase will draw funds from a bank account however they have not been able to keep up with the demand so there is no assurance that when ...
3
TL;DR
Businesses in the Bitcoin space face no special challenges to implement KYC regulation, except the privacy oriented mindset special to some bitcoin users. However, it is impractical to enforce KYC regulation on the entirety of the bitcoin network itself.
Long version below
Know Your Customer (KYC) regulation applies to financial institutions and ...
3
While buying from the major exchanges requires a bank account, you can buy from individuals using any form of payment you agree upon, such as cash or prepaid cards. If you don't know anyone with bitcoin to sell, try localbitcoins.com or Craigslist.
Another possibility is to sell something and accept bitcoin as payment.
3
I am not aware of any. Whilst I like to think of such not-yet-existing services as simply waiting to be provided soon, there is a significant barrier to creating such a service. A broker wanting to offer taking bitcoin deposits as collateral for your stock holdings would need a reliable and classical-finance-compatible way of converting this collateral into ...
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