26
I am not a lawyer, but...
The Coinage Act of 1965, Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," states: "United States coins and currency... are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."
In the USA all monetary debts can be paid in US dollars.
Second, while bitcoin is legally a payment method in the US, it does not have legal ...
22
There are several major differences. Bitcoin is a currency with a built in payment system for its currency. The XRP Ledger is a payment system for arbitrary currencies with support for cross-currency transactions.
One big difference is that currencies (other than XRP) are represented as debts (IOUs) on the ledger. This is much the way currencies are ...
19
I made a payment to a company for a product more than a year ago in
bitcoin. The amount that I paid then was equivalent to $75. Now the
company has failed to provide the product and they and I both agree
that I'm owed a refund. However, we disagree on the means.
The company wants to refund me - in bitcoin if I wish it - to the
value of $75 of ...
18
This is answered in the official wiki:
Like Bitcoin:
ripple is a distributed peer-to-peer payment network
ripple transactions are irreversible, sent over the Internet, and counterfeit proof
ripple uses the same underlying cryptography as Bitcoin
ripple has multi-signature support
ripple has low to no transaction fees
ripple servers can ...
15
TL;DR Bitcoin already is a currency because it's a generally accepted medium of exchange among certain communities. As those communities grow and usage spreads to other communities, its strength as a currency solidifies.
This requires a little bit of history. I am not a numismatist, but I have studied this a little even before the advent of Bitcoin.
...
14
The exchange rate at any one point in time is determined by supply and demand at the markets.
The value of all bitcoins at the current market price is $80 million because the current market price is the point where the demand for bitcoins at a certain price meets the supply. You are describing introducing an artificial demand that would indeed cause ...
14
While in the US last year, I sent money to myself in Europe that way once, because it was significantly cheaper than using the legacy banking system.
I think it mostly comes down to whether you have easy access to a Bitcoin exchange from your bank account in the US and what amounts you are trying to transfer. It also depends on how urgently you need the ...
14
A refund should be issued using the same payment method that was used at the time of purchase.
This also serves an anti-fraud measure for the cases where a purchase was made on a stolen medium (eg a credit card) but the scammers request a refund in a different medium (eg cash) as soon as the payment goes through because all they want to do is take the money ...
12
Bitcoins are a purely electronic currency. If you want to sell them in exchange for dollars or euros, you can do that. But as Bitcoins, they exist purely electronically. There are physical Bitcoins but basically, they're just the key to an electronic account printed in some form.
I think you're missing the concept that Bitcoins act like a currency or ...
12
Most Bitcoin lookalikes are not really worth looking at. The two that are more or less accepted are Litecoin and Namecoin, of which the latter is not intended as a currency. Another more or less popular cryptocurrency that is not based on Bitcoin is Ripple.
I know that there are many more Bitcoin-based currencies. Most of them are not adopted and are thus ...
12
Yes!
Bitsquare.io is:
Decentralized – there is no single point of failure.
Safe – Bitsquare never holds your funds.
Instantly accessible – no need for approval from a central
authority.
Private -no one except trading partners exchange personally
identifying data.
Open – every aspect of the project is transparent.
Easy – we take usability seriously.
Many ...
10
I'd actually like to see a reference to someone saying that it's illegal.
...because it's legal.
FinCEN guidance establishes who must register with government and when one must pay taxes (sell bitcoin for USD, pay taxes on gains).
10
XBT is used because the ISO 4217 (the standard for currency codes) alphabetic code XBC is already in use. It stands for the European Unit of Account.
Here's the Official table of ISO 4217 codes
The X indicates it's not a national currency, but rather a supranational currency (like the East Caribbean Dollar, XCD) or something else that isn't quite a ...
10
Given that bitcoin has increased in value, one of us has to profit from this.
If you hold the bitcoins while the value goes up, you are the one entitled to profit from it, because you also risk holding while the value drops, and then you're the one stuck with the loss.
Imagine the 10,000 BTC pizza transaction were refunded now: would the purchaser be ...
10
Acquiring Data
You have two options here:
Check out one of the data providers online. Quandl offers (mostly) free historical data for a variety of pairs and exchanges. Alternatively, if you have bucks to spare, Coinigy offers high-quality data sets on a per-month pricing model.
Roll your own data crawler, using a programming language of your choice and the ...
8
The process of attempting to buy all of the currency would drive the price up arbitrarily high.
For example, I have some bitcoins and plan to sell 10% of what I have left every time the price doubles. I will never run out of bitcoins to sell, no matter how high the price, so it is impossible for anybody to buy them all.
The US government could try to ...
8
This site allows you to compare the mining profitability of the various coins:
http://dustcoin.com/mining
8
As with any traded commodity the price largely depends on the confidence of the buyers and sellers in the future evolution of the price. Basically you pay whatever you feel it is worth. Like stocks this changes over time, as the company or the bitcoin economy in our case evolves.
The wild price swings are not that really that surprising then when it is ...
8
The Bitcoin price is the result of a free market. There is no central authority that could by order "pump money into the system".
This currently happens anyway - but decentralized. When more people buy Bitcoins the market cap increases. With a higher market cap a single trade has a lesser effect on the price. Therefore, over time when Bitcoin attracts more ...
8
But then the next problem is transaction order and validity to prevent double spending. I don't understand completely why a timestamp can't just be included for every broadcasted transaction, and the transaction could have the correct, universally agreed upon time, and each ledger gets sorted chronologically. Is this because it requires a centralized system ...
7
In the ECB's view, (Bitcoin) can be used by business (criminals), customers (fraudsters) and savers (money launderers) to perform legal (illegal) activities, but lets ignore it until volume reaches a level where comparison with sovereign currencies reflects negatively on our reputation. The public will then expect us to regulate such digital (rogue) systems ...
7
There is a Complete Guide on How to Create a New Alt Coin on Bitcoin Talk.
7
From Introduction on the Bitcoin wiki:
Capitalization / Nomenclature
Since Bitcoin is both a currency and a protocol, capitalization can be confusing. Accepted practice is to use Bitcoin (singular with an upper case letter B) to label the protocol, software, and community, and bitcoins (with a lower case b) to label units of the currency.
So, the accepted ...
6
There are huge differences between FIAT and Bitcoin.
Fiat is created out of thin air "with fractional reserve banking" and other mechanisms, there is no stop on how many will be created.
Another problem is that every country is FORCED to create more of it.
Since otherwise the value of their money would increase to much, ending all export industry and ...
6
I would write 36.2K BTC.
On the other hand, if I had 0.0362 BTC, I would write 36.2 mBTC.
6
The point of Feathercoin (and the other alt coins) is to see what works and what can gain traction. Feathercoin is where Bitcoin was in 2009-2010—one FTC is about $0.13.
CoinDesk had a pretty good article on Feathercoin: Feathercoin shows heavyweight potential.
Intro to Feathercoin has a good list of Feathercoin resources.
6
Does Bitcoin have inherent value if you can fork the project and create a new cryptocurrency easily?
Yes, this is a real possibility. Effectively, Satoshi Nakamoto created a billion dollar market-capitalization of currency out of thin-air. Of course major corporations are going to attempt their own flavor, it is the nature of capitalism and it is a very healthy reality, which ultimately ends with a satisfied consumer. Progressive companies are forking it, ...
6
Because the demand for bitcoins is largely driven by speculation, i.e. people buy bitcoins in the hope that the conversion rate will rise so that they can make a profit.
Such speculative investors tend to exhibit herd behaviour: the more the rate falls, the more of them will sell, to realize gains or cut losses. And the more it rises, the more people want ...
6
The reason Bitcoin has value is because it is resistant to censorship (e.g., prohibiting transactions related to illicit purchases) and corruption (e.g., an authoritative source changing the rules). It does this thanks to the innovation known as proof-of-work.
But this proof-of-work means Bitcoin is vulnerable to attack from a party or cartel with more than ...
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