[LINK] Bitcoin Virtual Currency

kim holburn kim at holburn.net
Wed Jun 15 16:35:57 AEST 2011


On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Richard Chirgwin
<rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
> 2. Anybody who thinks it exempts them from local laws is foolish. You
> have to, at some point, find some way to exchange Bitcoins for a
> convertible currency. That transaction, in Australia (if a local
> exchange existed), would attract GST as a starting point, since the
> Bitcoin exchange is providing a service.
>
> 3. Anybody joining Bitcoin today is similarly foolish, in my opinion.
> They are enriching the early adopters, with little prospect of accruing
> a similar benefit, and they're joining just at that time when
> authorities are starting to look at ways in which Bitcoin might break
> laws (eg, money laundering).
>
> 4. Journalists should be *extremely* wary of becoming Bitcoin boosters.
> In particular, a journalist who buys Bitcoins and then boosts them is
> acting unethically.
>
> 5. I can easily imagine that while Bitcoins are not a currency, they
> already fill the characteristics of some kind of trading instrument that
> *is* regulated. IANAL, so I don't know what definition might be applied,
> but the idea that they exist outside all regulations is dangerously
> simplistic.
>
> The journalist probably wasn't reading a press release, but rather
> getting swept up in a quite simplistic and unhealthy media frenzy.

L.E.T.S. seems to have made a place for itself somehow.  Despite all that.


-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
Ph: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
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