Must Listen! Silver Coins as Money - Ask The Expert – Hugo Salinas Price!

Hugo Salinas Price shares his views on precious metals, provides some historical background on gold and silver money, the manipulation of the precious metals markets, the inevitable collapse of the fiat money, and more…  

Click here for transcript and original posting

Bitcoin: What It Is, Why It Matters - and What the Critics Say - Mises.org

February 14, 2015

Thomas E. Woods | Thomas E. Woods a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, is the creator of Tom Woods's Liberty Classroom and author of eleven books, including the New York Times bestsellers Meltdown and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and other titles.

via libertycrier

OpenBazaar: P2P Marketplace to Undermine our Corporate Overlords

By Haystack on September 26, 2014

Howard Pyle: The Buccaneer (1905)

Around the turn of the century, Amazon, eBay and other online marketplaces provided revolutionary new venues for small-business entrepreneurship, but they have since grown into heavy-handed corporate behemoths that treat sellers like share croppers while exerting an ever-expanding influence over government and the economy. In the future, online marketplaces will be publicly shared via distributed p2p networks. There will be no fees, no trade restrictions, no corporate overlords running the show. The concept is gaining traction; the technology is already here.

One promising effort in this direction is OpenBazaar. They hope to offer a full release in 2014, and are currently seeking beta testers:

OpenBazaar is an open source project to create a decentralized network for peer to peer commerce online—using Bitcoin—that has no fees and cannot be censored. Put simply, it’s the baby of eBay and BitTorrent.

Right now, online commerce means using centralized services. eBay, Amazon, and other big companies have restrictive policies and charge fees for listing and selling goods. They only accept forms of payment that cost both buyers and sellers money, such as credit cards or PayPal. They require personal information, which can lead to it being stolen or even sold to others for advertising or worse. Buyers and sellers aren’t always free to exchange goods and services with each other, as companies and governments censor entire categories of trade.

OpenBazaar is a different approach to online commerce. It puts the power back in the users’ hands. Instead of buyers and sellers going through a centralized service, OpenBazaar connects them directly. Because there is no one in the middle of the transactions, there are no fees, no one can censor transactions, and you only reveal the personal information that you choose.

How does OpenBazaar work?

Let’s say that you are looking to sell your old laptop. Using the OpenBazaar client (a program you download), you create a new product listing on your computer with details just like you would on any ecommerce site, and ask for a price in Bitcoin. When you publish that listing, it is sent out to the distributed p2p network of other people using OpenBazaar. Anyone who searches for the keywords you’ve used—laptop, electronics, etc—will find your listing. They can then accept your price, or offer up a new price.

If you both agree to a price, the client creates a contract between you both with your digital signatures, and sends it to a third party called a notary. In the case of a dispute an arbiter can be brought into the transaction. These third party notaries and arbiters are also folks on the OpenBazaar network—could be your neighbor or someone across the world—who the buyer and seller trust in case something goes wrong. The third party witnesses the contract and creates a multisignature Bitcoin account (multisig) that requires two of three people to agree before the Bitcoin can be released.

The buyer then sends the agreed upon amount to the multisig address. You get a notification saying the buyer has sent the funds, and you ship the laptop to them and mark that it has been shipped. The buyer receives it a few days later, and they mark it received, which releases the funds from multisig to you. You got your Bitcoin, the buyer got the laptop; no fees paid, no one stopped your trade, everyone’s happy.

[Read More at openbazaar.org]

via disinfo

The Truth About "Gold Backed" Cryptocurrencies

We say, "If you can't hold it, you don't own it."

Thursday, July 17, 2014

The Truth About "Gold Backed" Cryptocurrencies

Another day, another salesman tries to sell us the story that they are launching the first Gold backed cryptocurrency. On this occasion it's Anthem Vault (founded by Anthem Blanchard, son of well known Gold advocate Jim Blanchard):

Newnote Financial Corp. is pleased to announce the successful development and launch of the first open-source gold-backed alternative crypto-currency, commissioned by Anthem Vault Inc. Business Wire

So are they really the first? They certainly aren't the first to launch a "Gold backed" cryptocurrency. The first I recall reading about was NoFiatCoin (XNF) which trades on the Ripple Network and was launched earlier this year:

Click Chart To Enlarge

Despite this cryptocurrencies favourable return for early adopters, the claim that it's backed by Gold (bullion) is dubious. The company simply allows those holding the cryptocurrency to exchange it for precious metals they have in stock. As Michael Suede wrote shortly after the announcement of XNF:

NoFiatCoin says that only a 1/3rd of XNFs are backed by bullion and that the market will determine the price for an XNF.  To me, this doesn't make much sense.  This means an XNF does not represent a fixed weight of gold.  Further, NoFiatCoin says redemption of XNFs for bullion requires a minimum of $3000 worth of XNFs at current market prices.

If XNFs were actually a "gold backed" currency, each XNF would have to represent a fixed unit of weight.  For example, they could set an XNF to be worth .001 ounces of gold, and if you saved up 1000 XNFs, then you could always exchange them with NoFiatCoin for an ounce of bullion.  Of course, under this system, it would be impossible to have a fixed limit of currency creation, and there would have to be a way to take XNFs out of circulation once they were redeemed for physical specie.

Without convertibility at a fixed ratio with the coins, how is this Gold backed?

Other cryptocurrencies purporting to be Gold backed include Gold Backed Coin (GBC) which also trades on the Ripple Network, they suggest that each of these coins is backed by 1/10oz of Gold. But what do we really know about this company and how or where they are storing the Gold that is supposedly backing all these coins? The domain for the website was registered only a few months ago.

Then there is Ripple Singapore which claim to be able to load your Ripple wallet with XAU (Gold), XAG (Silver) and XPT (Platinum) with the bullion backing these positions stored in Singapore by Silver Bullion Pte Ltd. Though take up doesn't appear strong, they published these audit figures on their website:

What is the benefit of storing these in your Ripple wallet? There's not much liquidity given the published reserves, why not just setup a regular unallocated account with the dealer? Not that I would recommend storing your precious metal that way either.

Further to those already mentioned there is also G8Coin, MinaCoin, XGOLD (a work in progress) and probably others that I've missed. None of these currencies really offer anything that hasn't been seen before in one form or another, for example E-gold was founded in 1996 and topped 5 million users before the Gold was eventually seized and company placed into receivership. Also, there are already online exchanges where one can buy precious metals electronically or trade peer to peer with other account holders, some of which are well established and trusted, such as BullionVault and Gold Money.

​ .. Read more​

Bitcoin vs The Dow Jones -- New Highs

July 03, 2014
BitcoinAssay

Which is more impressive?  The Dow Jones Industrial Average(DJIA) has reached new highs.  A wowing 17,000.  That's phenom levels.  So how does the stock market go to stratospheric heights when less people than ever are employed, less have money to purchase items from those companies making up this stock market index, and less are actually working to manufacturer those items.  Hence why we hear of stock market manipulation.

Whereas, Bitcoin is making steady progress price wise while simultaneously developing as both a currency and an investment.  I'm more impressed with Bitcoin, and many others are also.  Bitcoin is growing as a reliable currency as we see and hear of more vendors accepting Bitcoin and more ATM's deployed for easier access.

Bitcoin – more secure – growing – it is reaching new highs everyday as the ecosystem grows.

Capital Controls Rolling Into High Gear Under FATCA

May 29, 2014

Editorial By Jeffrey Berwick

The traditional banking system was already bad enough but now, with banks around the world rushing to comply with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) it is beginning to reach extreme levels.  And it isn't just affecting the most financially restricted people on Earth: US citizens... it is affecting everyone.

Take myself, for example.  I operate numerous businesses worldwide.  I am a Canadian citizen as well as the citizen of a Caribbean country and our business operations are also operated out of a non-tax jurisdiction in the Caribbean.  On top of that we hold no bank accounts, whatsoever, in the US... instead, we have bank accounts all over the world.

Yet, in the last two months we have had our accounts or transactions frozen, denied or questioned in different jurisdictions at least ten times.  And we have had countless other problems over the last two years.

Here are just a list of the most recent:

We got FATCA'ED.  We received a FATCA notice from one of our banks in Eastern Europe.  They told us that we must comply and contact them immediately.  We contacted them and let them know that the company is not a US company and no US citizen is involved with the company nor the bank account.  They told us that one of the phone numbers they had on file for us was a US number and therefore they'd have to close our account.  We informed them that the number they had was a virtual Skype number, one of many we have, that forwarded to the property departments in our companies around the world.  We are still dealing with this issue.

Constant Inquiries.  At the same Eastern European bank a few weeks ago they demanded to see detailed contracts and information on a large number of our transactions.  We are still also dealing with that.

Wires Constantly Scrutinized.  At one of our bank accounts in Canada with which I have had a 20 year relationship in good standing they have blocked numerous of our recent wires and demanded to see information on who the money is going to and why.  In more than one instance, when sending funds to the Middle East, we were informed that any and all wires sent to the Middle East were under heavy scrutiny causing us numerous problems.

The Paypal Monster.  Paypal has frozen many of our numerous Paypal accounts that we have worldwide on an ongoing basis. 

This shouldn't come as news to any merchants who use Paypal as the company is notorious for constantly freezing funds and accounts for all manner of reasons.  In one instance, as part of operations in our hotel in Acapulco (Las Torres Gemelas Private Suites) they froze our account until we could show them proof of numerous very small denomination transfers.  The transactions were for room rentals that had occurred weeks or months prior and Paypal would demand that we show proof that the person had stayed with us and approved the transaction.  Often these were past guests who had just booked for a few nights, who we had no other relation with, that we would have to somehow try to contact afterwards and bother them to supply Paypal with their information and approval of the transaction!

No Cuba For You.  In another instance, just a few weeks ago, another Paypal account we had was frozen after we paid for a flight from Havana, Cuba (ironically I had just stopped there for one night because I wanted to avoid the pain and risk of flying through the US) via Paypal because it was nearly impossible to purchase a flight to or from Cuba by any other means.  Because we denoted the payment done was for a flight from "Havana" the account was frozen.  The total dollar amount was for just a few hundred dollars.

No Brokerage For You. Last year, a brokerage account I use in Luxembourg threatened to close my account.  When I asked why they said that the brokerage had recently been bought by a Canadian brokerage and there is a Canadian law that says that no Canadian can deal with a brokerage owned by a Canadian company outside of Canada.  Luckily they accepted my Caribbean residency and therefore let the account remain open.  US citizens are not so lucky.  The SEC has made it so hardly any brokerage outside of the US will accept US citizens effectively locking their accounts inside the US as a capital control.

And, we are most definitely not alone.  At TDV Offshore we hear dozens of stories per week from people scrambling to find a way to have international bank accounts after their accounts have suddenly been shuttered.  The great majority are US citizens who receive a notice that their accounts will be immediately closed due to FATCA.  

FATCA is essentially creating capital controls for US citizens on banking making it harder and harder to hold funds outside of the US.

In short, it is getting more difficult all the time to transact in the traditional banking system.  And it seems to just get worse by the month.  There appears to be a worldwide effort underway to make it harder and harder just to transact financially.

THE OPTIONS

Luckily there is still options for getting around many of these issues but it isn't cheap or easy... and not about to get any easier.

Passports.  For Americans the only way to really be able to internationalize your assets and get out from the unbelievably egregious US tax system is to get a foreign passport and then to renounce your US citizenship.  This may seem extreme to some but it seems like the most rational thing to do to us.  We foresee the US continuing to devolve, further capital controls to be erected and the US not being a place anyone will want to go for an extended period of time as it completely collapses... so why not get yourself and your capital out while you can?  The US government, as we have reported, has even gone to lengths to make it harder for US citizens to get foreign passports... which should be a big hint as to their intentions. 

Just this month they have attacked probably the most arduous, respectable and legitimate "citizenship by investment" program in St. Kitts.  And the US government has pressured the Dominican Republic to increase the time to get a passport from an original two years to now eight years.  We foresee this continuing and by the time many do see the writing on the wall and want to get a second passport to get away from the US it will be too late.  The demand will be too overwhelming and the supply will continue to dwindle which will drive the cost through the roof... if it is even possible at all. 

You can contact TDV Passports for a consultation on what your current options are.

Foreign Trusts.  Another option that is still available but may not be for much longer is to transfer your assets into an offshore trust thereby getting around FATCA rules and giving US citizens the ability to bank, have brokerage accounts and to do business internationally. 

This is not easy or simple and our FATCA experts at TDV Wealth Management have a fulltime job trying to help US citizens to internationalize their assets.  Citizens of other countries may feel that they do not need to do something like this as their country does not currently have FATCA controls nor taxes them on worldwide income.  We expect this door to be closed very quickly as the Western countries all devolve into the Greater Depression and as tax revenue for their governments decline.

Bullion.  One of the best ways to retain your assets is to have them in hard assets like precious metals outside of the financial system and preferably geopolitically diversified to make it harder for any one government to seize.  This, also, is getting harder and harder but is still possible even though it is now nearly impossible for Americans to ship gold outside of the country and have it insured as we know of no companies that will now do that for US citizens.  There are many ways to international precious metals though and you can read more in the Getting Your Gold Out Of Dodge report.  As well, precious metals should rise tremendously as the modern banking and financial systems collapse during The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It (TEOTMSAWKI).

Bitcoin.  Bitcoin offers not only a safehaven from the financial system and ability to transact worldwide in seconds for free and with no chance of any government or bank freezing the transfer... but it also offers tremendous speculative upside.  I believe that as more people awaken to the serious capital controls and inability to transact internationally easily that more will move to bitcoin as a way to hold their assets as well as to transfer them easily.  This alone could see bitcoin go up 1,000% in the next 1-2 years in my opinion, if not more.  In fact, bitcoin has surpassed Western Union and is now close to surpassing Paypal in terms of transaction volume which is no surprise to us here at The Dollar Vigilante (where we have been following bitcoin since $7 in 2011 at The Dollar Vigilante newsletter) as it is a much easier, better, faster, safer, more private and cheaper way to transact.

MASSIVE CHANGES IN THE WORLD MONETARY AND BANKING SYSTEM

The perfect storm is developing and it is all going as we have predicted over the last five years.  The Western world will continue to inflate their currencies to keep the system alive as almost all governments are bankrupt.  Governments will continue to make it harder to get your assets outside of the country.  There will be further grabs on all manner of assets including retirement and pension funds and more bank bail-ins, like in Cyprus, as government bonds collapse and the currencies hyperinflate.

Luckily, as mentioned above, there are still options but the doors are closing at such a rapid pace now that if you haven't begun to protect yourself from the coming collapse you had better start doing it yesterday.

This article provided courtesy of The Dollar Vigilante.

via Dailybell

How to Debit Card with Bitcoin

Why would anyone expect any different defense from the international banking cartel? They have been nesting in the plush uplift bras and groin holsters of congresscritters for as long as I can remember. It beats competing in a free market, no? Especially so, since it's your money going to the government-dependent lobbyists!

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May 19, 2014

 

MasterCard is crying for protection from Bitcoin.   The Washington, DC, lobbying firm Peck Madigan Jones have been hired to concentrate on swaying Capitol Hill of the threat from Bitcoin to the established credit card giant and a $50 Billion a year fee based financial services market.  Therefore, expect to see Visa next to initiate a similar course of action.

Globe and Mail -  How Hidden Credit Card Fees Work

Bitcoin is emerging as a major competitor in the currency exchange sector due to its drastic lower fees and ease of transaction, especially at the international level.  MasterCard and Visa, with their high fees and transaction costs are vulnerable to this low cost alternative. 

In perspective, no one should be surprised at this howl for protection.  MasterCard, Visa, and Bitcoin fundamentally offer very similar capabilities in the area of digital currency services, but, in the case of Bitcoin, at significantly less cost to the user.   

As if the emergence of Bitcoin as a low cost alternative to the long-established credit card industry wasn’t enough, now MasterCard and Visa are sweating the emergence of Bitcoin debit cards, like Bitcoin Money, BitPlastic, and Xapo.  

These cards are indistinguishable at the ATM from MasterCard and Visa. 

The Xapo debit card will allow you to use your current Bitcoin funds and convert it into currency anywhere that MasterCard is accepted.

One point to consider is that instead of lowering their cost structure and associated fees with making a MasterCard transaction they would rather use their clout and those same fees to hire lobbyist.  Thus, signaling that MasterCard feels that the political process will yield better results than the open market and that the vote of politicians is a surer means of protecting their $50 Billion yearly cash cow.

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MasterCard lobbying on digital currency bitcoin

MasterCard is paying lobbyists to focus on the growing digital currency bitcoin, according to federal lobbying disclosure records.

In a quarterly report filed this month, lobbying firm Peck Madigan Jones said that five of its lobbyists were concentrating on “Bitcoin and mobile payments,” among more than a dozen other issues, on behalf of MasterCard.

The payment giant is the first company to officially lobby on the virtual currency, according to federal disclosure records.

In a statement sent to The Hill, MasterCard said that it was “gathering information in connection with recent congressional hearings to better understand the policy issues around virtual and anonymous currencies.”

The bitcoin company Xapo is working with banks on a bitcoin debit card that uses MasterCard and Visa networks, but MasterCard said on Tuesday said that it had no relationship with the company.

Bitcoins have been controversial on Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers have viewed them skeptically and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) even called for an outright ban. Still, others have been quicker to embrace them.

Defenders counter that the currency is no more risky than cash, but say it has the potential to revolutionize the way people pay for things. Backers say that bitcoins are safe and transactions are much cheaper for businesses than credit cards, which charge fees.

So far, Congress has been interested in learning about the money but has resisted passing legislation on its use or treatment. MasterCard’s lobbying could be a sign of new activity on Capitol Hill.

Other agencies, however, have begun to flex their oversight muscles on the issue. 

via bitcoinassay

Gold Versus Bitcoin: An Unnecessary Argument

By Staff Report - March 17, 2014

via dailybell

Gold is king, but there may be a better way to store wealth ... A great investing mistake is to try to predict the future. Really, an investment decision is more about the price you pay and whether you can afford to be wrong ... Bitcoin needs to move past its current use as a payments processing tool to a realistic medium-term store of value. Its chief competitor is clearly gold. – Sydney Morning Herald

Dominant Social Theme: Maybe, just maybe, bitcoin can take the place of gold, spelling an end, finally, to the yellow metal's allure.

Free-Market Analysis: This article is an overt statement of a subterranean argument about gold. It encapsulates arguments regarding bitcoin versus gold that only add to the confusion.

Bitcoin proponents often seem driven by a barely concealed contempt for gold – and even hatred. Yet gold persists. It has value as a money metal because people have bestowed value on it.

People have seen gold's value probably for tens of thousands of years. 

They've supposedly found gold mines in South Africa that may be 100,000 years old. That's a good run when it comes to allure and utility.

And so ... the idea that an electronic currency can come along and simply knock gold off its perch strikes us as muddled.

Yet here, again, in this article posted at the Sydney Morning Herald we find the same confusion:

Gold is loved the world over for its unparalleled ability to keep governments at bay; after all, not even the US Fed can print gold, no matter how useful this might be for quantitative easing. Combined with gold's innate ability to endure, this is what continues to draw investors to confidently buy and hold gold for the long term.

But it's not without problems. As Warren Buffet said, gold "gets dug out of the ground, ... we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it ... Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head."

It is these qualities - the heaviness, the clumsiness, the expense to protect and to move - that makes some believe our millenniums-long love affair with the yellow metal should stop. What though might replace it? What if there was a currency mathematically guaranteed to have a fixed quantity (preventing inflation), eminently storable, perfectly protectable and costless to transfer? 

Bitcoin offers these possibilities.

These analyses inevitably begin with a determined apologia – gold is good! – before proposing the writer's real sentiments, which is that it is NOT.

Gold (and silver), as we can see in this article, simply seem to bring out these deep seated resentments, especially in the chattering classes that have been much influenced, at least subconsciously, by John Maynard Keynes.

It was Keynes who formulated the proposal that gold was a "barbaric" metal, not fit to be circulated in modern times. Yet it seems to us a reasonable proposition that if something has been seen as valuable for millennia that whatever modernity we are familiar with cannot and will not render it suddenly valueless.

This article, however, advances all the weary arguments about gold's demise. It states that government interference can be prevented by the system's governing algorithms, "which allow you to create an account in private with no connection with your personal information."

It also makes the point that "bitcoins can be transferred at no cost and can be secured either digitally or on paper (or even in your head, if your memory is good enough)."

What's the conclusion? "Not only does this open up the possibility of replacing gold, it also poses a solution for large and small savings, allowing the entire world to participate, not just the relatively rich."

And the article closes this with this last irrelevancy: "Should this occur, gold's unrivaled reign may finally be at an end."

This is idiocy. Bitcoin can prove to be the most efficient purchasing agent ever created and it will not put gold out of business. Yet it's open season in the mainstream media and even in various elements of the alternative media.

Anti-gold critics of late have taken to predicting that gold is owned by elite banks and bankers who can control the price and thus render it unsuitable for ordinary people to hold. But this is simply disinformation. Tens and even hundreds of millions own gold around the world.

To discourage people from owning gold in this day and age is a kind of malicious error. When fiat currencies collapse, as all fiat currencies inevitably do, gold and silver will retain value and utility.

And even if bitcoin thrives, somehow – and it may – it will not take the place of gold but act as an adjunct to it. Gold's anonymity and longevity as a money metal will surely continue. Its only competitor is silver.

So hold bitcoin and other kinds of electronic coins if you wish. But don't forget that gold and silver are evidently the oldest forms of money on Earth. And there's a reason for that.

How To Steal Bitcoins In Three Easy Steps

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/21/2013

Over the past several months, Bitcoins have soared in popularity, acceptance and price. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before Bitcoin crime followed. As reported here previously, earlier this month, the largest heist in the history of Bitcoin was pulled off when the illegal drug bazaar Sheep Marketplace was plundered, either by hackers or insiders, and about $100 million worth of the currency was stolen from customers.

U.S. Government Nastygram Shuts Down One-Man Bitcoin Mint

Banksters still live by their own 'golden rule' of John Rockefeller wisdom: "Competition is a sin" . Free, uncontrolled markets shall not be permitted and will be punished by banking's government-owned agents.

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By Robert McMillan

12.12.13

Back in April, Mike Caldwell mints physical bitcoins at his home in Sandy, Utah. Photo: George Frey/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Mike Caldwell spent years turning digital currency into physical coins. That may sound like a paradox. But it’s true. He takes bitcoins — the world’s most popular digital currency — and then he mints them here in the physical world. If you added up all the bitcoins Caldwell has minted on behalf of his customers, they would be worth about $82 million.

Basically, these physical bitcoins are novelty items. But by moving the digital currency into the physical realm, he also prevents hackers from stealing the stuff via an online attack. Or at least he did. His run as the premiere bitcoin minter may be at an end. Caldwell has been put on notice by the feds.

Just before Thanksgiving, he says, he received a letter from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN, the arm of the Treasury Department that dictates how the nation’s anti-money-laundering and financial crime regulations are interpreted. According to FINCEN, Caldwell needs to rethink his business. “They considered my activity to be money transmitting,” Caldwell says. And if you want to transmit money, you must first jump through a lot of state and federal regulatory hoops Caldwell hasn’t jumped through.

Caldwell has stopped taking orders for his popular Casascius bitcoins, which have become one of the most recognizable images of the thoroughly intangible digital currency.

Because the process is so complicated, Caldwell has stopped taking orders for his popular Casascius bitcoins — which have become one of the most recognizable images of the thoroughly intangible digital currency. In recent months, the feds have cracked down on many other bitcoin operations in similar ways, including Mt. Gox, the most prominent online bitcoin exchange. But Caldwell’s case is a little different. He doesn’t think he transmits money.

Caldwell doesn’t accept U.S. dollars or any type of fiat currency. You send him bitcoins via the internet, and he sends you back metal coins via the U.S. Postal Service. To spend bitcoins, you need a secret digital key — a string of numbers and letters — and when Caldwell makes the coins, he hides this key behind a tamper-resistant strip.

So long as you can keep your Casascius bitcoins safe, nobody can learn the key. To date, Caldwell has minted nearly 90,000 bitcoins in various denominations. That’s worth about $82 million at today’s exchange rate.

Caldwell takes a fee of about $50 on each coin he mints, but he argues that sending the coins through the mail is not a way of transmitting money. He thinks the coins should be viewed as collectibles.

But, clearly, that’s not how the federal government sees things. If he doesn’t verify or have a way of knowing whether the owner of the bitcoins is the same person he’s sending the coins to, that’s a problem, says Faisal Islam, the director of compliance advisory services with Centra Payments Solutions, a company that advises corporations on financial compliance.

Running afoul of FINCEN is a risky proposition. In the spring, the Department of Homeland Security seized two bank accounts belonging to Mt. Gox. The reasoning behind the $5 million seizure: Mt. Gox, like Caldwell, hadn’t registered itself as a money transmission business. 

FINCEN did not return a message left by WIRED on Wednesday, but according to the letter it sent to Caldwell, dated Nov. 15, the agency believes that Caldwell’s business is a “money services business,” that must be registered with FINCEN.

Because he runs a bitcoin-only business, Caldwell says there’s no Casascius bank account for authorities to seize. But he adds that he has no desire to anger the feds, whether he agrees with them or not. So he’s cranking out his last few orders and talking to his lawyer. He says this may spell the end of Casascius coins. “It’s possible. I haven’t come to a final conclusion,” he says.

Caldwell isn’t the only person who makes physical versions of bitcoins. You can also buy bitcoins that look like dollar bills or tickets or even other types of metal coins similar to Casascius.

Noah Luis, another virtual currency coin-maker who produces metal litecoins as well as bitcoins, says he has talked to Caldwell and is carefully watching his case. Luis and his company, Lealana, isn’t registered as a money services provider — like Caldwell, he doesn’t believe that swapping bitcoins for bitcoins qualifies — but he says he’d probably follow Caldwell’s lead if he receives a similar letter. “I’d probably stop production and sales, just to be safe,” he says.

Minting digital currency has been lucrative for Caldwell, but it’s not without its stresses. For one thing, as the value of bitcoins has soared, the value of Caldwell’s inventory has gone up too, making theft and fraud a bigger concern. “When the coins are worth $1,000 apiece, that’s a ridiculous amount of money,” he says. They might be worth even more now, as collectibles, should Caldwell get out of the business.

On Monday, someone forwarded him a photograph of tamper-resistant hologram labels made to look like the ones used on Casascius bitcoins. They were fakes. But now Caldwell is worried that someone may be out there counterfeiting his bitcoins.

And with his operations suspended, Caldwell is going to be taking a revenue hit, just as the holidays approach. He wouldn’t say how much he has made from his bitcoin business, but things really took off in 2013, he says. “It’s good money, but I went and spent $5,000 in lawyer bills in two weeks.”

Additional reporting by Kif Leswing.

Source Wired

As BitCoin Touches $400 The Senate Starts Seeking Answers... As Does The Fed

Let Congress hear our loud "HANDS OFF BITCOIN!" [You've still got unfinished business you haven't taken care of : Give us justice on the too-big-to-fail banks before you screw anything else up with your crony bankers.] Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/09/2013 12:38 -0500 Moments ago BitCoin hit $395, and will likely cross $400 in the immediate future (the chart looks a little less scary in log scale).

Banking Cartel will either Control Bitcoin or Smash It - eBay is a Co-conspirator - the US Govt is the Enforcer to see it happens

We are not as sanguine about eBay 'rescuing' Bitcoin as this article implies. Why? Because in the past PayPal, a component of eBay, has acted conspiratorially on behalf of the banksters and fedgov "regulators" by stealing the donor account for Wikileaks. Maybe others we don't know about. If you think PayPal had a sudden stroke of morality, your tin foil chin strap is too tight.

Homeland Security Feds Seized $2.9 Million in Bitcoin Funds from Mt. Gox - Fed Panic Looms!

The banksters and their colluding enforcement political stooges are now openly antsy about the likelihood their US dollar debt fiefdom may get taken down! Be reminded that your government is THE enforcement arm for the Federal Reserve theft of your labor and savings.

Germany recognizes Bitcoin as 'private money'

Edited time: August 19, 2013 11:37

Bitcoin has been recognized for legal and tax purposes in Germany, making it the first country to take an official stance on the status of using the online currency as money.

One Third of Kenyans Now Have a Bitcoin Wallet

By Daniel Stuckey

Image via Flickr

Thanks to bitcoin, it's about to become a lot easier to move money in Africa. M-Pesa, a successful mobile money platform in Sub-Saharan Africa, is embracing bitcoin. The service will give rise to transactions with negligible fees (~$0.04), and could dramatically slash revenues of existing money transfer services like Moneygram, Western-Union and Paypal. That is, if the famed untraceable digital currency catches on.

U.S. feds make their first-ever Bitcoin seizure

It may be the currency of the future, but it now appears that Bitcoin is not immune to the U.S. government's prying eyes and hands — especially when it's being used to fuel black market activities.

Bitcoin's Big Bank Problem: Why Did Mt. Gox Halt U.S. Payouts?

By Robert McMillan
06.20.13

Photo: Casascius

The world’s best-known Bitcoin exchange stopped paying out customers in U.S. dollars Thursday. Mt. Gox didn’t exactly explain what was going on, though. It blamed an “increased volume” of transactions, and said it would suspend U.S. cash withdrawals for two weeks as it sorted things out.

After Government Raid, Jittery Future for Bitcoin

Published: Monday, 20 May 2013

By: Chris Morris Special to CNBC.com

With news last week that U.S. authorities had seized assets of the world's largest bitcoin exchange, traders and other people interested in the digital currency are looking nervously at the future.

Bitcoin: Money of the Future or Old-Fashioned Bubble?

Mises Daily: Tuesday, April 09, 2013 by Patrik Korda

 

Bitcoin has been all the rage lately. The stuff, or lack thereof, runs on peer-to-peer technology, is fully decentralized, has no patents, and is open source. Currently, there are almost 11 million bitcoin units in existence and the maximum amount of bitcoin units that will ever be created by the logic of its design are 21 million. For more details on how they work, see the recent Mises Daily “The Money-Ness of Bitcoins” by economist Nikolay Gertchev.

Before Buying BITCOIN, Read This - Mises Daily

Conceptually, we like Bitcoin. We do, however, lack the confidence that our enemies in government and finance  will not be able to destroy it when it becomes opportune. Our wealth destroyers have every tool known to man at their destructive disposal, bar none.

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Mises Daily: Thursday, April 04, 2013 by Nikolay Gertchev

 

Bitcoins have been much in the news lately. Against the background of renewed concerns about the integrity of the euro zone and the imposition of capital controls in Cyprus, the price of a bitcoin has tripled over the last month and reached more than $141 for 1 BTC.