What is Bitcoin? - We Use Coins. Bitcoin. Free Bitcoins. Free Bitcoins. What is Bitcoin? - We Use Coins. Exchanges - Using bitcoin for international travel - Bitcoin Beta - Stack Exchange. You should be wary when trying to travel only on Bitcoins, some people have failed in the past.
At the current stage of development, Bitcoin is not ready to be used to finance your local spending across multiple countries, as getting money to and from an exchange takes a long while. Moreover, you can't withdraw money easily this way into a foreign currency, so the model would work like holding all your money in your local bank and using a debit card to withdraw money at an ATM. You could potentially have your fellow Bitcoin enthusiasts offer to sell you local cash for Bitcoins on the spot, but that would require a lot of preparation, contacting people, and trusting them to show up on time when you need the cash. Generally, not an ideal situation. All in all, it can't really be done at the moment. Update: BitInstant has announced that they will be releasing an international MasterCard funded by Bitcoins in a couple months. Exchanges - Where do the dollars go? - Bitcoin Beta - Stack Exchange. When you buy a bottle of soda at the convenience store, where does the money go?
The money goes to the party that sold it to you -- that party owned the bottle before you owned it. You might be able to trace ownership of that bottle all the way back through the supply chain, to the point at which it was manufactured. It probably had several prior owners before you got it. Bitcoins are like a commodity that works the same way. If you purchase from a market exchange (like Mt. To buy $100 USD worth of bitcoins you must have deposited $100 to your account with the exchange. So when you trade your $100 USD for someone else's 10 BTC, your $100 goes to their account, and their 10 BTC goes to yours (if there were fees, the amounts would be adjusted appropriately to cover fees). Then when you withdraw your BTCs, the exchange will send that amount of bitcoins from the exchange's wallet to yours.
Then there are other types of trades which involve risk. What are the legal processes that someone would have to go through in order to get a Bitcoin exchange operational? - Bitcoin Beta - Stack Exchange. At the present moment, no country recognizes bitcoin as actual "currency" so the laws for exchanging, buying, selling or trading in bitcoin are exactly as they would be for simply setting up a shop.
For legal purposes, pretend bitcoins are any other object, let's say a chair... If you set up a web site that exchanges chairs for USD and you sell enough chairs, you'll probably need a business license, it would probably be smart to incorporate your chair-selling business at some point as well. If you "mine" (assemble?) Chairs then you have a cost of production and you make a profit. If the profit exceeds some amount which your state/country has established then you must pay taxes on those profits. I qualify all of this with "at the present moment" because it's all quite likely to change at some point. Edit: I must also mention that bitcoins may be recognized as a "value store" without being recognized as a currency.
Bitcoin.