So what stops me from just picking up one of these "burner" phones and (presumably prepaid) credit cards to actually use for legitimate purposes?

Hell, even if they just send me a bottom-of-the-barrel tracphone, hey, free $30 flip-phone to keep in the car for emergencies (911 will work on any activated US cell phone, regardless of its in-service status)!

When you participate in a pyramid scheme

Funny how you dumb fucks never get tired of showing off your ignorance regarding that term every time Bitcoin comes up.

You'd think after having your betters correct you a few hundred times over the past three years, you might have learned a bit.

Then again, that presumes an AC actually means to stand behind their post rather than just see who bites. Oh well.

/ Pull the hook out of his mouth.

Seriously, this is no joke. As an asset you will be expected to declare a gain or loss on the coins you used to purchase that cup of coffee. The gain or loss with respect to the change of value between the day you received those coins and the day you used them in the purchase.

Very true, no joke at all! That ruling makes Bitcoins far better from a tax standpoint than than USD, although slightly less convenient. Instead of paying your normal income tax rate on BTC, you pay your capital gains rate. Hold them for more than a year, and you have capped your tax rate at half-or-less of your normal income tax rate - 20% max, 15% for all but the 1%, and a whopping 0% for anyone making under $82k. Woo hoo, can I start getting paid in BTC today???

However, in their typical dickish fashion, the IRS has decide to only allow gains, not losses. So if their value goes down, TFB.

That said, you can expect that to change if ever more than a laughably small number of people start filing 400+ page schedule D1s. Make no mistake, the rules for gains on foreign currency (treated specially as something other than assets) exist more for the IRS's convenience than for yours.

a) there isn't one. the most that can be said is it's a concept misunderstood by deniers who have no clue what they are talking about.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

b) wrong.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-...

c1) wrong. they are NOT naturally absorbed. if they were, the planet would not be warming, leading to ever increasing amounts of stored energy unable to re-radiate out into space. the natural carbon cycle deals out no where near the amount of CO2 humans do. 40 billion tons. That's the YEARLY output of human activity. Imagine the biggest aircraft you can think of...they weigh ~100,000 tons. So now imagine 400,000 of those aircraft carriers. That's the weight of CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere yearly. Alternatively, think of a cubic volume of gas (CO2)....18 miles on each side (that's ~95k feet high...almost to space)...that's also 40 billion tons. And we do that every year. And before you spout some bullshit about volcanoes...no. Volcanic yearly output of the entire planet is only ~3 billion tons of CO2.

c2) the rest of c was pretty stupid, and just frankly not worth it.

And this idiocy still gets modded "insightful" while actual science gets modded "troll".
Stupid fucking mod system.

My mod stalker sure has a lot of points to abuse

I believe X.org versus Wayland would be another pair bridging the old and new Linux world.

The very fact that you would equate the battle over a display server with the battle over the granddaddy of all running processes puts you so far into the "new Linux" camp that you can't even see the border. I don't mean that insultingly, just a statement of fact.

CLI FTW.

again. not flamebait.

I thought people were allowed to have their own beliefs in this country without others attacking them for it.

>modded insightful

Yeah, well moderation here isn't perfect. Because you are wrong, and I will demonstrate how in the next two sentences.

You are perfectly free to spout inane bullshit.
Other people are perfectly free to call you on it.

That's how free speech works.

And your post was complete bullshit supported by toddler logic.

Have a nice day.

--
BMO

The premise behind Coin is attractive: consolidate credit cards onto a single card-sized gadget

First, calling this thing "credit card sized" amounts to nothing short of a lie - More like a PCMCIA-card sized, or about four credit cards thick. It wouldn't fit in my current wallet, which doesn't even like holding the older embossed-number style cards because of the extra thickness.

Second, my credit/debit/gift cards already come on credit card-sized devices. And they don't need batteries.

Third, how many cards do people have that they need this? One credit card, one ATM card, and on the rare occasion I get a gift card for something, I use it ASAP to avoid some crazy terms of service eating the balance away. As the only possible audience I see for this, the sort of crazy coupon ladies who have two dozen store-specific cards just so they can play games with juggling discounts and no-payments-for-x-months - And even in that case, Coin only holds eight cards total, making it still useless.

And finally, NFC has made the entire concept pointless. Coin has built dedicated hardware to do something that every smartphone (except the iPhone, because fuck you that's why) on the planet can do much, much better.

So someone explain to me what I've missed here... What killer use have I failed to consider for the Coin?

Why do you actually care how much time your washing machine uses?

Because although you can do other things while it runs, you really can't just take off and go about your day (Ever had an unbalanced washer shake itself loose of the drain hookup? Not a pretty sight). So if you have four or five loads to do on a typical Saturday, at one hour per load it means getting out of the house by noon to enjoy the day; at 2.5 hours per load, it effectively kills your entire day.

Questioning....for a valid reason.

Questioning....because you don't like it, or especially for political reasons, which is the number one reason for these cranks who say they have an equal right to their "opinion"... is not sufficient.

Don't tell me what I think when I keep telling you what I think.

Just because you CAN question something doesn't mean your theory is just as valid as the prevailing theory with tons of data to back it up.
Your new theory can only overturn the prevailing mountain of thought if it is sufficiently rigorous.
If it is not, you're just a crank.
If it is...if it can and does overturn the prevailing consensus....then it becomes the new consensus (over time).

but everytime it has happened, it hasn't happened just because the person was a crank, but because he was able to sufficiently back it up, sufficiently defend it, and show its superiority. and that is the problem with deniers, and why they are cranks: they have nothing.

It's almost like large organizations have voting rights.

What do you mean "almost"?

They have more voting rights than you, me, or anyone.

And you know what? We've got "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who will fight you tooth-and-nail to defend that, in spite of their own interests.

--
BMO