

Alberta man may be first to sell house for Bitcoin - MikeCapone
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/21/canadian-bitcoin-house-for-sale/

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jayfuerstenberg
Hope the value doesn't plummet right after the sale.

To say that the value of a Bitcoin has been on a roller coaster of late would
be an understatement.

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mrb
Pfft that is nothing. There is enough market depth that selling $400k of BTC
would barely make the market dip from $72 to $68 (which was the market rate
twelve hours ago)... <http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html>

Edit: oh, you mean for him it would be bad if the market fell.

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fyi80
5% in one day is quite a drop.

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tveita
There was a 7% drop today, and a 5% drop yesterday, and so on and so on,
though so far the price has recovered after each one.

I think you'd have to be crazy to be either the buyer or the seller of this,
unless you were doing it for the publicity. I also wonder if they'd agree on
the bitcoin price in advance, or if they would pin it to the dollar value up
to transfer.

Either way, imagine being the buyer, taking up a loan, maybe buying the
bitcoins, and then suddenly not having enough money because the price has gone
up/down.

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gamblor956
Welcome to the wonderful world of currency exchange risk! This is a problem
common to international business acquisitions, wherein changing exchange rates
usually changes the effective purchase/sales price (depending on your POV).
For this reason, acquisition agreements fix the price as of a certain date,
and the parties bear the risk of loss, or the fortune of gain, arising from
changes to the exchange rate after the deal is signed but before payment is
effectuated.

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hippich
I did sell my motorcycle back in a days for bitcoins. I posted that ad for two
reasons: it was fun and my ad was getting more attention. I converted
immediately to dollars, since I was looking for new bike. But still,
transaction itself happened with a bitcoins, laptops running linux and console
on 'em. :)

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tomfakes
He could spend some of that new-found coinage on wine from the first North
American winery to accept Bitcoin for wine!

<https://twitter.com/rollingdale>

Since they're in BC, they can ship to Alberta too!

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aneth4
> Since they're in BC, they can ship to Alberta too!

Is that right? How does that work?

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ew
It's way cheaper to ship something to a neighbouring province than to the US.

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aneth4
Ahh.. BC = British Columbia, not Bitcoin.

I thought there was some loophole in shipping or tax regulations with Bitcoin
:)

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littledot5566
My first reaction was: How is Bitcoin taxed in Canada?

After looking around, they indeed are:
[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/535/tax-
implicati...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/535/tax-implications-
in-canada-of-buying-and-selling-bitcoins)

"Bitcoin would fall in the same category as foreign currency or barter, and
would be taxable. In Canada, barter is sometimes exempt from taxation"

It would be interesting to see under what conditions are Bitcoin considered as
goods rather than currency.

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mctx
Do you pay the tax in BC or CAD?

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adestefan
If you sold a house for Euros would you pay your Canadian taxes in Euros or
CAD?

I'm not sure why people are having such a hard time grasping this.

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illuminate
Novelty-seekers who can't seem to wrap their head around bitcoin being an
evolution of existing concepts that've been around since money was invented.

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tikwidd
Great way to sell something, get it in the news.

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Nursie
And near the top of a crazy peak is the _perfect_ time to do this... LOL.

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alexjeffrey
assuming this is even a peak - the economics of bitcoin are ideal for the
price to just keep on rising. That's probably what the seller here's banking
on - that the 6-figure dollar-equivalent bitcoins he now holds will be worth 8
figures in a few years.

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Nursie
IF (and I think that's a big if) bitcoin continues to expand in use, sure.

Even then I think what we're seeing now is a speculation-driven local peak
that will die down again.

You're not trying to tell me that the recent spike is based entirely on a
sudden spike in trade are you?

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aredington
The recent spike in price is due to a recent drop in supply. The amount of BTC
awarded from successfully mining was recently cut in half from 50 to 25BTC,
and the difficulty rate has been rising as better mining hardware has been
getting out into (a few) people's hands.

It's harder to get your hands on BTC now than it used to be.

~~~
Dylan16807
That's not a drop in supply, that's a drop in the inflation rate.

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aredington
There's a growth in both supply and demand, let's call them ds and dd. ds is
relatively constant, though every 4 years it halves. dd is stochastic and gets
influenced by how many ways there are to use bitcoins as a store of wealth,
speculative opinions on its future conversion to dollars, and how many actors
will accept bitcoins as a transfer of wealth.

Most of the pressure on dd has directed it to grow, so demand is going up, and
it goes up faster over time. ds is a designed feature of the currency, and is
designed to shrink quasi-deterministically.

The supply of bitcoins is not growing in proportion to the growth of demand
for bitcoins, thus the price goes up. So it's probably most fair to say that
the demand is growing significantly faster than the suppply. However, the most
recent halving day has significantly altered the differential between ds and
dd.

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Siecje
I like how it says "But it has yet to catch on more broadly partly because of
concerns around security — bitcoin exchanges are regularly hacked" Which is
defiantly not true.

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damian2000
MtGox did get hacked badly a couple of years ago [1]. People have long
memories when it comes to monetary risk.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/bitcoin-price-
plu...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/06/bitcoin-price-plummets-on-
compromised-exchange/)

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samstave
How are taxes handled with bitcoin?

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adestefan
The same way they're handled now. If you make a capital gain at the time you
realize the sale, then you better report the gain on your taxes. You can't pay
the taxes due in bitcoin, so you better have some real currency on hand.

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brian_wendt
Risky business imo. Also, wonder what the IRS would think of that in the US...

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cpursley
Try this in the US and you can count on a Secret Service raid.

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adestefan
Can you please tell me why think there would be a Secret Service raid? I could
sell you my house for 4 chickens and no one would care.

The bigger issue is that if you're making a capital gain when selling, then
you better damn well report that on your taxes. And note that the realization
is at the time of the sale, not when you sell the bitcoins.

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cpursley
In the United States, financial transactions must be done in US currency. If
you report it on your taxes in US currency equivalent, you might be ok. But I
bet it would set up a red flag. You can't even own a bank account in a foreign
currency here.

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ios84dev
Huh? I know lots of people who have bank accounts in other currencies. Any
taxes due on them obviously have to be paid in USD but there's no inherent law
against it afaik.

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cpursley
Really, which bank? Is it a true foreign currency account, or based on that
currency's index. Personally interested.

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ios84dev
Offhand, HSBC and the Royal Bank of Canada in Canadian currency. Pretty sure
you can open an investment account with Interactive Brokers in multiple
currencies although that's not a true bank account.

You might have to go to one of their foreign branches to do it though. I don't
know if you can just show up at a branch in Iowa (for example) and they would
know how/be able to open an account denominated in another currency.

