> Actually, I believe Facebook would be required to report that transfer to the IRS. I believe you're right, because there's a cash transaction there, and cash

> Actually, I believe Facebook would be required to report that transfer to the IRS. I believe you're right, because there's a cash transaction there, and cash has intrinsic value. But if I 'bought' LTC with BTC that I mined at a cost of idle CPU cycles, where's the intrinsic value? The market rate for CPU cycles is far less than the value of the equivalent BTC (or, at least was initially). If I'm holding $1 million dollars in a bank, I would be subject to capital gains taxes on its interest earnings. If I'm holding 1 million BTC on my hard drive, I'm not. If I paid for those BTC, that's a bit different than if I mined them early. I'm not trying to be difficult, so much as point out that there's still a long way to go before you can actually say that BTC is currency, and that even if we do determine that it is currency, that it's subject to the same rules and regulations as actual currency or commodities. If I paid capital gains taxes on BTC holdings yesterday, vs waiting til today, I'd have 'saved' approximately 15% due to market fluctuation. As there's no real 'anchor' to the value of BTC at the moment, I think there are just more questions than answers, really.