Latest way to purchase a yacht: Bitcoin

Quite crazy would be one of the biggest understatements. It's bad enough for a business to gamble on currency and exchange rates, but bitcoin? Where did you see or hear that they were doing that? We just bought a center console from them and had no idea. Maybe we could have paid in Monopoly money had we only thought of it.

Volatility is irrelevant since services such as BitPay instantly exchange your Bitcoin for USD if you so choose.

Also, are you referring to the Fed's Monopoly money they keep printing out of thin air to bailout those whom are "too big to fail"?

Also, the US Dollar is the currency of choice of drug dealers etc... I type this as I sit on my couch I bought with Bitcoin on Overstock.com as I type on my Dell PC I bought with Bitcoin from Dell.com I don't think Overstock, Microsoft, and Dell sell drugs.

There is a lot of misguided information out there. Every Bitcoin transaction is recorded in a public distributed ledger called the blockchain. This makes these transactions completely visible and *not* anonymous. One would have to really try to maintain anonymity transacting Bitcoin. On the other hand, physical cash is as anonymous as you can get leaving no trail.

There's no denying Bitcoin has its early years involved with online black markets such as "Silk Road", just like early go-fast boats were built with the purpose of smuggling drugs. Necessity is the mother of invention, although Bitcoin wasn't built for the "purpose of selling drugs".

The technology behind Bitcoin is fascinating and solves computer science problems that have never been solved before. Bitcoin is a digital cash system distributed among countless computer systems on the internet. Not one computer, person, corporation, or government controls Bitcoin. So long as there is the Internet, there is Bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain can't be counterfeited because of mathematics. Every one of the countless nodes on the Bitcoin network has to unanimously agree on the validity of every transaction before it is recorded in the blockchain. Bitcoin is more than just a currency. It is a public ledger system that can do much more including recording of asset ownerships, contracts, etc...

Anyway... I'll stop there since this is a Yachting forum. In several years you will see. We haven't seen anything this revolutionary since the Internet it's self. At the moment, Bitcoin is in the "dial up modem" days and we are just thinking Fax machines.

Again, volatility is irrelevant. If volatility is an issue, don't simply hold it. Like I said, you can receive BTC payments and settle instantly to USD or EUR or your Fiat currency of choice without any volatility loss using services such as BitPay. The extraordinarily small market cap (3.9 Billion USD) of Bitcoin creates a very volatile currency never mind the fact that its only been around since 2008. I always recommend to *not* buy Bitcoin. At this point it is in beta and anything can and will happen.

Bitcoin isn't anonymous. You can see the details of every transaction on the blockchain here https://blockchain.info/ Click on any of the transactions and you get to see how much BTC was sent from what wallet to which wallet. There is no personal identification linked with each wallet address, but through some basic analysis you can discern who has control of those Bitcoins. Especially when they are either spent or converted to Fiat currency among other things. For a long read with a good analysis on the nuts and bolts of how and why Bitcoin isn't anonymous I suggest reading this http://anonymity-in-bitcoin.blogspot.com/2011/07/bitcoin-is-not-anonymous.html

MtGox was a poorly managed, potentially fraudulent, centralized currency exchange. The centralized nature of exchanges like MtGox goes against the entire decentralized design of the bitcoin protocol. This creates a central point of failure. Japanese police (again, through analysis) are coming to the conclusion that the stolen Bitcoins were an inside job http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bitcoin-theft-mtgox-was-inside-job-according-police-1481599

Buying and selling a yacht with Bitcoin makes perfect sense. Funds can be transmitted to escrow in a matter of seconds, without borders, for a fraction of a cent. Since Bitcoin is programmable cash, in the future escrow can be replaced with software. Through using Bitcoin's "multisig" feature, funds can be released once the buyer and seller's contract is satisfied, again for fractions of a cent. In the more distant future, foreign flagged vessels for liability, tax, and privacy concerns will be irrelevant if a distributed public ledger such as the block chain are used for recording asset ownership, once again instantly and for a fraction of a cent.

There is a very high probability I'm wrong though.

Only time we've used bitcoin is when one of our executives downloaded a locker virus and we had to pay the ransom in bitcoin to get her laptop unlocked. Reason they use bitcoin is that we cannot dispute the charge nor can law enforcement do anything about it. Regular electronic payments can be disputed and undone. Essentially the same as a bag of cash.

That is bad to hear your exec installed a virus. I don't mean to minimize your grief, but how many people get mugged or have their pockets picked or cash stolen out of their wallet every year? Do you not carry paper cash? There are bad actors everywhere you turn. How about the 56 million credit cards that were stolen from the Home Depot? ( http://www.homedepotdatabreach.com/ ) Should my credit card really be taken to the back room to authorize the payment every time I go out to eat? I've had my credit cards stolen 3 times and they never left my wallet!

If I was selling my boat; given the choice between a wire transfer, Bitcoin, or a bag of cash, I would choose them in that order. I sold my last boat for a big old bag of cash. Options are good for the consumer and I see no reason why a yacht brokerage or any other company shouldn't add Bitcoin to their payment options. Microsoft, Dell, Overstock, Expedia, Tiger Direct, NewEgg and many other companies agree.

Nothing like raising a red flag for the IRS, DEA, and any other agency that already has Bitcoin on their radar!

I am sorry, what is the problem with booting a clean system from external boot drive/usb flash and then running antivirus purge on that laptop?
Kind of beats paying a ransom to encourage these kinds of things, in my mind...

The virus doesn't just infect your system, it encrypts all your files. You're paying to get the decryption password.

Won't work. Encrypts your entire system and any drives mounted. Have to wipe laptop and restore from most recent backup. But you missed the part about it being one of our executives. She said she couldn't wait for all that and lose the last day of work too. Also there is a limited time offer to purchase the encryption key. Went over to Rite-Aide and bought the $400 of bitcoin.

Wow that's one kewlz virus. Last ones I heard only inflicted cosmetic damage.
More good reasons to run quality anti-virus and observe the usual precautions, since there's basically zero guarantee handlers will provide legit decryption key even if you pay.