Quote from: RobCayman on May 23, 2011, 08:36:46 AM

Hi, i'm completely new to BitCoin and am completely baffled by the concept, I'm also not 100% sure I'm asking these questions in the right place, but i will ask, and hopefully be pointed in the right direction.

1. is the 21 million bitcoins equal in value to the sum of global resources (including both physical, and intellectual)?

2. according to what i've read, everything is transparent. Coupled with the fact that almost every country in the world considers it illegal not to pay tax on transactions, do i have any security from prosecution? or alternatively, why have governments not clamped down on bitcoins already?

3. Am i correct in saying that BitCoin is essentially a global unified on-line autonomous resource tracking system?

4. assuming that the answers to the previous questions are all positive, can BitCoins be extended to function globally as a complete replacement for the current credit based economic system?

I hope that someone can either assist me or point me to someone who can

thanks

1. Not yet, maybe people will value them that much someday

2. All transactions are recorded in the block chain which every node has. The transactions contain no information about you, so unless you give away the connection between 1fhdjHFS98DKJjdksDS9euDH44 and yourself then no one knows it was you who sent 3.3BTC to 1HE9hd9ejwQ3QnvJKSL4LKccn. I don't know of any countries where small gifts to friends are taxed. It's pretty wrong to say that all governments tax all transactions. Governments are slow as hell.

3. Sounds roughly correct.

4. I think so. The extensions required are mostly ease of use in a broad sense.