US-based financial forecasting firm Elliott Wave International has become the latest in a growing list of companies which have announced that it now accepts Bitcoins as payment. On January 17, the independent market forecasting firm said it is the first major financial publishing firm to accept the digital currency as payment for any of its financial forecasting services.
According to the company, it was also the first financial publisher to discuss the electronic currency when it trading for pennies. Early adopter Elliott Prechter introduced bitcoin to Elliott Wave Theorist readers in September 2010, writing at the time: “Bitcoins have the necessary features of money: medium of exchange (anonymous and across great distances), unit of account (private), divisibility (up to eight decimal places), scarcity (21 million), portability (transferred electronically), and store of value (current exchange rates – as of August 2010 – show 1 Bitcoin, or BTC, equal to US$0.065).”
In August 2012, EWI’s president Robert Prechter further predicted further surges in value: “Presuming Bitcoin succeeds as the world’s best currency — and I believe it will — it should rise many more multiples in value over the years,” Prechter wrote. It was trading at about US$8 at the time.
“Back then we figured digital currencies would be the wave of the future, and now the future has arrived,” says Prechter. Elliott Wave International processes Bitcoin orders through BitPay, the largest payment processor for virtual currencies.
At the time of writing, 1 Bitcoin is worth US$930, according to popular currency exchange converter XE, and is abbreviated to XBT.
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Bitcoins in Singapore
In Singapore, a Facebook page set up to discuss Bitcoins has garnered 510 likes at the time of writing. The interest in Bitcoins has led to the establishment of Bitcoin Exchanges, and companies like kranjiracing.com, a resource for horse racing, and web hosting provider Sh3lls.net have home pages which say they will accept Bitcoins.
The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) has also stepped in to clarify how they will tax Bitcoins. On January 8, David Moskowitz of the Coin Republic published a post announcing that the IRAS does not consider Bitcoins as money, and will tax the Bitcoins under capital gains, earnings, and even GST as appropriate depending on the nature of the transaction. Any other digital currency which becomes popular is likely to receive the same treatment.
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Source (PR Newswire)