Two college students attending UCSD, Jeff and Robbie, are taking a walk through campus hanging out and talking about current news and school issues. Jeff says to Robbie, “hey man lets grab a bite to eat over there at the Hub! They have really great food and it is a quiet place. I wanted to talk to you about this new bill being passed about that Bitcoin thing we were talking about!” “Oh yeah! That sounds really interesting but I really have no idea what that is. What is a Bitcoin? What is the bill named and what is it going to do?” says Robbie. “Well it really goes in depth and there is so much I have to explain for it to make sense so lets grab a table and I’ll go over everything,” said Jeff. These two college students are taking an interest in the current issue of the new online people to people trading currency. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency introduced as open source software in 2009. It is a so-called cryptocurrency because it uses cryptography to control the creation and transfer of money. Transactions are made with no middlemen, meaning no banks or stock funds to get in the way. There are no transaction fees and no need to give up your real name, only transactions are recorded in a public log of names of buyers and sellers but only their “wallet ID’s” are revealed, never a name. This makes it very hard to trace back something that someone sells or trades and is the reason why it has become the currency of choice for people online buying drugs, weapons, trading child porn, hiring assassins, acquiring illegal commodities, or other illicit activities. More and more merchants are beginning to accept them; you can buy webhosting services, pizza, and other hard goods with them. At first when the Bitcoin was created, it was used mainly to trade for illegal things such as drugs and weapons on the online black market on websites such as “The Silk Road’ and “The Underground”. It only made sense to have a non traceable currency that didn’t have any fees or government interaction to interfere. The dollar price of the Bitcoin was around 30 dollars a year ago but shot up to more than $1,100 in December when more people became aware of the currency and started to get involved. The growing problem is that merchants and ecommerce websites are beginning to accept them worldwide and especially in the US and it has no state or federal tax on it. The bill was set up to introduce a tax of 8.75% on all purchases when using the Bitcoin similar to a state tax on goods. It sets a tax on the Bitcoin market since it is like a stock market. When you invest your money earned in dollars and put it into this growing market it has the ability to earn a lot more and grow just like the stock markets of the world. The idea of taxing the gains and the profits of the new currency was built into the bill. This puts a tax of 12% on all profits and gains made in or by the Bitcoin market. Also included in the bill are a list of earmarks that add more specific detail to the Bitcoin problem. For example, the bill will shut down all websites and merchants th