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Michael Dell announced this week that his eponymous company will start accepting payment in Bitcoin internationally.

The company will accept digital currency in the US, Canada, and the UK. This makes Dell the largest company to accept Bitcoin internationally. 

Here's what it won't do, though: put any skin in the game when it comes to bitcoin. From Jonathan Marino's earlier post:

Just because Dell is taking payment in Bitcoin, it doesn't mean he's technically investing in the product. Other companies, including Overstock.com, that also accept virtual currency as payment often immediately swap it for cash, via exchanges like Coinbase, aimed at reducing exposure to a volatile investment product.

Accepting but not holding it means, essentially, that Dell wants people to be able to pay with Bitcoin technology if they want, but isn't necessarily yet ready to trust Bitcoin as a currency. In other words, Dell is not suggesting you run out and convert all of you dollars into Bitcoin. Which means this isn't huge news on the digital currency front, yet. 

SEE ALSO: It's time to break up with American Express

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Tax season is right around the corner, and most Americans are getting their W2s and paperwork ready.

And as virtual currency like Bitcoin becomes increasingly intertwined in consumer and corporate culture, the Internal Revenue Service may struggle to regulate and prosecute digital scofflaws.

But for the latest Bitcoin miners and traders trying to cash in on the cryptocurrency craze, the burden of staying within the complicated boundaries of the law are on them.

The IRS treats Bitcoin that is ‘mined’ differently than Bitcoin that is ‘bought’ 

In order to obtain Bitcoin, you can either buy it on an exchange or you can "mine" for it using a computer.

“This is going to create a headache for some people,” says Annette Nellen, a professor at the San Jose State University College of Business. “If you mine the Bitcoin, that’s a separate issue."

For the IRS, buying Bitcoin has a completely different classification than Bitcoin after it is mined.

For those who buy it, virtual currency is not treated as cash; it is treated as property. This means that the treatment of foreign paper currency like yen or euros is different, in the eyes of the IRS, than Bitcoin. 

For those who mine it, the miner recognizes income when that Bitcoin is mined, says a tax expert quoted by TechCrunch. And the price when it is mined is the basis for which the miner can calculate a gain or loss when they sell it. But the expenses attributable to mining those Bitcoin are also deductible.

So while investors like the Winklevoss twins — who have set up an ambitious Bitcoin fund and also plan to launch this year an exchange called Gemini — are not required to pay taxes on the Bitcoin they have amassed until they sell it, the same might not apply to Satoshi Nakamoto, rumored to be the individual who developed the currency. (Nakamoto, of course, was outed in a Newsweek profile he has challenged, and was subsequently victimized by hackers.)

Bitcoin investors will need detailed records of transactions

Having your Bitcoin taxed might be a particularly painful process, especially if you haven’t been doing your homework all along, Nellen says (tax day preppers can view the IRS' latest regulations here and here). 

Because it’s treated as property, and not as currency, it means owners have to track the price of it from when they buy it until when it is sold or used. Because there is no set price for the digital currency, as it trades on numerous exchanges, investors may even want to break down purchases by where it was acquired.

If a person buys Bitcoin and later uses it to pay someone for a service, they will need to track the value of the currency at the time they bought it, and when they used it as payment — the recipient will need to do the same, Nellen said. 

And, for another thing, many owners of Bitcoin — who had to pay taxes after the digital currency saw its value soar across 2013, until late in the year — won’t have to pay anything based on the falling value of the currency during 2014. 

However, those that made money investing in Bitcoin will have to pay taxes on their paper gains. 

Nellen said that businesses accepting Bitcoin — like Overstock, which was among the first companies to start taking the digital currency — or, Dell, will have to abide by the same rules as Bitcoin buyers—as long as the company has been holding, and profiting from, digital currency. 

Still, she acknowledges, both legislation and regulation pertaining to virtual currency and Bitcoin has barely entered its infancy — and more rules could be on the way, especially if it proves too difficult to efficiently track.

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Announced on Twitter on February 11, 2015, Telebit started to gain traction earlier today. Telegram is an instant messaging app for smartphones, tablets and the web. Similar to Whatsapp, the popular instant messaging app acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion, Telegram offers better privacy and security, as well as an open protocol and API.  These features have gained Telegram 50 million faithful users. A Bitcoin wallet integrated with Telegram, Telebit allows bitcoin to be exchanged among other Telegram users as well as external bitcoin addresses. “The [Telebit] system has been live for 2 weeks now, and we are now satisfied with its feature set and stability,” reads today’s announcement on the Bitcointalk forum. “Telebit leverages the Telegram messenger […]

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Ledger Wallet, a Paris, France-based provider of bitcoin security solutions, has raised 1.3 million euros in seed money to accelerate the development of its product line and expand its global reach. XAnge Capital, a French private equity and venture capital group, led the seed funding. Accompanying XAnge Capital are Pascal Gauthier, the former Criteo chief […]

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International customers of Dell have one more payment option when shopping for the company's newest products: Bitcoin. 

Michael Dell tweeted out earlier today the announcement that, instead of accepting payment in Bitcoin in only the United States, Dell will take virtual currency payments from customers in the UK and in Canada, as well. 

That, Dell says, makes his company the biggest to accept international Bitcoin payments.

In its announcement, Dell noted that the company's largest Bitcoin transaction to date was over $50,000 for its server system.

Thursday's announcement to increasingly accept Bitcoin comes as other US businesses are taking virtual currency payments — and, as Bitcoin's value has plummeted over the last 12 months. From a value of more than $1,000 more than a year ago, shares have fallen to the high $260s as of mid-afternoon trading today, according to website Coindesk. 

Just because Dell is taking payment in Bitcoin, it doesn't mean he's technically investing in the product. Other companies, including Overstock.com, that also accept virtual currency as payment often immediately swap it for cash, via exchanges like Coinbase, aimed at reducing exposure to a volatile investment product. 

Michael Dell teamed with private equity firm Silver Lake partners in early 2013 to buy out his eponymous tech company; even after a protracted battle with activist investor Carl Icahn, Dell succeeded with the buyout. Some of Icahn's complaints as he tried to wring more out of the investors were realized, it appeared, after Dell and Silver Lake reported a surprising 90 percent paper gain on the company one year after the deal completed. 

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