91–100 of 115 posts
thats why on some level it is better to run your own wallet.
You still have to buy your bitcoin somewhere, unless you earn it or mine. This is about Coinbase's brokerage activities, not its wallet services.
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Respectfully, you are incorrect or misinformed on many points. - coinbase is and has been a licensed MSB for several years, this means that it has already had to comply with all of the same BSA rules as every other bank. [1] - Banks don't have to report ANY transaction over $10,000. They have to report every CASH transaction (or aggregate of transactions) over $10,000 and any Suspicious transaction (or aggregate of t…
Coinbase is welcome to fight the breadth of the request, but they will lose -- if not this time, then the next. The government has every interest in regulating BTC out of existence: the ability to transact value with no government intermediation cuts to the core of what it means to be a nation state, and no state is ever going to renounce that monopoly.
Yet, some countries have started willingly renouncing that monopoly.
For example, Australian Reserve Bank has clearly stated that "There would be nothing to stop people in this country deciding to transact in some other currency in a shop if they wanted to. There’s no law against that, so we do have competing currencies."[1]
Similarly, The South African Reserve Bank has come to the conclusion that "The Bank does not oversee, supervise or regulate the Virtual Currency (VC) landscape."[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country...
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This, absolutely. I'm actually surprised the government showed their hand so soon. There must be a lot of money in Bitcoin already. The government WANTS people to go 100% digital with their capital. It is infinitely easier to track digital money. Bitcoin is something they're against because the anonymity factor. I won't be surprised if we see some legislation to block or inhibit anonymous digital currency. Let's not…
The downvotes on this comment are confusing. Do people dispute that a cashless society would be a dream come true for the US government & Fed? Or that the US will do pretty much anything to protect its currency hegemony?
More practically, I would dispute that the US regulators' concern about Bitcoin has much to do with speculation on its potential to pose such a threat in the future, as opposed to its current suitability for tax evasion and popularity for money laundering, crime, etc. (Please note that I'm not claiming Bitcoin is only or primarily used for those things, only that people who want to do those things often use Bitcoin.)
*edited to add tax evasion, which is of course the stated purpose in this instance...
This was just a matter of time. Welcome to the reality of being involved in the money business in the USA. Coinbase is concerned with the breadth of the request. That is actually kind of cute considering that your bank has to report any transaction over $10000 to the US Dept of Treasury and people are actively prosecuted on suspicion of making transactions under this threshold to avoid reporting requirements [1]. Whe…
I've been postulating that a return to import/export taxes in addition to a small vat and include financial exchanges for import/export could be a better tax system with less bureaucracy than the current IRS. Not that I like the approach, but feel it would be better overall, have less gov't and be harder to work around.
thus significantly slowing B2B and B2C markets. Why would we do it? It is like Middle Ages - one can consume only what is produced in the castle's vicinity and from every bucket of grain one has to give share to the lord and share to the church (note - the example is exactly vat, not income tax, as vat is taken as share of the total volume without regard to the production cost while income tax is share of profit (i.e. of difference between total value and cost to produce)) And yes, nor the lord, nor the church were bothered with bureaucracy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coinbase is welcome to fight the breadth of the request, but they will lose -- if not this time, then the next. The government has every interest in regulating BTC out of existence: the ability to transact value with no government intermediation cuts to the core of what it means to be a nation state, and no state is ever going to renounce that monopoly.
>> ..cuts to the core of what it means to be a nation state, and no state is ever going to renounce that monopoly. Yet, some countries have started willingly renouncing that monopoly. For example, Australian Reserve Bank has clearly stated that "There would be nothing to stop people in this country deciding to transact in some other currency in a shop if they wanted to. There’s no law against that, so we do have comp…
1) These are bit players in the world economy, with nothing like the clout that the US derives from manipulating the world economy via seigniorage, reserve currency status, monetary policy and the ability to lock other countries out of the global economy
2) They will all change their tune if/when crytocurrencies start impeding the state's ability to make policy and collect taxes.
There's a digital currency in our future, but I guarantee that it won't be decentralized and that the government will have the signing keys.
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When I visited Istanbul, I passed through a district with an endless number of exchange shops, and it seemed like a place where you could easily wash money without any bank account involved. I believe Turkey isn't alone in having such a culture of buying/selling US dollars by tracking the USD rate. Do the IRS and say Turkey's tax office tracks these as well? Assuming that you don't try to deposit the exchanged for bi…
This is not tax advice but from what I've seen in news reports, the IRS has different rules for currency. The reason bitcoin users have to report every little gain/loss is that the IRS doesn't consider it currency.
Without capital gains, if Bitcoin had ~0% inflation and the US got back up to 5%-10% inflation, then Bitcoin would become a better store of value.
However, with capital gains, the US would have to have significant inflation, around 20% or more, before Bitcoin would really be competitive. (I'm assuming there are significant transaction costs related to the low acceptance of Bitcoin)
In this manner, the US can (1) gain some additional tax revenue, and (2) prevent Bitcoin from becoming a competitor to the national currency, which every nation wants complete control over.
remembering that time, we saw BTC spoke to the ~1000$us mark. my thoughts about his at the time was that the price spike was largely driven by Chinese demand for BTC. Note that the price crashed after Beijing halted BTC exchanges with their state banks. It could be part of some larger plan to leverage info against the sorts of folks who have enough RMB to help drive the price of BTC to +$1000.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> ..cuts to the core of what it means to be a nation state, and no state is ever going to renounce that monopoly. Yet, some countries have started willingly renouncing that monopoly. For example, Australian Reserve Bank has clearly stated that "There would be nothing to stop people in this country deciding to transact in some other currency in a shop if they wanted to. There’s no law against that, so we do have comp…
Two counters: 1) These are bit players in the world economy, with nothing like the clout that the US derives from manipulating the world economy via seigniorage, reserve currency status, monetary policy and the ability to lock other countries out of the global economy 2) They will all change their tune if/when crytocurrencies start impeding the state's ability to make policy and collect taxes. There's a digital curre…
That might be possible, but its too early to say anything at this point in time. The thing is that Bitcoin has technologically established itself as a stable crypto-currency and also an open-source wallet software. In future, some governments may also come up with their own centralized digital currency, but it will be too little and too late compared to something like bitcoin or litecoin.
Besides, bitcoin is international and a lot of people have started transacting in it already. Now, the government has to tread carefully about this, despite all the talk of sovereign nation and government upholding its economic control, no government can go against its own people in this day and age.
Also, actually persecuting the public for using crypto-currencies is against their own interest as it will create something like a Streisand effect. Right now, only the technically inclined know about bitcoins, blockchains and wallets, the rest treat it like some magical buzzwords. But if they start persecuting, a lot of other non-technical folks will also come to know about it and they will also start using it.
In short, the future depends on the mood of the people of the nation and not the governments. Its a fallacy that money begets is value as a legal tender by the government. Rather, it gets is value because its "generally acceptable", in other words the people accept it. People of a nation are above the government, not the other way round.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Respectfully, you are incorrect or misinformed on many points. - coinbase is and has been a licensed MSB for several years, this means that it has already had to comply with all of the same BSA rules as every other bank. [1] - Banks don't have to report ANY transaction over $10,000. They have to report every CASH transaction (or aggregate of transactions) over $10,000 and any Suspicious transaction (or aggregate of t…
Coinbase is welcome to fight the breadth of the request, but they will lose -- if not this time, then the next. The government has every interest in regulating BTC out of existence: the ability to transact value with no government intermediation cuts to the core of what it means to be a nation state, and no state is ever going to renounce that monopoly.
You realize you can transact in any medium you want, right? Literally anything you want, as long as the other party accepts it. But this has nothing to do with the fact that you owe taxes on income, to be paid in dollars, regardless of the medium you choose.