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Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

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Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I disagree with you, but I'd like to understand your reasoning...

I disagree with a solid 80% of government spending. Lots go against my core values and morals. Currently right now as a Canadian I even have to pay taxes for religious schools, a religion which was responsible for molesting my father as a child. I pay against my will because the government holds a monopoly on violence. They will lock me up for not paying. A society built on top of the threat of violence is not one I…

Now what I want to know, why is it so hard for some to imagine that those who share your opinions around the world, would not eventually be self interested to use such tools like crytocurrencies to finance/allocate operations that end up helping to dismantle/replace/circumvent the systems that they don't want to pay for with those that they would?

Isn't that the only way governments' have come and gone on this planet?

Well of course if people seriously think locking up your tax chattel so they can not be productive at all (assuming they were locked up on tax evasion, yet still contributing goods/services to someone/thing else) is a effective allocation of resources, then there is no way to argue against that.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#152
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it was this change that put that to rest. I doubt Satoshi ever foresaw that BTC transaction times and fees would grow so large that you essentially cannot use it for everyday purchases. It is still not feasible to regulate BTC itself. They only really only regulating the exchanges.

I also have been a bit confused by the usability of BTC for ordinary people, due to the units of measurement. The fractional nature of BTC and cryptocurrency seems like it would not fit the necessary ease of use for most non-digital, day-to-day transactions. I think ordinary people would find it hard to buy bread if it cost 0.000127 BTC ($1.99 USD), for example.

I think things would start being priced using different units. With your example of bread costing 0.000127 BTC, that could also be written as 127 "bits" or μBTC. It would take a lot of getting used to, but it really isn't any more complicated than $1.99.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#153

I don't mind being taxed at all. What I find stressful is calculating - not just the 'what was the USD price at the time of the exchange' that has to be manually entered and looked up into the exported CSV spreadsheet... BUT tying that to the movement of coin from Coinbase to the exchange. It's a pain. I regret using Bittrex, as there's almost no tooling for this available.

A CSV file is a dream compared to what you might have to go through with on normal stocks. My wife inherited a small amount of telecom stock from her grandmonther who worked for AT&T back in the early days. No records had been kept as to when the stocks were bought (they were part of her salary I think). Of course they were all acquired before the Bell breakup. So what she inherited was a big mess of baby bells and a…

Don't you get a step up? The basis is the price when inherited.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I disagree with you, but I'd like to understand your reasoning...

I disagree with a solid 80% of government spending. Lots go against my core values and morals. Currently right now as a Canadian I even have to pay taxes for religious schools, a religion which was responsible for molesting my father as a child. I pay against my will because the government holds a monopoly on violence. They will lock me up for not paying. A society built on top of the threat of violence is not one I…

All valid points - and the U.S. government is even worse, considering the defense budget.

But while naughty, the alternatives to these governments are private individuals / militias / warlords doing far worse against your values and morals.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#155
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love Canada! I have no problem with Canada. But I don't think it's fair to consider one nation in isolation; the entire world system has afforded hegemonic states for over a century now. Time to bring it to a close.

I agree, I picked a single one, though I could also have pointed at the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and so on. Curious what you mean by bringing it to a close, though.

I mean deprecating the system of state sovereignty in its entirety. I believe this to be the inevitable effect of the internet.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#156
post #106

I don't mind being taxed at all. What I find stressful is calculating - not just the 'what was the USD price at the time of the exchange' that has to be manually entered and looked up into the exported CSV spreadsheet... BUT tying that to the movement of coin from Coinbase to the exchange. It's a pain. I regret using Bittrex, as there's almost no tooling for this available.

> I don't mind being taxed at all. Spoken like somebody who has never had a taxpayer-funded clusterbomb dropped on their children. Taxes pay for evil. The only reason I pay them is because I don't want to be a victim of violence myself.

Spoken like somebody who has never had a taxpayer-funded clusterbomb dropped on their children.

Spoken like someone who likes to speak for someone else using a curious line of reasoning. You don't want to pay taxes because taxes pay for bombs. But they also pay for poor people to get health care (yes, even in the U.S., at least up until now), older people to get health care, and much more.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many exchanges that are crypto only don't have any KYC

The owners will get some interesting housecalls at some point, I'm sure

What if there are no owners? AFAIK, there are protocols for atomic cross-chain trading, and there are dapps that are hosted on the blockchain itself (and are part of the chain). I think dapps have ownership, but I won't be particularly surprised to see if bazaar would be able to try something about consensus-updated codebase without explicit ownership. That could go very wrong, but nonetheless that would be interesting experiment to witness (if anyone would dare, heh). I mean, not for tax evasion purposes, but solely as a "ownerless" software development model.

Node software developers could be at risk, though.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I disagree with you, but I'd like to understand your reasoning...

I disagree with a solid 80% of government spending. Lots go against my core values and morals. Currently right now as a Canadian I even have to pay taxes for religious schools, a religion which was responsible for molesting my father as a child. I pay against my will because the government holds a monopoly on violence. They will lock me up for not paying. A society built on top of the threat of violence is not one I…

Nor is it one I endorse, but it is the kind I have to live in.

I can pay taxes without grousing about it too much, so long as they're just taking my money. It's when they start taking my time that I start to get bitchy about it.

If it takes me 20 times longer to calculate the taxes associated with doing something than it actually took for me to do the thing, then that tax is simply not reasonable, no matter how much or how little it costs in dollars.

The worst part of the entire US tax system is the requirement to self-report on taxable events. If the IRS really wants to dig down in such detail to find out what I owe them every time I move money from my left pocket to my right, they can damned well send me a pair of tax-compliant pants. Write wallet software for US users that makes the tax compliance automatic and seamless, don't bother trying to collect taxes that can't be fairly enforced solely through self-reporting, or FOAD.

It's like they think we exist only to do their paperwork and write them checks. Do they even realize how much more I'd be willing to pay in taxes if I didn't have to do an annual ritual humiliation of proving to them through the submission of forms and reports that I am not trying to cheat? If they just sent me a freaking bill, so long as it explained why my regular payroll withholding wasn't enough, and the amount seemed plausibly close to correct, I'd probably just pay it. There is no particular need for me to fill out 12 pages of forms, so that I can figure out what I think I should owe, based on my own understanding of the tax code. Likewise, if I were due a refund, they could just send out a check.

It's not just based on violence. It's also based on institutional bureaucratic displays of social dominance.

Re: Tax-Free Bitcoin-To-Ether Trading in US to End Under GOP Plan

#160

Can somebody explain something to me... I haven't been participating in the Bitcoin/cryptocurrency movement for better or worse, just following it from afar: I thought the premise of these currencies was to avoid government and banking oversight/control... but with both the SEC and IRS putting controls around virtual currency (which I think we all expected to happen), how does that change the original inspiration? Do…

The vision behind crypto is more decentralized than the actual currency is. Some may applaud the SEC stepping in to combat shady ICO's, others see it as overreaching death throes by an increasingly anxious dinosaur. Bitcoin was set up to disproportionally reward the early adopters. The early adopters were cyberpunks, cryptography enthusiasts, and darknet merchants. Since we can only speculate about the inventor(s), t…

Arguably one of the ways “Bitcoin” protects from the select few with it’s adoption is by only being one such currency. Since the many can create a new currency to place their faith in with relative ease - at least in comparison to fiat - they can combat “rich bitcoin jerks” through devaluation and other such mechanisms, in theory.
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