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Bitcoin is a disaster

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Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#491

Post by Someone »

sunshinerag wrote: post #8

I have no idea what he is talking about. I use bitcoin to buy things both onchain and via lightning and the experience is so smooth and much much better than the circa 2017 period when fees were high. Don't keep it on exchange. The real thing that is stopping adoption is countries trying to classify it as a commodity and insist to pay capital gains on every microtransaction. Some countries are backwards (US, UK) than…

That a German seller doesn’t charge VAT does not imply that you do not have to pay VAT.

You may have to inform your tax office about the purchase, after which it will send you an invoice for VAT (happens for ‘normal’ bank transactions, too.)

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/taxation/vat/vat-rules...:

“For EU-based companies, VAT is chargeable on most sales and purchases of goods within the EU. In such cases, VAT is charged and due in the EU country where the goods are consumed by the final consumer. Likewise, VAT is charged on services at the time they are carried out in each EU country.

VAT isn't charged on exports of goods to countries outside the EU. In these cases, VAT is charged and due in the country of import”

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#492

Post by nootropicat »

nfin wrote: post #410
wpietri wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. It frustrates me that the term "investment" has been stretched to include raw speculation. People are welcome to do either one, but it's dangerous when people confuse zero-sum and positive-sum games. Buying any currency, crypto- or otherwise, is like playing the ponies: for every dollar won, there's (at least) a dollar lost. That's very different than investing in a company, which hopefully uses the money to…

that‘s not true. Would be true if bitcoin was full premined, but it wasn‘t. There are still 900 new bitcoins mined per day, and with an open source / patent free environment the space is a competitive market, the cost to produce one should tend towards the price of selling it (less so when the price rises quickly). So how is at least a dollar lost (for every dollar won)?

If your point was that bitcoin is worse than zero-sum because it generates net losses, then you're right.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#493

Post by DeafSquid »

xapata wrote: post #36
sunshinerag wrote: post #8

I have no idea what he is talking about. I use bitcoin to buy things both onchain and via lightning and the experience is so smooth and much much better than the circa 2017 period when fees were high. Don't keep it on exchange. The real thing that is stopping adoption is countries trying to classify it as a commodity and insist to pay capital gains on every microtransaction. Some countries are backwards (US, UK) than…

> No VAT on bitcoin transactions Sounds like a defect in the technology to me. A good currency should be able to support the full range of social policies (like VAT). One of the problems of the Euro is not being able to inflate different countries within the Eurozone at different rates. If Bitcoin were ever to become popular for regular transactions within many countries, it'd be a fiscal policy disaster. Pretty soon…

Your post disgusts me

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#494

Post by wmf »

nichohel wrote: post #311
etimberg wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe there should be no capital gains on it?

Possibly funny thought: If you have to declare a capital gain on every BTC purchase of a cup of coffee, why can't you declare a capital loss every time you spend dollars that you earned long ago, and which have decreased significantly in value since then, due to inflation?

Serious answer: In the US, capital gains and losses are defined relative to the US dollar.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#495

Post by imtringued »

brianobush wrote: post #75
loeg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTC prices have approximately zero relation to inflation in the real economy (for whatever definition of that you want to use). Rising BTC prices are driven by pyramid scams, fraud, and speculation. There is no useful signal here related to anything else.

Is there a useful signal in the dollar price? Price of silver? They are all used in hedging bets. Same for BTC, people with a lot of cash are looking for a safe spot while we have the possibility of hyper inflation.

There is no meaningful threat of hyperinflation in first world economies until China's GDP per capita has reached $20k - $30k and even then there are investment opportunities in India (if they get their corruption under control) or other Asian countries.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#496

Post by madeofpalk »

megameter wrote: post #490
cambalache wrote: post #304

I agree with most of the points raised by the author but as a Venezuelan Bitcoin is a godsend. If you live abroad and want to send remittances to your friends and family it can be pretty easy in a normal country , with wire transfers,western union and so on. If your family lives in Venezuela your options are extremely more limited. These are some of the options Venezuelans have had to use: 1. Ask the money to be sent…

I see BTC as an immensely successful first try at making this kind of thing - and like any emerging tech it's slow, inefficient, sharp edges, mostly used by experts. It's a tech channeled towards an Ayn Randian utopian fantasy, and has run right into the limits of that fantasy as a working philosophy. And yet, it still has practically useful properties. The coins that win as a currency will have to loosen their grasp…

> and like any emerging tech

The problem that everyone else sees is that Bitcoin has been "emerging tech" with all its rough edges for so many years.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#497

Post by ZguideZ »

I commented something similar to this below - the true value of Bitcoin is that it was put on autopilot and took off - in the meantime, there is no record of who the creator of it is - except a persona called Satoshi Nakamoto. It has been adopted widely enough that it cannot be shut down. It is decentralized, extra-governmental, and you can't sue or indict the founder or a centralized organization. Yes, bitcoin is code. Yes it is being used for the same purposes as fiat and banking. Yes it could certainly still use lots of adaptation. The simple matter that most people don't understand (yet) however is that Bitcoin is Anarchy.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#498

Post by wmf »

etimberg wrote: post #98
coconut08 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because you can't use it as a money if you need to pay capital gains on every stick of gum you buy. they should find other ways to collect taxes that doesn't inhibit it.

If you held any other foreign currency you would have to track it like this. For example, I live in Canada and if I bought USD and then spent it over the course of a year in Canada I would be responsible for the capital gain tracked on each expenditure based on the day's exchange rate. It's hard to see how Bitcoin should be any different.

There's an exemption for foreign currencies that does not apply to cryptocurrency.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#499

Post by cambalache »

thegjp210 wrote: post #470
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal experience: not only bitcoin was the only practical way I was able to receive funds in Russia from an Indonesian client, it was cheaper than just one leg of converting Indonesian currency (to USD). Think of it. Buying bitcoin, sending and selling resulted being cheaper than just buying USD. The spread was that much lower. (It was in a relatively static price period in summer 2016) And regular banks just didn…

how much counterparty risk does the rapid price fluctuation result in? Can't imagine pricing a contract in bitcoin, as someone's getting screwed at payment if the BTC/fiat rate has changed during the lifetime of the contract

You can peg the contract in USD (or better put, the original price was in USD) and just accept the bitcoins within a very small window, say 30 min/1h.

Re: Bitcoin is a disaster

#500

Post by d0gbread »

tomphoolery wrote: post #319

I think the biggest failure of Bitcoin is that it was marketed as a "currency" and ended up becoming a commodity. Bitcoin isn't something you use to spend wealth, it's used to hold wealth. Unlike a stock, however, whose value is based on what price people are willing to pay for it, Bitcoin's value is determined by its scarcity. Sound familiar? That's why I hate the term "cryptocurrency". It has a lie baked right into…

This is a similar argument to the semantics of black lives matter and refund the police. Sure, maybe there's a better name to make a better first impression, maybe not. Move past it.

Ironically you already have by simply referring to it as "crypto" as most do. Things evolve, like "e-mail" becoming "email" and countless other evolutions as things find their niche and become mainstream.

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