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The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

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Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#41

Post by cperciva »

geofft wrote: post #15

I think what strikes me as the large-scale problem here is that some people are baffled by the concept that not wanting money might be a rational decision. As a completely different example of the same decision being rational, let's remember when Tarsnap wasn't accepting Canadian customers (despite a presumably sizable potential market) because dealing with Canadian sales tax law was too much overhead. Even if the pa…

Tarsnap wasn't accepting Canadian customers (despite a presumably sizable potential market)

FWIW, Canadians are about 2% of Tarsnap's customer base by revenue. This is a bit less than proportional by population, but not much; the USA is about 40% of Tarsnap's revenue, but that includes several large startups (like Stripe) and Canada is distinctly lacking in similar.

The extra 2% is probably worth doing the sales tax paperwork for... but only barely.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#43

Post by zanny »

anton000 wrote: post #42

"The vocal people in the community seem like they don't actually care about Bitcoin, but they want to see it succeed so that their "investment" makes a profit." Im into Bitcoin, and I agree with this view. Most specially the reddit based bitcoin community.

And so what? You believe in the promise, and putting your money where your mouth is is one of the most powerful market forces. People are putting their money in BTC because they believe in it.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#44

Post by zanny »

joshfinnie wrote: post #28
muyuu wrote: post #23

Sorry Armin/Mr Ronacher/Mitsuhiko but your "Bitcoin is Wild West" rant is unwarranted. Your problem has little to do with Bitcoin and all to do with the fact that a bunch of guys signed you up to their payment service without your consent.

I agree except for the fact that his concern with tip4commit is that it wouldn't exist if bitcoin wasn't available. The fact that bitcoin is what is making tip4commit to run without much regulation is Armin's main point.

And what would he do about an international tip service that is not incorporated in Austria that pestered him like this?

The jurisdiction of almost any country besides the US in terms of what happens online is almost nil. I don't see the recourse an Austrian would take against an online tip service in China or South Africa that spams them with tip notifications.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#45

Post by firepacket »

This was a painful read.

He says he "doesn't want to be educated about bitcoin" because "he's heard all the arguments", while at the same time claiming it's a "terrible currency (or not a currency at all)" without any further reasoning.

This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications.

Common decency dictates that if you openly state you are unwilling to learn about something, you should refrain from posting opinionated articles about that thing.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#46

Post by sashazykov »

ubernostrum wrote: post #35
mike_hearn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why accepting tips is so complicated? What specific law means you cannot do it? Let me put this another way. If your friends give you money for your birthday, do you give it back to them and tell them you can't accept their gift because of tax and regulation? I doubt it! You may well declare the gifts on your tax return if it's big enough to bother with, but if Austria makes it hard to accept cash g…

First let's get some perspective on the sums involved. One of the tip4commit spams I got after a commit informed me that my tip balance was 0.00000171 BTC. At current exchange rate this is equivalent in US dollars to $0.0005525523. In other words, at a rate like that, it requires nearly two thousand tips just to add up to a single US dollar worth of tips. And it gets worse. Remember that tip4commit "refunds" the tip…

There are some projects that got much more donations and users that got more tips. You can check the list https://tip4commit.com/users It was a mistake to bother you with this tiny tips. Sorry

Also, if you claim your tips by specifying your bitcoin address, tips will never be refunded again.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#47

Post by cbsmith »

firepacket wrote: post #45

This was a painful read. He says he "doesn't want to be educated about bitcoin" because "he's heard all the arguments", while at the same time claiming it's a "terrible currency (or not a currency at all)" without any further reasoning. This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications. Common decency dictates that if you openly state you…

> This poor guy needs to be educated if he thinks that avoiding taxes, regulations, and credit card fees are the only applications.

I think he very clearly understands all the applications. The point is that _for his case_ it doesn't provide any value, and he believes in a lot of cases its drawbacks outweigh its advantages (which is an entirely arguably point).

> Common decency dictates that if you openly state you are unwilling to learn about something, you should refrain from posting opinionated articles about that thing.

Again, I think you misread the article. It isn't that he is unwilling to learn something. He's learned a great deal and concluded that it makes his life more difficult. More importantly, he's pointed out a significant problem with it: there are a lot of things that can happen with Bitcoin that would otherwise be prevented and you'd want them to be prevented.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#48

Post by cbsmith »

mike_hearn wrote: post #3
wdewind wrote: post #2

TLDR; there are two problems with tip4commit: 1. The obvious, that they are collecting funds on behalf of other people's work and then keeping them when the funds go 'unclaimed' 2. Even if you do want to claim it, they don't make it easy, and for someone in a complicated tax country (like the author, Austria) there is almost no way he could accept the money without incurring some kind of risk. So basically when they…

I'm not sure it is. I'm not a huge fan of tip4commit either, I agree that it's opt-out model is bogus, but the fact that it uses Bitcoin seems irrelevant. The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here. Obviously people make and accept tips using euros all the time, this is not illegal, so why it would be different…

> The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here.

I should think that would be pretty obvious. Go ahead and try collecting regular currency for a charity of your choice without ever getting sign off from that charity and only ever giving them the proceeds if they ask. It will end very badly for you.

> You can declare tips as income, no problem.

No, there are a lot of potential problems that stem from this. In particular, it raises lots of flags about whether those tips are accurate, whether it is some form of money laundering, and whether they are really tips or something more nefarious. Unlike in the US, in a lot of other 1st world countries, handling taxes is incredibly straightforward (less than an hour of your time a year and zero risk of liability), but once you throw tips in to the equation now it's as difficult as it is for many people in the US.

> So he has a generalised feeling that Bitcoin is bad because it's popular and has vocal fans, and that regulation is good yet also complicated, so anything which seems simple must be unregulated and therefore bad.

No, he's pointing out that its vocal fans have a distorted perspective and often don't really buy in to its virtues... but those problems are not why Bitcoin is a terrible currency.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#49

Post by cbsmith »

djur wrote: post #7
mike_hearn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it is. I'm not a huge fan of tip4commit either, I agree that it's opt-out model is bogus, but the fact that it uses Bitcoin seems irrelevant. The author seems to believe he cannot accept tips, because of tax and regulation, but he doesn't point out what specifically would cause problems here. Obviously people make and accept tips using euros all the time, this is not illegal, so why it would be different…

This may have changed in the last 24 hours, but last I checked tip4commit's opt-out model is "get stuffed". The original controversy was over their refusal to remove projects from the site on request. I agree that Bitcoin is more or less irrelevant to the controversy, but like the OP says, the tip4commit defenders seem to have intentionally made it a pro/anti-Bitcoin conflict. Bitcoin advocates were mobilized to supp…

> I agree that Bitcoin is more or less irrelevant to the controversy

It's relevant insofar that tip4commit likely couldn't get away with what it was doing without it.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#50

Post by cbsmith »

zanny wrote: post #44
joshfinnie wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree except for the fact that his concern with tip4commit is that it wouldn't exist if bitcoin wasn't available. The fact that bitcoin is what is making tip4commit to run without much regulation is Armin's main point.

And what would he do about an international tip service that is not incorporated in Austria that pestered him like this? The jurisdiction of almost any country besides the US in terms of what happens online is almost nil. I don't see the recourse an Austrian would take against an online tip service in China or South Africa that spams them with tip notifications.

Actually, in most first world countries you'd have a hell of a time doing this for very long or on much of a scale without the authorities catching up with you.

Sure, services in other countries could still maybe get up and running, but they'll have a harder time finding donors.

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