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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

#71

Post by muyuu »

cbsmith wrote: post #60
muyuu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said unwarranted. As in, not justified and not related to his recent anecdote.

> I said unwarranted. As in, not justified and not related to his recent anecdote. [Sorry. I couldn't believe you intended the correct meaning of unwarranted and instead meant "unjustified" in an entirely different sense.] As he pointed out, if tip4commit tried to do what it was doing with anything other than a crypto currency, it'd have to change its ways or be shut down rather quickly; either way, he'd not have to…

I misread this before and I replied like a right twat. Sorry about that. Cannot edit or delete it now.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#72

Post by muyuu »

Nursie wrote: post #70
muyuu wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it has nothing to do with Bitcoin. It's because he was signed up to something without his consent. Bitcoin works not differently to cash in regards to taxation, and if you got dodgy envelopes with cash you wouldn't blame "cash" for it.

In some places it's treated as an asset rather than cash. In some it's illegal. If I got unwanted cash, in a new currency, from enthusiasts keen that I take it regardless and refusing to opt me out of their system... I might think less of that new currency too.

Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"?

Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Euro, etc. which makes this "BTC smells" argument absolutely pointless.

Just imagine you got envelopes with Indian Rupees in them. Why on Earth would you go on a rant on the currency? What happened hardly has anything to do with it. It appears to me some people are just looking forward to express their dislike about Bitcoin or whatever else they dislike, be it relevant or not. Thus, "rant".

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#73

Post by Nursie »

muyuu wrote: post #72
Nursie wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some places it's treated as an asset rather than cash. In some it's illegal. If I got unwanted cash, in a new currency, from enthusiasts keen that I take it regardless and refusing to opt me out of their system... I might think less of that new currency too.

Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"? Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Euro, etc. which makes this "BTC smells" argument absolutely pointless. Just imagine you got envelopes with Indian Rupees in them. Why on Earth would you go on a rant on the currency? What happened hardly has anything to do with it. It appears to me some people are just looking forward to e…

>> Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"?

What's the difference? Its value is subjective and brought about by the people that use it. If I find them obnoxious I might not want to deal with it at all. If someone came up with Arsebucks and they were used predominantly by arseholes, I might not involve myself in that either.

>> Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Euro, etc. which makes this "BTC smells" argument absolutely pointless.

If you've got an account set up to perform such exchanges, and if you disregard all the valid legal and taxation reasons people have come up with, and if you ignore all the various transfer and conversion fees, and the market volatility ... sure. But I haven't got such an account, and I don't want one either (frequent hacking comes to mind as a reason).

>> Just imagine you got envelopes with Indian Rupees in them. Why on Earth would you go on a rant on the currency?

Given that it's illegal to take Rupees into or out of India, I might have some concerns, yes! There's another currency you want to be careful with!

>> It appears to me some people are just looking forward to express their dislike about Bitcoin or whatever else they dislike, be it relevant or not. Thus, "rant".

There are a lot of reasons to dislike BTC in itself, over other currencies (I don't want to get into that argument here), at least some of which are down to how individual countries treat BTC. There are a lot of reasons not to want to be involved in its ecosystem (dodgy dealers, hacking etc). There are a lot of reasons not to want to be opted in to a tipping service that you can't leave.

I don't think any of these are irrelevant to the situation, it's a nice combo of all of them.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#74

Post by muyuu »

Nursie wrote: post #73
muyuu wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"? Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Euro, etc. which makes this "BTC smells" argument absolutely pointless. Just imagine you got envelopes with Indian Rupees in them. Why on Earth would you go on a rant on the currency? What happened hardly has anything to do with it. It appears to me some people are just looking forward to e…

>> Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"? What's the difference? Its value is subjective and brought about by the people that use it. If I find them obnoxious I might not want to deal with it at all. If someone came up with Arsebucks and they were used predominantly by arseholes, I might not involve myself in that either. >> Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Eur…

Ok, this is a rant too, just in case you were wondering.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#75

Post by jamespo »

zanny wrote: post #43
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.

And they are vocal about it because they want some people to get in under them in the pyramid.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#76

Post by beagle3 »

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…

It is very far from simple anywhere, especially in the US: It isn't perfectly clear if you should treat bitcoins as commodity or currency. See [0] for more details.

As a general rule, if anyone tells me "but taxes aren't complicated" or "but what's the complication", I know they are talking from ideals and not experience.

The Federal US tax code, last time I looked at it (2009) was over 71,000 pages (add a few more thousands per state). It doesn't get shorter with time. Of those, "only" 20,000 or so apply to every individual (not the same 20,000). Other countries are better, but the shortest country tax code I've had the pleasure (?) of dealing with was only 4,000 pages of printed text.

Intrastate/intracountry transactions are usually complicated, but somewhat tractable. Cross-border transactions are usually ill-specified, can be classified in multitude of ways all technically legal - and yet, if the tax authorities in either country things you've done it wrong, you are assumed guilty until proven innocent.

Anyone who is not scared of the tax code has not had to wrestle it. You may win some battles after working hard. But you never want to go into this war.

[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Tax_compliance

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#77

Post by [deleted] »

muyuu wrote: post #74
Nursie wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"? What's the difference? Its value is subjective and brought about by the people that use it. If I find them obnoxious I might not want to deal with it at all. If someone came up with Arsebucks and they were used predominantly by arseholes, I might not involve myself in that either. >> Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Eur…

Ok, this is a rant too, just in case you were wondering.

[deleted]

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#78

Post by Nursie »

muyuu wrote: post #74
Nursie wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Right. But would you blame the cash? rather than the "enthusiasts"? What's the difference? Its value is subjective and brought about by the people that use it. If I find them obnoxious I might not want to deal with it at all. If someone came up with Arsebucks and they were used predominantly by arseholes, I might not involve myself in that either. >> Also, note that this "cash" is readily exchangeable for US$, Eur…

Ok, this is a rant too, just in case you were wondering.

Because ... ? Because you say so? Colour me totally unbothered by what you think is a rant or not then. Your criteria for characterising rants are obviously wanting.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#79

Post by muyuu »

Nursie wrote: post #78
muyuu wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, this is a rant too, just in case you were wondering.

Because ... ? Because you say so? Colour me totally unbothered by what you think is a rant or not then. Your criteria for characterising rants are obviously wanting.

Because you ignore the context of the situation and go straight for your likes and dislikes going out of your way to justify it.

Re: The Future of Payments and Open Source Support

#80

Post by Nursie »

muyuu wrote: post #79
Nursie wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because ... ? Because you say so? Colour me totally unbothered by what you think is a rant or not then. Your criteria for characterising rants are obviously wanting.

Because you ignore the context of the situation and go straight for your likes and dislikes going out of your way to justify it.

Not really, not seeing that. Sorry. Pretty sure I answered your points rationally there.

Nice work on the Rupees by the way - that was a perfect example of a currency that has inherent downsides to dealing with it. Not all cash is equal.

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