Bitcoin Forum

Mods, I urge you to add this to important announcements. This is a PSA for the USA.

The US "infrastructure" bill passed the Senate and House (https://www.benzinga.com/markets/cryptocurrency/21/08/22268564/can-the-us-infrastructure-bill-kill-major-cryptocurrencies-like-bitcoin-ethereum-dogecoin). It will be signed by the President in the next few days (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/we-delivered-biden-touts-infrastructure-win-after-chaotic-late-night-n1283399).

When this is done, all US citizens engaging in mining, development, running a node (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5356305.msg57774119#msg57774119) (i.e. running Bitcoin core) will be legally "brokers". These activities will now be felonies, by federal law, since reporting is impossible (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/06/house-sends-infrastructure-bill-with-crypto-tax-provision-to-us-president/).

Additionally, transferring >$10k without recipient's SS#, etc. will be a felony. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5360520.msg57959412#msg57959412)

Staking for proof-of-stake (PoS) cryptos, NFTs and sending money via DeFi are also now felonies. DeFi is dead.

Privacy is also effectively banned.

If you live in the US, please make considerations for all your crypto activities, before this bill becomes law.

It is really a real pity that reason did not prevail and that some amendments were not accepted, which in my opinion is very strange considering that the crypto community in the US is very strong and active. It seems that large crypto companies were not very interested in trying to prevent or at least to some extent change this law, and in that case, it does not seem to be a problem for them.

It remains to be seen how this law will be implemented in practice and how much impact it will have on Bitcoin globally.

NO THEY WONT

the myth started from some idiot on twitter that has no clue what bitcoin is to realise the difference between a node and a broker

he has no fiat understanding of the term broker either
the idiot started a FUD and many people fell for it and became fearful.

exchanges are brokers.. not developers
mixers are brokers not miners
remitters are brokers not node users

so calm yourself down. and realise the actually terminology is about persons offering a service for payment, where the service is the custodialship of coin for and on behalf of others payments

so calm down developers, node users and miners are not affected.

But that does not make for good scare headlines.
What is also interesting is that cash and similar instruments have had reporting requirements for a very long time.
Someone hands your business $10000 for something you do have reporting obligations. This is just putting BTC / crypto in the same pile as cash.

-Dave

The text of the bill can be viewed here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text

The first point to note is this one. A broker shall include:
It is trivial to argue that a miner is responsible for providing a service which effectuates transfers on behalf of someone else, given that without miners there would be no transactions at all. I know franky1 likes to endlessly repeat his opinion with no evidence to suggest that anyone in the US Congress thinks the same way he does, but the fact of the matter is that there have been multiple attempts in both the House and the Senate at redefining this language and there are already some members of Congress promising to bring forth new legislation to redefine this language. If this language was as clear and unambiguous as franky1 thinks it is, then there would not have been several previous and several ongoing attempts to fix it. It doesn't matter at all at how any single one of us interprets this language; it can be interpreted in a way which suggests that miners are brokers, and this interpretation has been reached by multiple members of both chambers. If you think for a second that the US government will not interpret it in the way that suits them best and lets them tax as many people as much as possible, then you are incredibly naive.

The second point to note is this one.

Section 6050i (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/6050I) says this:

Anyone who makes a trade (or a series of related trades) worth more than $10,000, must file a return containing the name, address, and TIN (Taxpayer Identification Number) of the person they are trading with. The TIN is most commonly the other party's SSN. At current prices, this means you can trade a total of 0.16 BTC with someone before you have to ask for their KYC information and SSN.

But the point is that if I were selling you unregistered real goods for cash. Say, gold coins. That same law applies.'

If I sell you a car, there is a record of sale, transfer of the VIN and some other stuff in which you could not really have to do it.

If I sell you a bag of diamonds there is not. If I sell you a few of top of the line gaming video cards at the moment there is not. If either one of these things happen, you are responsible for the same thing.

Just because nobody does it, does not mean that it should not be done by law.

I used to see this all the time when a sort of co-workers family had side business dealing in wholesale used pinball / video games. People would try to hand them cash, and they would ask for check / CC instead just to avoid dealing with the reporting. They finally put up a sign in the office that said. "The games take cash, we only take credit cards" And that was 20+ years ago. It's not even that people were avoiding taxes, it's just that arcades had a lot of cash and it's was easier for them to let someone else deal with the paperwork.

-Dave

Oh sure. I was just pointing out that this was the relevant piece of the law as applies to what OP was talking about.

What annoys me about this is not that they are bringing bitcoin in to line with cash trades, it is that they continue to treat bitcoin as whatever suits them best at the time. By all means treat bitcoin as the same as cash - I think that is an entire reasonable stance to take - but then you need to acknowledge that it is indeed a currency and stop charging people capital gains on it when they buy a cup of coffee. At the moment it is treated as cash for the situations where it means the government can tax you more, and it is treated as property for situations where it means the government can tax you more.

Looks like United States are slowly turning into tax hell not only related with Bitcoin but with everything else, and I think they are planning to increase other taxes soon.
I don't know if they are really thinking they can avoid financial collapse with this mambo jumbo stuff or they just want to milk as much money from people as they can.
I also wonder what would happen if majority of people just stop paying bunch of taxes (call it peoples experiment), at least not pay them like they are paying them now, that is more like an extortion.

Yet another reason why I argued against the claim that "Chinese miners moved to USA". It is silly on all accounts, this included. It is like falling from the frying pan into the fire, or as we call it "came out of the hole just to fall into the well".

1.
a miner does not take responsibility of assets on behalf of another person
as thats called custodianship

please actually get a screw driver open up an asic and please try and find the hard drive that stores keys or even blockchain data or even transaction data...

oh look there is no hard drive or memory store for this..
hmm seems i mentioned this before to oeleo and he has simply been ignorant.

a miner does not take responsibility nor does any transfer.
a miner just hashs a block ID

2. there has not been multiple attempts IN THE HOUSE and senate.. because if there were. the wording would have been redefined. because they are the ones to do it.(its either a yay or nay).
what you will find is that alot of the twitterverse of emotional social media people campaigned TO the representatives of the house/senate. because the twitterverse/redditers were kneejerk reacting to a guy that didnt know better ..
its much like how twitter campaigned that the world is flat and that trump won 2020

3. to emphasise again
no miner takes responsibility for other peoples funds nor does a miner process a transaction.
if oeleo can prove otherwise he should provide the chips manufacturing reference number, the firmware and the software that has anything related to transactions, public and private keys of other peoples funds
i shall wait for his "proof"

4. oeleo is(secretly contradictory) not afraid of bitcoin full node/miner/dev users being deemed brokers. his real fear is actually on his favourite altnet LN where routing is involving the hot potato movement of funds on behalf of other people. meaning anyone using LN that is offering a route payment for a non-zero fee is deemed as a broker.
but its very funny how he remains very quiet about his real fear. and instead wants to claim anyone using bitcoin is a broker.. very obvious he wants people to stop using bitcoin and shift to his favourite altnet whilst hiding the truth that using LN in the way its designed is the actual' broker' definition
but oeleo's biggest problem of understand is that he cant tell where bitcoin ends and where LN begins. and still believes LN (a separate network) is bitcoin.

its become comedy gold watching certain social drama queens try to create social chaos

---

not in all cases.
seriously it is obvious you have never run a business or even done any transaction of any kind above $10k personally yourself.
..
people dont 'file a return' everytime they send or receive $10k
in fiat world.. the BANK does that for you.. because THEY are the MSB (money service business)
AKA broker
remember the reference "for and on behalf of other people" that is where the BANK is the broker. not the buyer/seller

as others have told oeleo. a surgeon doing a heart transplant does not become a broker for charging for his surgery. (something oeleo should know as a doctor)

the wording of this rule is about money service businesses.
i told oeleo before and will tell him repeatedly until he actually goes and does it
RESEARCH MSB

instead of crying about how many times i tell him things and he just replies that i said something multiple times but then pretends i didnt say it.
how about he just researches the subject. instead of relying on twitterverse as is opinion maker

for anyone offering a service that takes responsibility of pother peoples funds on behalf of others for a fee needs to become an MSB
these MSB(brokers) then have to follow policies and guidelines. which include reporting
oh and they get given access to a portal to allow them to report.
yep normal citizens dont report things. because they dont have access to the portal, why? well because normal citizens are not MSB's

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

Wouldn't there a way to prevent reporting your transactions if it's under 10k? I think I've heard it in a video regarding money laundering and that you won't be flagged if you are only transferring that much amount. Plus, would it be that difficult for users in US to navigate when this bill is signed? Privacy was a dead a long time ago, around the time of Cold War and Red Scare, they're already listening to our homes.

people dont report there transactions. brokers do.
people moving their own money does not make them a broker.
an accountant auditing your account is not a broker. a retailer receiving your money is not a broker

a broker is someone that has custody of your funds on your behalf and then moves funds for you and does it for a fee

banks. escrows, remitters and such

this broker thing is not the same as a income declaration you do to the IRS where you have to report yearly value and report large income streams.

this broker rule is about businesses operating a service to take responsibility of funds for other people and move them on behalf of other people

the broker report is a separate thing to the self assessment irs report(something oeleo is confused with and cant tell the difference of)

citizens do not become brokers simply because they handle more then $10k
bitcoiners do not become brokers simply by writing some code or using an asic or running a node

If the USA treats cryptocurrencies as fiat,gold or any other financial assets,that's a good thing.
Reporting financial transfers bigger than 10K USD isn't such a big deal,unless the sender and the receiver have something to hide.If we want crypto to become fully legal,then we have to sacrifice all privacy and become fully transparent.If you want privacy,then use Monero and stay in the darkweb.
Crypto miners and developers cannot be treated as "brokers",because they don't fall under the legal description of being brokers.If there's such mistake in the "infrastructure bill" then somebody will fix it sooner or later.There are Bitcoin/crypto supporters in the US congress,they will have to step in.
The current Bitcoin price is 65K USD,so nobody is panicking due to this unsuccessful FUD attempt. ;D

I think it does not matter who they are targeting for this law, because it's intent is clear.... strip Bitcoin's anonymity and get as much taxes as possible from it. (It will first target the big players in the industry and then it will be amended to cover everyone, if it was not applicable to them)

You get this type of things, when you have a president that can hardly finish a sentence ....How will he have the attention span to comprehend the full impact of a law like this. (The Puppet masters behind the scene are pulling the strings... he just fondles the young girls)  ::)

The wording of the bill says nothing about requiring anyone to take responsibility of assets on behalf of another person. It states if you provide a service which makes transfers, which is exactly what miners do.

Yes there have.

Amendment 2466: Strike provision relating to information reporting for brokers and digital assets
Amendment 2498: Revise the rule of construction re. information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2617: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2619: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2627: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2644: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2645: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2650: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2651: Revise rule of construction with respect to information reporting for brokers/digital assets
Amendment 2656: Clarify definition of a broker for digital assets

Again, the wording does not require them to take responsibility for other people's funds. It simply requires them to provide a service which effectuates transfers.

Your strange obsession against Lightning is irrelevant.

And when you hold your own bitcoin in your own wallet, there is no bank to collect these details and so legally you must do it yourself, just as you would if you were accepting cash. Which is exactly what Section 6050i I linked to above talks about - cash trades - and not payments through a bank or other institution.

and under your same logic. it does not mention mining development nor node users

again miners do not effectuate transfers.
please buy a friggen asic and try to find the hard drive/ram that contains transaction data

as for your blindness... it never mentions miners, nodes or developers.. although you think it does
it does mention 'responsible' and 'on behalf' of which you think it doesnt


it does not say anything about accounting historic transfer data
it does not say anything about software development by volunteers
oh and in fiat world. a cheque clearing house is a separate business to a bank. and the cheque clearing house that validates checks in batches never does the reporting. the bank(custodian) does
so please do some friggen research on the real world not what you read on twitter
oh and also in fiat (real)world the software developers of visa, cheque clearance houses, and banks are not brokers.

so try to read.. and then do research on actual money service businesses
this is the multiple time i have asked you to do some research and the multiple time you have played ignorant thinking your right 'coz twitter'

if your life revolves around auto-belief in twitter messages. then your just as bad as the flat earth trump 2020 crowd.

oh and also learn a bit about bitcoin (not your altnet pretending to be). you know learn how transactions work. like learn about signatures. then realise to effectuate a transfer means having signature authority to effectuate transfer
meaning to have responsibility to effectuate transfer on behalf of someone else you need to be a custodian

the quote is about businesses that do transfers for others.. again learn about custodians aka money service businesses..
the quote is not about individuals signing their own transactions.. again meaning not node users. its, if you read the quote businesses that offer a service on behalf of others.. aka custodians(because they have the private key of funds belonging to others)

.. please do some research beyond what you find on twitter campaigns. it might help you learn something

And you think our politicians understand any of that? Most of them can't even tell you what bitcoin is, let along what a miner is or what they do, and most will never even have heard of the term ASIC. If you want to phone up every member of Congress personally along with all the people at the IRS and tell them just to ignore the legislation, it's all fine because you and you alone have figured out the one true interpretation of it, then be my guest.

The bottom line is it does not matter how you or I interpret it. All that matters is how the people who are going to be enforcing this law think, and as I've shown above many of them are interpreting this law to apply to nodes and miners as well.

The exact wording from 6050i states "Any person who is engaged in a trade". If you go through a centralized exchange, then yes, they will already have all your KYC details and ware already reporting you to the IRS. But now, if you trade bitcoin cumulatively worth more than $10,000 peer to peer, whether it is for goods, services, fiat, altcoins, whatever, then at least one party is now responsible for collecting the KYC details of the other and reporting them to the IRS.

If I understand this correctly,  running nodes on/in your private property(laptop, PC, phones, home etc ) which is more like owning piggy bank or wallet could be considered evil unless certain rules are followed?
Hope lawmakers understand that the purpose of Law is to guide us to do what is right not prevent us from doing what is right.

Reminder - this will be signed Monday by President Biden (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/biden-to-sign-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-into-law-on-monday-e2-80-93-live/ar-AAQxDQ7). The full law will go into effect then.

Could Bitcoin be banned entirely (https://coingeek.com/could-taproot-privacy-features-make-btc-illegal/)? Coingeek had a really interesting article about the upcoming Taproot softfork (which coincidentally goes into effect the day before the US officially illegalizes many aspects of crypto), may place Bitcoin as a "privacy" coin. It apparently adds an obfuscation level where transactions from different users are pooled together and linked to one hash. It sounds kind of like a built-in coinjoin or weaker version of Monero's ring signatures. I am all for enhanced privacy and making crypto operate more like money, but I also recognize the government may see this as a threat - they do need tax to function. The existing tax structure would have to change, if consumers gain privacy through crypto and they can't monitor everyone's spending through banks.

On developers and privacy, the article says:

On miners, the article says (to put another nail in the coffin of the argument that mining won't be considered an illegal activity):

That is correct. You will be a lawbreaker.

I've just read through that article, and I must say, it is absolutely trash. It sounds like he has no idea what Taproot or its associated changes are going to do.

"Taproot is essentially a mixing service"? What is he even talking about?

"Developers and reporters are usually careful to say 'privacy enhancements' instead of 'anonymity'." That's because it doesn't make you anonymous by any stretch of the imagination?

Figured I would check out the author since his article is such utter nonsense. Turns out he's a BSV shill who thinks known fraudster CSW is Satoshi. Lol. No wonder he doesn't know what he's talking about, but still wants to somehow twist it in to negative press for bitcoin.

As much as this law is obviously terrible and should be fought, this article isn't even worth the non-existent paper it isn't written on.

see. this proves you dont know the answer.

if you are doing a trade with someone else. then YOU are the seller/buyer..
you are not the middleman agent of 2 other people

grocery stores are not brokers just because they receive money
grocery store customers are not brokers just because the hand money to grocery stores

and no. handing money to your dad to get him to buy a mcdonalds for you on his way home from work is not a broker either
it has to be a business offering a service for a fee to take your money and do something with it for another person (aka financial custodians aka MSB)

heres an example.
you are buying/selling something on ebay.
you are not a broker whether your a buyer or seller.
ebay is not a broker. its the retail/advertiser
paypal is the financial broker
more precisely its financial accounting department, which has a special policy written up that fits the SEC requirements to be an MSB

the human software developers that made paypal (elon musk + original+current IT team) are not a broker
the physical server and human IT technician contracted to maintain paypals server are not a broker
every employee of paypal does NOT have to do AML/KYC on paypal customers


its funny. because it seems you and your buddies are trying TOO HARD to try to make the law imply that it does involve developers, miners and node users. as if you want it to imply it involves them.
you have a very weird way of trying to twist things to make it seem like it implies it

if you were really against it. you would be trying to explain how the wording does not even mention anything to do with developers, miners, node users

oh wait i forgot. you do want to imply bitcoiners are brokers but at same time stay silent about your altnet 'routers' as being a service for a fee that takes responsibility of routing payment for others.. hmm now why are you very silent about your favourite (alt) network, whilst being very loud about your assumptions that the law does apply to all aspects of bitcoin...
(im being rhetorical, i already know why. no need to reply)

instead of replying with the obvious answer.. how about do some research on the SEC and how they handle and regulate the policies of MSB's.. you will learn alot

You are now conflating the two parts of the bill together. The part which defines brokers is separate and unrelated to the 6050i reporting requirements.

Whether or not they are defined as a broker is irrelevant for the purposes of 6050i. If you walk in to any store and try to pay for goods over $10,000 in cash, then they are legal obligated to collect your tax details. Have you ever filed a Form 8300? Have you even read it?


Because, for the third time in this thread, it doesn't matter how you or I interpret it. What matters is how law makers and the IRS interpret it, and they have already signaled that they will be interpreting it to include miners and anyone else they like when it is in their interests to do so. You can't explain this away - the language needs amended.

Your weird obsession with Lightning aside, I'm sure that law makers will absolutely try to include Lightning nodes in to their definition as and when it suits them to do so.

Welcome to Coingeek, where all the writers, staff and even the company owner are pro-CSW.

---

Anyway, I hope some brave USA person/business who still deals with crypto then and is dragged to court will be able to make a legal defense that ultimately punches a hole though this legislation by a Supreme Court injunction.

But nevertheless, the law was adopted and if it is signed by the president, it will come into force. It looks like cryptocurrency is facing a tough time for government regulation. For sure, mining cryptocurrency that uses the energy-intensive PoW algorithm will be banned in almost all countries. Bitcoin will suffer the most from this. In fact, more than 18 million bitcoins have already been mined. He can walk without the remaining three million. Even if the law is stupid, it will still be followed. Over time, it will be followed by appropriate amendments. Yes, interesting times are coming.

Oh lol. I tend to completely avoid any crypto only "news" site since they are all click bait trash, so I had no idea this one was owned by Calvin Ayre. A very quick scout of their site reveals it to predictably be a hub of conspiracy theories and misinformation.

The US is not synonymous with "all countries". Thankfully there remain many countries whose politicians aren't so backward thinking. Miners will simply uproot and move their operations (or just hide them from the government) as they did a few months ago with China.

The remaining bitcoin waiting to be mined are almost irrelevant. Without mining there can be no transactions.

It's hard to be a privacy coin without no KYC exchanges and upcoming regulations. But Cryptom from Utopia P2P https://u.is/en/currencies.html has its own decentralized no KYC exchange  and can't be tracked or blocked anyhow. And that's the best way out.

Seems bad slap for US side. Well Asians are doing all ok (not you china) and I think sooner or later Europe or Asia would become the epicentre of crypto. The reason is simple, if such USA law is passed then most of the mining operations and most of billions of dollars will be squeezed out of USA. The only countries with good laws and regulations is Europe and some Asian countries who has graciously accepted bitcoin as well as crypto technology. I literally thought USA would overpower one more time with the crypto but it seems the roots are falling for the same. Different countries different views and all this is because of decentralised fear of the monetary system that could destroy any government.

You mean "federal reserve", not entire governments.

Bitcoin doesn't offer anything that can preclude non-monetary functions of governments.