Bitcoin Forum

A Federal judge in new York has recommended to cancel the charges of money laundering on local business based on the definition that Bitcoin does not fall under the definition of money. Instead, the judge Hugh B. Scott ruled that Bitcoin is more like a commodity. While he noted that Bitcoin might one day become so reasonable that it can be considered as money, Scott suggested that he currently has more in common with collectibles such as trading cards and other novelty items.
The case involved a 31-year-old man who allegedly sold Bitcoins for $13 000 to the agent in an attempt to launder money and distribute drugs. However, the interpretation of Scott was adopted by the district judge of the United States Charles Siragusa, who expressed skepticism about the possible consequences.
This is a controversial issue, so lawyers for the defendants said that they will try to withdraw the petition. In this situation, the protection refers to the scepticism of Siragusa as a defining factor in their current strategy. Lawyers of the defendant also stressed that their client is in no way connected with the so-called darknet market and just traded Bitcoins, like other trading "baseball cards, stamps or coins."

That is great news ! I want it to not be recognised as money, because we will have to pay taxes for it, but as a commodity, just as the judge told it ! There will be a lesser hype, but who cares, if it permits us to do not give a penny out of our sales !

Yes, really good news. I don’t care of what if someone is recognizing it as money or not. In fact the person is actually helping you to get rid of the additional taxes that you will have to pay. I am okay with it if someone doesn’t call it or recognize it as a currency. I need it to be useful and it is for now.

There were innocent people who got punished just for running exchanges for the reason of helping money laundry. This is judgement was made late till good one.

It depends on what position youre in. Some want BTC to be defined as a currency so that it will become a legitimate and a valid form of money.

The courts at present arent ready to handle cases that involves BTC because the definition itself is so open to interpretation.

Bitcoin is not known as money at USA so is normal such action. If I am not wrong, according to USA regulators bitcoin is a digital commodity and as for me in such way must be interpreted everything connected with it in order that be conform the regulations.

Well, that was some luck their for the defendant.

IF i was the judge and i just bothered to read over what the hell is bitcoin about for 1 minute before I made the decision, i would have stayed with the money laundering charges. Perhaps the government just wants to keep bitcoin not legally defined as currency, i don't know.

Bitcoin is a commodity, sure. But it's definitely not trading cards. It has much more potential than trading cards, and it's not a collectible. It's much more liquid and easy to trade across the globe. No way a trading card can serve what bitcoin is doing right now.

Japan already said that bitcoin is a legal currency, when will USA say that?

Very good news, friends. Distinguishing bitcoin as money or commodity is very complicated, it really depends on how we look because bitcoin can be used for both. Bitcoin can be called as money because it can be used for transactions and even some shops start using it, but also can be called a commodity because it has a fluctuating value that is suitable for trading.

Actually I prefer if bitcoin is used as a commodity because of its fluctuating value. Also if used as money I think there must be legality from the government and have a form, so bitcoin still not fully qualified to use as money. That is a good case for learning bitcoin.

I'm curious if that could actually help you with taxes

I don't know much about the US tax system (so bear with me), but as I understand it, taxing money is a meaningless idea as such (unless we speak about the inflation tax otherwise known as seigniorage, of course), i.e. if Bitcoin is recognized as a currency you can both hold and sell (as well as buy) your coins indefinitely without paying anything (would that count as capital gain?), while if Bitcoin is considered as a commodity (property), this may no longer be the case

Another thing to discuss is its also good if the government or whoever starts accepting BTC as a currency. It would mean we could also pay our taxes with it. One of fiat's important function is to pay what we owe the government with it. Its one property that makes fiat valuable.

It is highly unlikely that any major government will ever go that route

Since that would effectively mean creating competition for the local currency which these governments print. Why would they want that? By going that way, they will be shooting themselves in the foot. Though some minor governments (and especially those which are already using some foreign currency as a legal tender) may in fact accept Bitcoin as a legitimate payment for taxes provided its price stabilizes over long enough term (but no sooner than that)

I do not think that we bitcoiners need government to recognize bitcoin as a currency. Just regulating bitcoin as digital property will be more than enough, I believe. No government will not prefer to have a system which is beyond their control.

The only option in front of government is taxing on cash-out of bitcoins. But people will prefer going for "using-bitcoin" for their need. Then I guess using-bitcoin will be exempted similar to PayPal's personal payments. So, it would be great for bitcoin not to consider it as money.

Maybe government will start thinking money is what they are printing and all others are just tokens, people do create for their conveniences. I guess there will be no other options left for them.

Gradually Bitcoins is getting the recognition that it deserves, even the SEC are thinking about reviewing a bitcoin ETF it rejected a month ago, The decision to review it is due to bitcoins recent price rise. If the ETF is approved it will be a huge victory for bitcoins.

The good part about bitcoin is that it is it's own thing, it doesn't need any authority to determine if it's money or not. In any case, I think it's funny that lawyers and in general the law struggle so much trying to determine if bitcoin is money, an asset, or the equivalent of pokemon trading cards.

USD is money, EUR is money, JPY is money, GBP is money, CNY is money, Bitcoin is not.

Bitcoin is online gold. You don't price stuff with gold/bitcoin. Instead you price those with FIAT (USD, EUR, JPY, GBP etc) Bitcoin is a commodity which you can trade online. When you buy something with bitcoin, you actually buy it with FIAT. Bitcoin is only carrying your FIAT through.

It will be entirely true. If bitcoin will be defined as a currency, That means bitcoin has filled the legal aspect. There is no doubt for everyone to adopt bitcoin as a currency.

Especially there is no regulation about bitcoin, The courts will take a single perspective about the definition of bitcoin itself. In this side, Crypto is needed a regulation (to secure the users).

is this news?!
i am not living in US but last time i was checking different laws in different countries i remember that i saw bitcoin is listed in US as a commodity already. and this happened back in 2010 or maybe even older. that is why i am surprised you are representing this as a news today!

it is not exactly regulation, but it is already decided years ago that bitcoin is a commodity according to laws of US.

If Bitcoin is not money, why do you accept payment for your posts in it?

If you think of it, you will have to admit that you are a bit hypocritical here. You offer a service and got paid for it, and you don't get paid in dollars, you get paid in bitcoins which you don't consider as money. How come? I understand that you can't buy much stuff with it, but you still get paid and can pay for services you provide and which could be provided to you. Economically, there is no particular difference between goods and services. Anyway, in today's world services are already overtaking goods in terms of money spent and earned. You pay your hefty monthly bills (or your parents pay) and you (they) pay for services, not goods, after all

Not bad at all, if it was money you would have to pay taxes  :D

Bringing bad news to you here, bitcoin being recognized as "not money" doesn't remove the obligation to pay taxes on your ownership of it. Bitcoin is considered an investment too, like stocks. And when ever you sell it for Fiat you'll be obligated to pay taxes on the value of the appreciation in it's price.

While you should, you may still choose not to

When you are small fish, I guess no one will give a fuck about you, if you don't shout it loud at every corner about your success with Bitcoin, indeed. If you have literally millions of dollars in Bitcoin (and are looking to cash out), you may want to buy citizenship of some country with loyal and Bitcoin-friendly tax system, where proceeds from Bitcoin operations are not taxable at all. And if that country entered an agreement with the country of your residence about avoidance of double taxation, you may legally not pay any taxes on your Bitcoin earnings. I guess there are a lot of other "legitimate" ways if not totally avoid taxation then at least substantially "optimize" your tax burden

There is not country in the world where btc is recognised like a money,but psst if bankers will read that thay will start launder money with btc,btc will jump to 100k $.Like a side effect we wil have crash on dollar

Any commodity can be given from one person to another.  I could give you a block of gold and it would still have been transferred from one person to another, even if it's pretty inefficient.  Signature campaigns are more of an anonymity thing - people don't want to give credit card details or something to random online companies.  Bitcoin is ideal for the purpose, even though the fees are pretty high for those microtransactions. 

When someone buy goods using bitcoin, it become another medium of exchange, everyone is free to consider bitcoin as what they want depends​ on its use for what purpose. Bitcoin price be measured with fiat but it just a figure of value, bitcoin-fiat-and gold are worth and could be used for buy something without need to state it as a money.

Glad to see people aren't getting wrongfully charged for ridiculous things like trading BTC. How is the drugs aspect related to BTC at all btw?

They basically have.  Treating Bitcoin like a commodity doesn't change the status of it from our perspective very much at all, except that in Japan you might be subject to annoying and arguably excessive regulations on exchanges.  The US has been surprising lenient towards Bitcoin users, and regardless of whether judges give legitimacy to it by treating it like a currency, we can still use it properly.  Not treating it like money might even benefit us since we don't have to mess around with taxes (except maybe VAT, we'll see how this plays out).

Did you consult the dictionary or what?

I haven't heard from you so far. Anyway, this is the basic function of money, that of transferring value, and you should take into account that the value for the job done here is transferred remotely (i.e. not via hand-to-hand transactions, as is the case with gold you refer to). In other words, if people start moving "any commodity" in this way and for this purpose specifically, this commodity will effectively turn into money. As I always say in such and similar cases, money is what money does, and in this case precisely, Bitcoin is used as a payment for a large number of people, something which money is typically used for. To sum it up, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is likely a duck itself

New York politics are corrupt. Maybe one of the most corrupt states in america.

It took forever for them to legalize mixed martial arts.

They like to stall on new legislature and sabotage the legal process to milk issues for everything they're worth.

Indeed the true justice system in the US they have, a judge gets a boner and issues a blocking order(freezing)of $11B Iran's money! I know you might say Iran supporting terrorism and they all are terrorists and deserve what they get but as clearly as franky1 is a shill for Wu and Ver, we all know Iran is not supporting terrorism but even fighting it and is a victim. I mean who the hell did put the governments in charge of everything? yes we did.
Couldn't US loving the human rights so much provide proper channels to give dozens of billions dollars of frozen assets to the people in Iran? lifts the sanctions on merchants doing business with medical companies and buying food supplies to give them the chance the people?

I wanna know are the whole world completely insane or blind not to see if Iran wanted to destroy Israel they already have enough non nuclear fire power to do so and if they wanted to build 10 nukes and drop on american soil then US could drop thousands on Iranian soils?

So what is the real deal here?
Answer: they're all SOBs and MFers want to bully others simple and clear as BU is a menace.
Actually the whole world has turned to fuck and the only thing trying barely to unfuck it is unable to jump start, take off because they know what potentials bitcoin has and if they allow it to scale and grow big then they might lose their grip.

Pardon my french I'm just honest and very much pissed.

Yeah that was the point. I was trying to show where fiat gets its value from, and thats because governments accept them as payment for your dues. To be defined as real currency, BTC has to be accepted by the government for tax payments.

This makes sense because bitcoin is not an official currency. Also, gold is not considered a currency and neither is paypal.

In fact, this is a shaky argument

If not to say that it is a completely false one. There are over 100 fiat currencies in the world, and only a few are accepted as legal tender in more than one country. In general, one specific currency is accepted in only one country, namely, where this currency happens to be printed. So, according to your reasoning, any foreign currency is not a real one, right? You may claim, of course, that at least one country should accept a currency to be considered as "real" but if some tiny and utterly inconsequential government accepts Bitcoin as legal payment for taxes, what would it essentially change? Would it make Bitcoin into a "real" currency?

Paying the taxes in bitcoin would be something really great for all bitcoin users, there would be just no struggle with doing that totally online, when in some countries you cannot even pay the taxes through the internet-which is a very huge disadvantage.

Also, adoption od BTC by governments would give the countries even more and more taxes, so why cannot we see something like this?

Obviously i would prefer for bitcoin to be tax free but i doubt that we can really hope for that.

Even though the bitcoin was sold for wrong reason like selling drugs, I am happy that the judge did not recognize it as a money and more like a commodity. Because bitcoin is indeed a commodity, an online commodity to be precise. Bitcoin is holding its value in USD and people across the world are involved in trading of the same.

It may bring some good news to all the bitcoin users across the states of US because I heard they are pretty stringent about bitcoin and planning to tax it heavily. This judgement can bring some other thoughts about bitcoin which may open up some opportunities to debate.

That's highly unlikely

As to me, the adoption of Bitcoin by governments would actually cause the tax revenues to dry up. How come? Simply because it is easier not to pay taxes with Bitcoin than with fiat money. Obviously, when a government starts accepting Bitcoin as legal tender ("a payment for all public debts and duties"), that will give Bitcoin a strong boost among general public as well as turn it into a vehicle for massive tax evasion. As the proverb goes, to think bad of people is a sin but rarely a mistake

I see no problem with them not recognizing Bitcoin as money. We don't really need regulated Bitcoin for anything.
Regulation equals taxes and special units in every government agency dedicated to Bitcoin tracking. I'd prefer if they left it alone and kept thinking it's a harmless movement managed and supported by a group of nerds.

You will not legally accept BitCoin. But you will also be punished if there is an unlawful event in the proceedings related to it.If you make decisions based on bitcoin , you need to know bitcoin first.The judge made the right decision.The government accepts the bitcoin first.   Maybe then the judge can make decisions


 

I strongly second this view

While some form of government regulation may somewhat help Bitcoin adoption, there is no reason to think that this regulation will be very Bitcoin-friendly overall. Basically, Bitcoin (just like any other foreign currency, for the record) is a competitor to a local currency, so you shouldn't harbor much hope in respect to such regulation. It will most likely be aimed at making the lives of generic Bitcoin users harder, certainly not easier. Existing foreign currency regulations are like that. They essentially limit the free circulation of these currencies, if not outright ban them. So beware of false prophets preaching for Bitcoin regulation

Is not Japan stated that Bitcoin is money and even Philippines declared the same? 


are not they already laundering their clients money, spending them to anywhere they wanted and making it hard for the owner to even move a cent from his money.  It does not seem like it because they are the authority.  No one will question it because in their system, their actions are legit and we clients agree with it.

That is why merchants dont accept the foreign currencies. Because its not worth anything to them. They cant pay their expenses with it nor their taxes. The need to convert it which is very tedious because some currencies need to go through the US dollar first. From the point of view of a merchant from Kenya, the Japanese Yen is something he can wipe his ass with.

So you basically confirm that any fiat currency, maybe, only apart from the major ones that are universally accepted (like the US dollar) are not real ones from a view-point of someone to whom they are of no use. In this way, they are not real currencies, and the whole issue can be happily reduced to what someone thinks about a specific currency (more specifically, whether he can pay taxes with it or not, as per your reasoning). If so, how Bitcoin is different from all these other "unreal" currencies then?

Note that for a Kenyan merchant it is of no importance if someone can pay taxes somewhere with the Japanese Yen

Maybe it is for better, cause of they don't accept bitcoin as money there is no needs to pay taxes form bitcoin earnings, as we pay it from our salaries.

Japanese Yen is a currency which can be easily exchanged anywhere in the world. I am sure that there are hundreds of currency exchanges in Kenya, which accept the JPY. If you are talking about currencies such as the Lebanese pound, then I'd somewhat agree. But don't say that it is completely worthless. You can find a trader in Lebanon or some other country, and then use Western Union to exchange the money.

Bitcoin still in grey area, but no country make any decisions whether bitcoin is money or not, some country adapted bitcoin and we can used it to pay things but still not recognised as money, so actually it's quite confusing, but it is a good thing if not considered as money so when we exchange bitcoin we won't be accused of money laundering

Were they see it as money from beginning? I don't think so. The governments are hiding from the through, they know that as far as they cannot destroyed bitcoin the only way is to arrest traders and said they are doing money laundry through bitcoin. Governments should no that bitcoin is decentralized! And that it can not stop bitcoin to perform role of money in our societies.

May you read the title again? Newyork and it's a part of USA.  ::)
Only japan and no more. Japan already determined bitcoin as legal payment which means if bitcoin can be determined as a legal currency in his country, but not for another country. They're just announcing about the bitcoin not for the legal status of bitcoin itself.

Everybody would want bitcoin not to be recognised as money. It is working best in the way it works currently. Investing in it as commodity is the best way to keep bitcoin alive for long time. Also how can we forget our huge profits that it has given back for our investments. Also if people start using bitcoin in terms of illegal activities them they will have to pay for it. :-)

Up to some extent, yes the Japanese Yen will always be useless for a guy in Kenya. But imagine this. If the Kenyan government start accepting Japanese Yen as payment for their people's taxes then everything about it changes. Its like a license for everybody in Kenya to start accepting it.

Yes, it's better for bitcoin. Now you can make good money by investing in coins and you do not need to pay tax for it.

And what does it change in respect to your original claim?

Namely, that Bitcoin is not a currency since it is not accepted as a legal tender anywhere if other currencies are not accepted either (apart from their home countries, of course). Indeed, if the Japanese Yen is adopted by Kenyan government for payment of taxes, it will become quite useful in Kenya, but I could just as well say that the same is equally applicable to Bitcoin. In fact, the chances of some government (like that of Kenya) to accept Bitcoin seem to be a lot higher than accepting the Japanese Yen since the latter is one of many other fiat currencies out there while Bitcoin is unique (even among cryptocurrencies). Strictly speaking, the Japanese Yen is one of the major currencies along with the US dollar, British pound, Swiss franc and Euro

Yeah the same situation with the guy in Kenya who wont accept Japanese Yen as payment because he cant pay his taxes are quite often cant buy anything with them in his country. People could choose to accept something like BTC because its a novelty but think about if its useful for an ordinary store in your country. Its better to accept the local currency.

I think an analogy with gold would be better here

Gold is not a legal tender anywhere in the world unless we talk about local gold coins accepted at their face value (i.e. way below there real worth). It is considered as money even less than Bitcoin. Gold is recognized everywhere in the world, though it is still not very useful for daily expenses (just like Bitcoin as such). But you can still exchange it for local currency since it is valued across borders. Bitcoin is in the category of things universally valued, and many countries have exchanges that will allow you to convert your bitcoins to local currencies without much ado

With gold its still a maybe. Maybe your small mom and pop store will accept your gold and bear with the conversion costs and the labor of going somewhere to exchnage them from you. But if you go to a gas station do you think theyll accept your gold? Maybe they will only because its stable and have been used as a store of value for thousands of years. Bitcoin cant claim the same.

Philippines recognized Bitcoin as money.  Some state of USA is considering Bitcoin as money (though this won't count for now).  So this will at least add to your info that not only Japan see Bitcoin as money. 

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I guess the decision were issued because there is not enough basis for Bitcoin to be considered as money during that time.  So definitely the judge will issue  a dismissal since the charges is proven not supported by written legalities about Bitcoin.

I thought that someone else had ruled Bitcoin as an asset that was to be defined and taxed in the same way that "capital gains" assets are taxed, but that was a while ago and things change so I might be wrong. This doesn't surprise me though, and chances are they want to get more of a cut through taxes for the future. I don't know if that's a fair comment, but the US judicial system is kind of weird so I dunno what to expect in the future.

People think a little, if you think that bitcoin isn't money, than why do you want it? Especially sig camp people, your say that bitcoin isn't money for you but I believe you exchange it on money immediately when you receive it.
Let's be honest, it's possible to exchange btc so this means it's money, it has it's value.
And someone said that if bitcoin will be considered as money, we have to pay fees. Well, when you exchange it. aren't you paying fees? But exchanger coveres fees of goverment and they take another part of fee for theirself.

I really don't have any issue with the interpretation the judge is giving because everyone is entitled to his/her opinion the same way we have other people who believes bitcoin is a form of HYIP but whats different here is because the Judge is in a position in which his opinion is having some influence over others and until there is a clear cut law on the subject matter, there will always be issue like this going forward and another judge in Nebraska can think differently on the same issue.

You are severely sidestepping your original point

Nevertheless, I'm still inclined to think that at a Kenyan gas station you would fare a lot better with gold than Japanese Yen (or some obscure currency the name of which neither of us has ever heard). And this is what my point is basically about. In any country you could sell your gold. It may take time and effort, but this is a way better than to get stuck, say, with Albanian Lek somewhere in Uruguay. The same is essentially applicable to Bitcoin as well, and that has nothing to do with its being novice and whatnot

Bitcoin is money, but if they don’t want to recognize it as such then take advantage of it, this means that you can exchange it as you see fit, and not to have to report it, while it may seem bitcoin not being recognized as a currency is bad I think this is a good news

In some ways it is good for the 31 year old guy who is a bitcoin user. Yet i cannot agree on the fact that this is not a money bitcoin is a currency which for me equates to a form gold money

My original point was a currency of some country would be useless to another country because each of their governments wont accept another country's currency to pay as tax. If the United States government started to accept BTC for tax payments try to imagine what effect that would bring to it.

Well, I actually thought you were talking about Bitcoin, after all


In fact, it was my point exactly that a foreign currency would be mostly useless in any country apart from its home one, and I told you that in this respect specifically Bitcoin won't be any different from any other foreign currency out there (unless the latter is accepted as legal tender, of course). You seem to have already forgotten who has been telling what

Its all comes down to a regulations that are uppon bitcoin exchanges. Thats the reason why the bitcoin must be considered as an asset. Those exchanges operates with fiat money and bitcoin/alts. The bitcoin users are to be controlled by the exchanges because it involves the fiat money, not because it involves bitcoins.

I would guess that if an exchange would work only as an exchange that trades with bitcoins and alts, it wouldn't have to comply with all the banks regulations concerning its users.

I think the bitcoin is not treated as money because the banks have nothing to with it and the money is defined as a bank notes, that are to be regulated by the banking laws. Hence its impossible to regulate bitcoin, its folly to treat it as money.

Hehe yeah. Anyway that was the point. Another point I was trying to make was the government's acceptance of a currency as payment for taxes, in our case its BTC, would give it more value than any future approved Bitcoin ETF investment vehicle. It wouldnt seem that way but if the US government started accepting BTC payments in payment for taxes, license registration and the like, expect the merchants to follow soon.

wonderful idea, thats the thing that I want to bitcoins, it doesnt know by the governments therefore it has no tax and they cannnot give as any accusations. but I dont think that if someday it will be remain unknown to the governments, people are get interested, they are curious, they are confuse and interested on it. I think government will discover this soon.

They don't even need that

Not that they will ever accept Bitcoin as legal tender but they should just treat Bitcoin as a foreign currency and allow banks to open accounts in it. That will suffice and will give a strong boost to Bitcoin popularity on its own. Regarding merchants, whether Bitcoin is legal tender or not is not very important presently. That possibility (of paying taxes with Bitcoin) will kick in if Bitcoin solves its issues with confirmation times and high transaction fees as well as price volatility. These seem to be the major factors preventing merchants from adopting Bitcoin as of now

Bitcoin is will be hot topic for many judges over the world. New York already had couple court sessions about bitcoin and I agree with most members here that in this case people from there can use bitcoins and that will be tax-free for them, that is a good thing for bitcoin, and many people there will see this is as opportunity to avoid taxes, for me that is a gray area and there will be new verdicts about bitcoin in near future.

How can it Bitcoin trades be tax free in the US if its not classified as a currency it will be classified as a commodity? Theres no such thing as tax-free in the US if you must know. Taxation is a means of controlling the people for them.

As quoted it's not taxation free. Every country has its stand on bitcoin usage with limitations and taxation system based on the transaction made. Recently Israel made a statement that there is no opposition for bitcoin usage, but same as the commodity digital gold it will be taxed. So not only US, nowhere it's tax free.

Did Iv4n it wasnt going to be tax-free? Look and read the post I have quoted. He says its going to be tax-free, thats why Im asking asking him how and why he mentioned it.

Now are you claiming it isnt what hes saying or didnt you read Iv4n's post?