Please don't ignore the question.
...
Do you really think the government is going to give up its control over money?
I think this is a very good question, and I think the answer is no, they will not give up control over money. At least, not on purpose. So in my mind the question becomes: does the government regard cryptocurrencies as a threat to their control over money? A few years ago I might have predicted yes, but recently I have been leaning more towards no, based on less-than-hostile comments from various people like Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen, Alan Greenspan. Propaganda. Have you followed what Larry Summers said? They want digital currency so they can easily confiscate. The establishment is supporting Bitcoin because they can more easily track where all the money is. ....but bitcoin is not as high on that list as early enthusiasts (like me) used to think. In an ideal world, bitcoin will not topple the central banking system, something else will; and when that happens, bitcoin will save us all from chaos. I am sure my thinking on this question will continue to evolve.
It is very high on their list if it can grow. They are trial ballooning different ways to bring the world onto a digital ledger so they can confiscate by pressing a button. Off chain on Bitcoin will be the mechanism to achieve this control. They have nothing to fear from Bitcoin, because one pool already controls 50% of the mining. They could easily blacklist coins tomorrow if they needed to. Now they just to manage their baby well to keep you all supporting their desired outcome of slavery. Proof is in the facts. Bitcoin is not decentralized. You all are controlled by propaganda. The mining is already controllable by the government. The key now is to manage it so you all don't wake up and move to an anonymous coin. To keep you all locked in by your greed and the thought the largest market size is best. Your mindset is based around things that don't challenge the government's control. Indeed the government will look the other way when their control isn't threatened. Even the guy who runs the FinCEN said in recent interview, they will regulate much more strongly if Bitcoin is used by most of the population.
My current thinking (again, this is likely to evolve as time goes on) is that by the time they decide to regulate bitcoin, it will be too late. Jim: What's so bad about that?
Bob: He like, had to fill out a Schedule D, man.
Jim: So you're saying it's worth it to give up $40,000 so you can avoid filling out a Schedule D?
Bob: Exactly.
Jim: You're mom and dad were first cousins, weren't they? .....
Now you are just being a dick. Having been born south of the Mason-Dixon line, I meant only to make fun of myself. My apologies if I offended ... That makes two us. Born and raised to age 15 in New Orleans. |
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RE. IRS...as always you are bullish. But Anony and others seem to disagree with you on this (I'm not American and haven't got a clue about your kafaesque tax system but most comments I see tend to be negative).
IRS ruling is bullish because the investors now know the rules. It is bearish only in the sense that the masses are not coming any time soon into Bitcoin, so this can deflate some of the near-term overextension by n00b investors who were expecting the masses to come tomorrow. Just another factor to cause weak hands to lose hodl when the price drop below $400 scares them. Re. addresses...well this is good...if I am mistaken, great but thus far it makes little sense to me (eg how do you know if an address is active from the data we were discussing and define a rolling window). If I make a new address to send a few satoshis to exchange one and then forward them to a new address, multiplied a few times multiplied by thusands of old time users how does this equate to 'increased adoption.'
I could accept this if all the other charts backed this up....but they don't (eg number of tx has remained pretty much constant over the last 12 months). Infact, the only chart that shows any sort of positive increase is...surprise, surprise, the one we should embrace.
The correlation of n^2 == p is undeniable from Peter R's upthread chart. Rather n appears to be 50% higher than baseline adoption at 100,000 (if you accept my TA notion that baseline is the linear projection of the bottoms on the log 10 chart). Thus the lack of transactions expansion could support my idea that n will come down to 100,000 so that the recent divergence between n^2 and p is corrected (instead of p rising to resolve the divergence). Then we bottom and upwards "to the moon" from there (until the next bubble overextension and correction). |
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The less totalitarian governments (I include the US here) have no immediate plans to do any crazy-ass confiscations. But, if and when they decide to borrow a page from FDR ... it will be too late. Bitcoin will be entrenched.
The head of the USA Treasury department that oversees FinCEN has said in recent interview (have a link to it on my thread) they are monitoring adoption very closely. He specifically said that government oversight will increase if it becomes possible to move large amounts of money with Bitcoin and/or you can live by spending only Bitcoin. And that was only the financial crimes division. He said other departments were watching it with other mandates. This will not fly past their radar. He specifically mentioned anonymity as a threat many times. He also said they have people tracking the block chain. |
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EMunie will be anonymous.
hahaha. |
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An anonymous coin would be great. Be sure to note it here when you find someone(s) to launch it. A well thought out alt could grow very quickly compared to bitcoin. The market is ready established, and crypto-funded.
Note that the developer of Darkcoin admitted to me yesterday that I was correct and Darkcoin breaks anonymity by trusting the master node with your identity. I provided him a suggestion, but it is not my best idea of how to do anonymity (which requires a different design than Darkcoin has). |
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However, masses don't have a compelling need to use Bitcoin and the tax issue adds another reason for them to stay away. The rumor will spread virally, "you need to do a Schedule D to use Bitcoin".
People will slowly realize that the tax issue is NOT a good reason to stay away. All across America, there will be thousands of conversations in the coming years just like this one: Jim: Does the IRS reaaaaaallllly give a shit whether I do a Schedule D? Surely I can just fudge it, right? Bob: You could probably fudge it if you only used it like once or twice for small purchases, Why did the USA expend in inordinate resources to make high profile cases of teenagers innocently downloading a few songs using Napster? Please don't ignore the question. The reason is because the government didn't want the population to be free of copyright law slavery. Do you really think the government is going to give up its control over money? Your mindset is based around things that don't challenge the government's control. Indeed the government will look the other way when their control isn't threatened. Even the guy who runs the FinCEN said in recent interview, they will regulate much more strongly if Bitcoin is used by most of the population. or if you held it during a period when bitcoin value didn't go up a lot. The IRS really won't give a shit unless you made a significant amount of money on your bitcoin holdings.
Jim: And you're telling me that's a bad thing?
Bob: It sucks. My cousin Billy-Bob earned $50,000 in bitcoin capital gains last year and only got to keep something like $40,000.
You are conflating the market segment of speculators with the market segment of masses. You continue make this critical error. You assume that the masses love to speculate. And you assume that Bitcoin is always going up. Hey right now what the masses see is Bitcoin is going down. Masses are afraid of volatile speculations. They come it at the end, to lose everything. I do agree the Bitcoin could end up being a huge pyramid ponzi bubble as more and more get sucked into the intoxicating rise, with no fundamental compelling use as a currency. Smart traders will sell when it can be overhead at birthday parties amongst the mothers that they are buying Bitcoin "to the moon". We've seen this before in history of man. Jim: What's so bad about that?
Bob: He like, had to fill out a Schedule D, man.
Jim: So you're saying it's worth it to give up $40,000 so you can avoid filling out a Schedule D?
Bob: Exactly.
Jim: You're mom and dad were first cousins, weren't they? .....
Now you are just being a dick. Is that really necessary to insult in order to discuss? |
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Even if you are correct the US isn't the only country in the world.
I don't know to what extent tax issues (if at all) will affect European masses in adopting Bitcoin. I lack domain knowledge of those jurisdictions. Capital gains tax is a non-issue in the developing world (masses here don't files tax returns). Yet they also are not currently the target demographic of Bitcoin. The other issues I enumerated (look 2 posts up) should prevent Bitcoin from adoption of the masses for use as a daily currency every where on earth. Whether those issues will be fixed and whether they will be fixed in Bitcoin, offchain services, and/or an altcoin, is something that remains to be seen. Right now Bitcoin is mainly adopted as a self-reinforcing (i.e. those who invest are supporting the rise in price, i.e. a sort of pyramid scheme of sorts but not entirely) speculative investment and some genuine use as a means to transfer value over distance. Also there are cases where one needs to use Bitcoin, e.g. buying drugs over the internet, registering domains anonymously (if you are very careful), etc.. Mostly Bitcoin is used to speculate in Bitcoin and altcoins. It is an investment unit-of-exchange. But none of that is really widespread mainstream use. I am still searching for that compelling need for the broader population. One of the big needs I expect is when the confiscations begin, there will be a rush into crypto-currencies. Yet I expect an anonymous coin will get most of that, if that anonymous coin is respected and well established and is competing very strongly with Bitcoin (i.e. perhaps 1/10 or more of Bitcoin's market cap). Otherwise Bitcoin will get most of it. |
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I believe you are too preoccupied with USD. The feedback loop of (lower USD price -> less users -> even lower price) has never before held true with Bitcoin, and I have no reason to believe it would now.
What about 2011? In between 7-11/2011, the number of non-dust addresses grew by 30%. Even if we assume that there is such a negative feedback loop, 2011 was a proof that it was reversed and did not self-immolate. So far we have one vicious bear market that was reversed, and 5 years of gains. My theory is that Bitcoin has a self-reinforcing positive loop which will eventually consume fiat totally, and all the bear markets are temporary. If you say otherwise, the burden of proof is on you because such an assertion is not supported by neither history nor reason. Strawmen avoid the points made. 1. Why can't a "vicious bear market" repeat? You admitted before that the 2011 bear market was caused by tech geeks early adopters who overextended because they are poor at speculation. Recently we've had a huge influx of n00bs into Bitcoin investing. 2. Who is arguing that Bitcoin won't continue to go up (i.e. "self-immolate") after the bottom? Not me. 3. What proof do you have that Bitcoin is different from every investment in the history of mankind, in that all investments are limited to a market segment and eventually peaked without reaching every man and woman on earth? You do no market demographics analysis. You just assume that Bitcoin will jump the chasm even though it currently lacks a compelling feature set to do so. |
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Yes I am disputing it because it was state law versus the Constitution. And it was a change from the long standing hands off policy on all mail order that crossed state lines. Nobody took it seriously because they know the state is impotent and there was no tracking of everything back then. Certainly the states don't have the ability to track what is happening on the internet.
Also sales taxes are not personal income taxes. They are ad valorem. The only people that get prosecuted over sales taxes are the merchants, not the consumer.
And besides that was a long time ago and the USA has morphed significantly of recent.
You just got through explaining how people are idiots and don't understand anything. Now you're saying they understand the finer points of constitutional law and taxes and penalties for not reporting. I didn't say they understand finer points of Constitutional law (again and again you try to put words in my mouth to construct your strawman). I am saying they continued to do what they had been doing. I am saying that mail order shipped from out-of-state had always been tax free for all of us. All of us knew that. The states tried a complex switcharoo wherein if Amazon had any presence in the state then goods shipped from out-of-state were subject to sales tax. They tried to claim this tax was on consumers, but the fact is all sales tax is paid by merchants not consumers. Always been that way. And so people just continued doing what had always been. No need for them to understand anything. Any more strawman arguments which deviate from the point at hand? When someone says, make sure you file your Schedule D, they will say shit I don't need no Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not 1/100 as compelling as a currency as getting their goodies from Amazon. Your strawman you see.
That is as a currency. Now as a speculation for investment, those who are up for that won't be deterred by capital gains. They want capital gains. I was talking about the impact on the masses of this tax ruling and the effect it will have on sentiment being negative for while until something turns attention back to the "to the moon" theme that is Bitcoin entire reason to exist.
Well how compelling is it? You seem to be boxing yourself in - it's compelling enough that having to pay CG tax will hurt its adoption, but not compelling enough for people to either track their purchases or ignore the IRS? Are you really serious? You really think Bitcoin is compelling for the mass right now as a currency? Looney. Now you conflate two different market segments, the one are the masses who would need to use it daily as a currency and the other are the white males investing "to the moon". I tend to lose patience with those who repeatedly conflate and waste my time. Instead of ad hominem useless comment how about actually telling me why you are qualified?
I actually made software for the mainsteam (1 million of them twice) and supported them over the phone and email.
If you want to put me on ignore, just do it. What is this fucking political BS every time you disagree with my right to express my thoughts?
The software issue is you don't understand how even what seems simple to you, is not simple for the masses. That is why I asked what kind of experience you have in the industry.
The software "issue" is just you trying to argue from authority and hoping no one else sees through it. I am arguing from experience. When I have to report capital gains, do you think I record all that stuff myself? No. I go to turbotax.com, type in the name of my brokerage and credentials and it imports it all for me. Software. There's nothing fundamentally different about bitcoin that it can't be reported the same way.
I have never been able to get my brokerage to interopt with H&R Block and never was worth the time to figure out. That you figured out how to get interoption is great for you, but fact is there is a huge amount of Murphy's Law involved and this won't scale. One of Steve Jobs favorite analysis and putdowns to very smart people was, "that won't scale". I know because my former genius boss says Steve did it to him. Interoperation friction destroys scaling. Average people (who generally have a pretty simple tax return) either do something like that, or they just fudge it. In the appropriate 1040 box, they'll just make up some bullshit number that's close enough. Millions of people do that every year, nobody goes to jail because it's small potatoes. The IRS might have an agenda to destroy bitcoin, but they do not give a crap about a few bucks on low income tax returns.
If the masses have a compelling need to use Bitcoin as a currency or end up with a lot of gains unexpectedly, they will deal with it some how and one way is as you say. However, masses don't have a compelling need to use Bitcoin and the tax issue (in the USA) adds another reason for them (masses in the USA) to stay away. The rumor will spread virally, "you need to do a Schedule D to use Bitcoin". Since most people don't know what a Schedule D is and since using Bitcoin is something they aren't already doing, they will tend to avoid it. That is unless some very compelling reason comes along that entices them to use Bitcoin in spite of this rumor (and the other weaknesses of Bitcoin I enumerated quoted as follows) You are asking people to change all the ways they think about money: - Money is now taxable.
- Money takes 10 minutes to an hour to spend.
- Credit cards can lose their balances.
- Credit cards have no refunds nor consumer protection.
People don't change even one thing easily, much less such a laundry list, unless there is some amazing compelling reason for them to. Rather you are taking the position that masses won't care at all about the tax implication and will willfully ignore it and it won't affect their nexus of thought about Bitcoin. Again those investing "to the moon" are not affected. Please don't conflate the two market segments. P.S. Isn't there a $600 exclusion for reporting on bartering? I need to look into that. |
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This is an interesting point. In the long run, this IRS opinion that miners need to report income when they mine, is frankly absurd, and will definitely be reversed in a tax court, if they don't revise it before then.
How do you figure? The network is paying them for their services of mining. Seems correct to me and it is the ruling I expected and predicted since long-time ago. I can freely produce a work with a market value, and the act of production does not result in a taxable event, in every precedent case. Selling the work produces a taxable event. Mining isn't producing a unique work. It is providing a repetitive service that is scripted by the network. The litmus test is that the network is the manager, not the miner. The network sets the difficulty, the protocol, etc.. A network cannot pay you anymore than a gold mine can pay you. You book a profit when you sell the gold you mined. Your paint box does not pay you when you paint a picture. When you sell the picture, a taxable event occurs.
Gold miner you are your boss. You make all the management decisions. |
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Just make an anonymous coin and the problem is solved for now.
It does not remove the tax liability, all else being equal. It may reduce the probability of compliance. Whether that is a good thing is hotly contested. Your position seems clear, at least. I ran some polls. Perhaps 25 - 40% of Bitcoin users are ready to give their middle finger to the government if they feel confident in doing so. Others see working with the government as the only viable future. I don't see how Bitcoin can go mainstream without the government removing the tax issue. I don't think technology can solve it for the masses. So I already assume that either Bitcoin will become a government fiat, or it will peak when it reaches saturation in the current speculator demographic (we are not near that). The wildcard is some application of Bitcoin that compels the masses to use it, perhaps some social networking application. But what if that application requires some feature Bitcoin doesn't have. Or it might be offchain. P.S. I will be actively trying to make that happen and trying to make Bitcoin fail. But I probably can't do that. I hate Bitcoin in some sense because it already has 50% of mining at one pool and controlled by ASICs and I see it as a trap for my fellow libertarians. But I also see Bitcoin as a fulcrum to leverage, so I like it too. I never felt more strongly in my whole life about being determined to use my skills to defeat a competitor. |
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After a bottom it goes up. We've seen this like.. 7 times now in Bitcoin's history. 99.95% don't own bitcoins. Hundreds of millions have now heard about them, mostly negative. It takes 12-24 months for them to buy. The first 1% of them is the next 500% of Bitcoin adoption, the ones who lift the price to $5,000 before leaves fall from the trees. If 5 million people invest $1,000 per person, they can buy 10 million bitcoins. That absorbs all the lonely Chinese and stolen coins, like many times before. There is nothing new in Bitcoin. Everything has happened before. It is a fractal. Before I even bought, it was explained to me.
99.95% of that which is not currently Bitcoin's target market. The only way Bitcoin is adopted by the masses is if it becomes a government fiat. Period. Refute? I believe you are too preoccupied with USD. The feedback loop of (lower USD price -> less users -> even lower price) has never before held true with Bitcoin, and I have no reason to believe it would now.
What about 2011? |
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The other near-term implication of the tax ruling is the margin call on miners who have to get cash before April 15.
This is an interesting point. In the long run, this IRS opinion that miners need to report income when they mine, is frankly absurd, and will definitely be reversed in a tax court, if they don't revise it before then. How do you figure? The network is paying them for their services of mining. Seems correct to me and it is the ruling I expected and predicted since long-time ago. But most people are rather conservative with regard to the IRS, and disinclined to fight, so this may well lead to hobby miner tax sales. However, most miners are holding for a better price at this point, and those who have any margin to play with will not take a forced sale at a loss, which would be foolish. Nonetheless, there will be incremental supply as a result of that issue, I agree. It will dry up on April 15th.
Agreed. We don't have the system of Sweden. IN the USA, everyone is afraid of the IRS. Or at least they don't want to add hassle with IRS just to use some stupid technobabble money that they don't need any way.
Agreed. But I see such problems as business opportunities, not for me, but perhaps for someone in whom I may invest. Almost no one needs bitcoin now. Some people can benefit strong from using it, but they are not typical consumers. That needs to change in order to achieve full potential, but not in order to address the low-hanging fruit, of which there is plenty. There are so many opportunities in this ecosystem and I agree that solving the tax issue with s/w automation is a very silly one to go after now. Just make an anonymous coin and the problem is solved for now (no need to hassle with s/w and no need to pay taxes for those in our white male demographic who like to point their middle finger at Uncle Sam). And first you need to fix so many other things before the masses will use BTC as a currency. Agreed so many lower hanging fruits. Target the current demographic, which are speculative investors who want high tech weapons versus the government and liberate commerce. That is exactly my marketing plan in spades. And I estimate I will win $billions with that plan. |
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BS. That was sales tax and Amazon collected it directly on checkout. It was no hassle at all.
No. Look it up. They didn't collect state sales tax for years. For example they started collecting CA state sales tax in 2012. States argued that (if Amazon had a physical presence in the state) but this was disputed because it violates the interstate commerce clause and the States only got their way by getting Amazon to deduct the taxes. We are not talking about an ambiguous issue like that. The IRS has made it very clear what the culpability is. In many states, residents were required by law to track and report their Amazon purchases for tax purposes. It did not stop people from using Amazon. Are you really trying to dispute this? Yes I am disputing it because it was state law versus the Constitution. And it was a change from the long standing hands off policy on all mail order that crossed state lines. Nobody took it seriously because they know the state is impotent and there was no tracking of everything back then. Certainly the states don't have the ability to track what is happening on the internet. Also sales taxes are not personal income taxes. They are ad valorem. The only people that get prosecuted over sales taxes are the merchants, not the consumer. And besides that was a long time ago and the USA has morphed significantly of recent. I just gave you a counterexample where a similar burden was ostensibly placed on people and they just didn't care. The market decided the Amazon product was compelling enough to either track their purchases or risk the consequence of not reporting them.
If you want to tell me some crucial difference between tracking Amazon purchases and tracking bitcoin purchases, go ahead.
You built a strawman. Then you get all pompous on me. The difference is that when the IRS talks, people dread their fucking April 15. And they don't need to add a Schedule D to that, when there is no compelling reason to. And they don't know what a Schedule D is any way. When someone says, make sure you file your Schedule D, they will say shit I don't need no Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not 1/100 as compelling as a currency as getting their goodies from Amazon. Your strawman you see. That is as a currency. Now as a speculation for investment, those who are up for that won't be deterred by capital gains. They want capital gains. I was talking about the impact on the masses of this tax ruling and the effect it will have on sentiment being negative for while until something turns attention back to the "to the moon" theme that is Bitcoin entire reason to exist. As for my software qualifications and your rant about going to prison for not paying a few hundred bucks in taxes: I just took you off ignore *today*, I regret it already.
Instead of ad hominem useless comment how about actually telling me why you are qualified? I actually made software for the mainsteam (1 million of them twice) and supported them over the phone and email. If you want to put me on ignore, just do it. What is this fucking political BS every time you disagree with my right to express my thoughts? The software issue is you don't understand how even what seems simple to you, is not simple for the masses. That is why I asked what kind of experience you have in the industry. |
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I expect nothing less from a self-proclaimed "world-class programmer who knows his shit".  Damn correct. Agreed and thanks. Okay I am gone now. I passed along my suggestion. Did my part. Buzz me if needed. |
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please read again what he has written on the last 2 pages, then read this again:
the problem with anonycoin, he is dismissive even before he has really seen it, and even before knowing anything regarding the way it works,
its always good to have 3rd party to look things trough, but being desmissive before even knowing anything about this particular implementation thats more like trolling...
Because I am a world-class programmer who knows my shit. I can deduce all possibilities. You don't know who I am do you or the software you use which I created? If you did, you would understand. Here we go ... Just give him the source code already.  I don't need the source code. I could write an altcoin from scratch in weeks. Wouldn't need to look at any source code from Bitcoin nor any altcoin. I was just saying that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow". That is Linus Torvalds' law (as stated by Eric Raymond). |
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Design B: Users provide inputs, outputs and collateral at once. In this case the master node knows who is sending money to who, but later it can tell who didn’t sign.
I’ve chosen to use design B (users will add inputs and outputs at the same time) because it’s the only design that can’t be attacked in the way you’re saying.
Okay he has confirmed that you are not anonymous to the master node, as I wrote upthread would be the case if he associates the collateral transaction with both input and output stages of the CoinJoin. eduffield I would like to say that is not acceptable because for the same reason I don't want to use mixer or laundry website, I can't know if the master node is an NSA honeypot. I would like to suggest you think about my divide-and-conquer idea as another electable option for users. If there is failed stage, then divide the inputs into two groups. Then ask for outputs again. Divide and conquer as necessary, then the join will complete. Not ideal, but at least you don't break anonymity and require trust of the master node. Best of luck with it. |
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When people asked him about what he was working on, he would now say "his coin is the best of X and Y"
I was waiting for this foul mouth retard to arrive. Actually what I said is that I promised never to release nor endorse any altcoin. So slyA has proven he is a liar. Now you can trust him. |
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Here come those (newbies who don't know shit) who want to chase me away again (I was last here on pages 3xx). No problem. I can leave and come back silently to take your money instead.
Where is that foul mouth retard slyA?
Closed-source is already an indication of trouble. Also lack of detailed description of algorithms, at the level of detail necessary for a programmer like to analyze properly.
at least read it proberly, closed source until everything is up and running, and after we have gothen 3rd party to look it through it will be open sourced... which part of this do you indicate as "trouble" also, description of algorithms, well there is 1 programmer, let him finish it up to the point when he thinks its ready, then we can throw mud on each other with regards to description Closed-source makes it more difficult to get a correct result, because there's no peer review. Open-source later is better than nothing, but the sooner open-source, the sooner to verify and improve. |
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