From the article: ...there were multiple red flags but 99% of us were just blinded by the art and the promises and the potential profits we assumed would come. To be fair, that's pretty much 99% of the crypto community now in all things crypto. No reasonable expectations of what is probable because they're just blinded by the potential profits they assume will come. Also, the article ends with the "do your own research" warning, but that's not really helpful to a community that's dominated by people who suck at researching things and thinking critically about what they find. |
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It’s just a matter of time before a lot of countries will adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. As more and more of them continues to do this, they will be motivating others to also take this same step. Then I don’t really think it is necessary for every country to make it a legal tender, it can just be another legal asset that anyone can invest in and also be used for transactions, simple.
Before that, now cryptocurrency is already legal in so many countries, so it is not really all of them that are going to consider it as a legal tender. It can just remain as an asset that people can freely be making use of in their country.
Really it's only the developing nations with weak national currencies and troubled economies that are considering this. There are no first world countries with a strong economy and a strong currency that are entertaining bitcoin as a viable national currency. An optimist would call this "innovative" while a pessimist would call it "gimmicky." I'm closer to the latter group, because at the end of the day, bitcoin won't solve these nation's economic woes, and it's not going to prove to be a very useful currency if it can't hold a steady value (unless that country is experiencing hyperinflation). |
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I'm more interested to know whether the tax haven countries accept those who are dodging taxes...
Yes, of course they are. They've crafted their laws specifically to cater to people dodging taxes in their own countries as their way of getting deposits and businesses to domicile within their country. Most of these tax haven jurisdictions are places that are completely irrelevant but for the tax dodging industries they have created. It was intentional and by design. |
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Looking at the past financial crises that happened, they all seem to have a few things in common, such as the mass adoption of a new financial product or technology (e.g. mortgage backed securities in 2008, dotcom boom in 2000). Given the extent to which institutions (and some influential figures) have been manipulating crypto recently, do you guys think this narrative is likely?
I don't think that there is a lot risk coming from crypto currencies to be the root of evil of the next financial crisis. We have been in a zero interest rate world for more than 10 years already. This interest rate makes loans so cheap which is making huge messes in the financial world. Everybody can get a loan for almost free right now which made real estate very expensive. Buying an apartment or house right now will put us in debt for the next 30 years. I think we will see another crash in the real estate bubble. As of now there isn't even a slight chance for cryptocurrencies to become the root of evil for the next financial crisis. Maybe if the overall market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies is above $5 trillion, we might slowly perceive cryptocurrencies and a potential massive crash as a systemic risk. Right now cryptocurrencies can't really do much in terms of initiating a financial crisis. Other markets are way bigger, riskier and way more dangerous to global financial stability. Just look at the housing market and the price explosion in real estate facilitated with newly printed money. Bubble? The way the financial systems are linked and the massive use of leverage, small problems can quickly snowball and become systemic. That's why you're seeing Janet Yellen start to talk about the risk posed by cryptocurrency because it's completely unregulated and operates in the dark. Nobody knows if or how big of a problem crypto could spark, and that's a problem. There is some truth to what you are saying, but there is also a difference between fiat money where you can create 9 dollars of inexistent credit money for every 1 dollar deposited in a bank account and cryptocurrencies where a bitcoin is a bitcoin, no matter what. You can trade crypto with leverage here and there, but you can't create a legal bubble like you can with fiat. What you can do is pump up bitcoin with printed Tether, but that can't be legal unless there is a real dollar (which in essence is a fake dollar) for every single USDT printed on the blockchain. It's not "inexistent credit money." The vast majority of loans in the fractional reserve system are productive loans, meaning they're made to support new economic activity. As long as that's the case, the new economic activity created by the loaned dollars justifies the expansion of the money supply. This is why the system works. If it didn't work, we would see constant bank failures and the system would have collapsed long ago. But it endures because it works. The criticisms against it you levied are common among people who don't understand it. |
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...
It's always troubled me that the green folks wanting to eliminate fossil fuels will turn their head away from nuclear energy, pretending that the fate of Chernobyl is emblematic of all nuclear energy plants. OPEC has the monopoly on oil and the R&D into green forms of energy aren't happening fast enough, especially when you eliminate nuclear as an option. Nuclear has it's own set of problems. It produces no carbon emissions, but it does create radioactive waste that takes thousands of years to degrade and has to be safely and securely stored. On top of that, the natural disaster at Fukushima showed that outside disasters can also impact the safety of the plants. You don't really have safety concerns with green energy alternatives; their biggest problem is scale and reliability. |
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Without quoting the whole OP, I think traditional money transfer businesses like Western Union and Moneygram are on the decline, but also they were on the decline prior to bitcoin. They're being disrupted by other centralized payment processors like PayPal, Square, Venmo, etc. The old wire transfer services were prime for disruption because they were expensive compared to alternatives. But other centralized payment processors are fast and cheap and easier to use than bitcoin, so I don't anticipate them being disrupted by bitcoin.
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This has been out a long time ago as well. It was called panama papers at the time, there were tons of famous and rich people who took their money to panama and saved on taxes thanks to that, do you know what happened? After 100+ billion dollars on taxes got avoided thanks to panama rules and so forth and rich people got to save all that money instead of paying taxes on it, the only thing that happened was the journalist got murdered (officially ruled as suicide I believe) for outing those rich people.
Same as 2008, when the journalist who figured out that banks were playing with fire and knew the risks when they did mortgage bonds and they still did it anyway because they didn't care if they lost since they knew they would be bailed out, so took low risk on high reward thanks to government backing them, that journalist was jailed for breaking confidentiality law. So, when the most powerful people do something illegal, who is there to stop them? Nobody has more power than them so they can do whatever they like.
No, the Panama Papers was a different set of documents. The Pandora Papers are a distinct leak of documents detailing different people and gathered from different sources. Undoubtedly, there is some overlap and they are similar in that they both involve a leak of documents detailing wealthy people hiding their money offshore to avoid taxes, but these are separate incidents. It only goes to show how pervasive is the problem of the wealthy dodging taxes. |
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It looks like they are following a pattern, basically because the price has been trending up since they bought their first stash.
I'm an advocate of buying a small amount of bitcoin regularly but being able to HODL what you have bought for multiple months or even multiple years depending on your end game with the budget you set yourself. So, there are two questions: Is the MicroStrategy strategy of seemingly regular purchases an up-scaled version of what I wrote above? And, if so, what is MicroStrategy's end-game for the coins? (i.e. dump at a given price? Dump on a given date? Or just HODL indefinitely?) MicroStrategy is employing the same dollar cost average strategy, just on an obviously much larger scale. They convert excess cash to bitcoin on a regular basis, and then have done pretty frequent offering of stock or bonds to raise big chunks of cash to also use to buy bitcoin. As far as their end-game, they say they're using bitcoin as a treasury asset, which implies not holding indefinitely, as excess balance sheet assets are traditionally used to grow the business or paid out to stockholders in the form of dividends or stock buy backs. MicroStrategy continues not to fit the traditional mold though. I would expect that if bitcoin stopped appreciating in value for a prolonged period of time, this would factor greatly into their future plans. But as long as it slowly pushes new highs and the business doesn't need cash to grow, there's no immediate reason to sell. |
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Interesting strategy. This way you can concentrate all your spins in a single round to accumulate most tickets as possible increasing your winning chances at the lottery. Maybe among so many spins you can also hit some Lambo tickets and who knows, maybe an Iphone or rolex.  If you don't bother, and sorry if I'm being nosy, but could you share the results from these spins once you decide to use them all at once? That would be a nice public experiment. It would be a smarter move if he uses the spin while the price of BTC is down. Those difference can be like tens of dollars. There are actually pros and cons of using the spin as soon as you got it vs accumulating. But for me, I also prefer to use it once you acquire it, because the value of btc is fluctuating. And it would be good to get more satoshis while btc is not high, as compared to getting it when the value is already high. Anyway, it still depends on the strategy of the user. Though I understand that the feeling of spinning the wheel continuously is somewhat good for the player. In my case I prefer to accumulate before spinning it all because I find this strategy effective for hitting high rp, sats and lottery tickets, though its not a guarantee at all. But I agree to use the spins if the value of btc is declining rather than it is soaring high, its more wise. I wonder is there anyone here who already won rolex or iphone? Statistically, you're not more or less likely to hit higher rewards per spin if you're rolling one at a time or 100 at a time. The odds per spin are the same, however obviously spinning 100 at a time gives you 100x greater odds of hitting a higher reward than if you were only spinning one time. That doesn't make it more likely to hit it compared to spinning one time each over 100 days though. In the long run the odds are exactly the same. |
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Currently, there are many usd-based stablecoins such as, usdt, busd, usdc and maybe many others. To be honest, I used to think that crypto would completely eliminate the usd's dominance of the world economy but I was wrong, it turns out that usd is now evolving to crypto (stablecoins). What do you think, whether in the future bitcoin or other crypto can replace the role of currency in each country and leave fiat currencies such as usd, euro, yuan and others.
Expecting fiat to disappear was a rather dumb expectation in hindsight. Bitcoin is practically unusable as a currency because of it's absolute failure to hold a steady value. If it was a viable currency the concept of stablecoins would never have arisen. Stablecoins arose to do the one thing bitcoin will never be able to do- hold a predictable value, which is the most important aspect of a currency. |
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...
After El Salvador regulated Bitcoin as legal tender, other countries are tempted to follow in its footsteps:
If you buy $1,000 of Bitcoin, the price goes up 10% and you buy a $5 coffee at Starbucks, you will owe taxes on 10% of that $5. If the next day the price of Bitcoin goes down and it is only 5% above your initial investment, when you make a purchase you will also owe taxes but only on 5%.
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What do you think?
This makes perfect sense even though it's clunky as hell. The American economy is denominated in US dollars. If you make a profit on property or investments, you owe taxes on that no matter the medium your profit comes from. It's the same for foreign currencies as well, if you make a profit trading in and out of them from US dollars, you owe taxes on those gains. Obviously for people who want to use bitcoin as a currency that presents a bookkeeping headache, but then again people who actually want to use bitcoin as a currency and not a vehicle to speculate are the vast minority so it doesn't matter much in the big picture. |
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https://fortune.com/2021/09/17/south-korea-crypto-exchange-shut-down-bitcoin-regulation/The regulation coming into place this week places unbearable compliance demands on crypto exchanges up to the point of only three of these being able to fully comply. SK is one of the countries where people have participated in crypto to a much higher degree than in most and this is not good news. Still, some of the exchanges remain open. In 2022, the government will also introduce a crypto capital gains tax; investors who make over $2,135 in trading profit will face a 20% tariff. With the amount of exchange fraud happening in South Korea by the unscrupulous exchange operators and the massive increase in reports of fraud by retail traders, I'd say the regulations are overall a good thing. It will increase confidence in crypto and cut down on bad actors. In the short term, it will restrict competition as the largest exchanges can afford to comply with the regulations quickly. It's a shame there hasn't seemed to be enough forewarning to allow more exchanges to comply by the deadline. They could have handled that aspect better. |
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Bitcoin obviously can't replace oil because in no way can bitcoin fulfill the uses of oil as a fuel or in industrial applications. As for replacing gold, if you mean as a store of value this is also extremely unlikely. A store of value with thousands of years of history as such is not going to go away because there's a no medium to store value. Bitcoin could become a widely accepted a mainstream store of value, but in no sense will it replace it.
The OP probably meant that Bitcoin may replace oil as an option in commodity trading. But I agree. It is unlikely. First of all Bitcoin is not a commodity. And secondly, it's price movement is not similar to oil or natural gas. But I disagree with you on usage as store of value. There is no doubt that currently Bitcoin is a highly volatile asset. This may change in the future. The reason for the high volatility of Bitcoin is due to large fraction of the circulating supply being kept as free-float. As Bitcoin prices increase, more and more people would move their coins to cold storage and this would reduce the volatility. Nah, the volatility doesn't have anything to do with the "float" and everything to do with it being a speculative asset. All speculative assets are volatile because there is no definable value so people buy on the assumption that someone else will find it more valuable in the future. It doesn't matter the medium, all speculative assets are subject to the same predisposition to volatility, be it unproven tech stocks, bitcoin, NFTs, or other assets with no intrinsic value. |
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China is a big country in this world. This influence on crypto is actually very high, They always spread FUD every time the price is coming to rise up in order to make any drop. But we don't know the right reasons behind it, whether they really want the price drop because they dislike crypto, or they want to control Bitcoin, make the price dip, and then get many more Bitcoin to prepare before the next pump.
We also actually realize that with or without those FUDs, Bitcoin price will always skyrocket moreover if the cycle of halving has been finished and the price will commonly create new ATH. But on the other side, we may not underestimate what China can do, although it may only influence for a certain short time, it exactly will give a big impact at that time.
One of the things why I like the China FUD is because the price of BTC will go up, it always is, when there was the problem with the miners leaving China, the price took a nice bullish turn, when China does a movement against BTC, other countries take advantage of it. It is strange that a country like China that is so big does not accept BTC technology, nor its alternative economy, sometimes I think that the big whales of BTC reside in China, because when looking at the market from the speculative point of view of the market, when They start their FUD, the market goes down, but from one moment to another the market has a big bullish rally. China doesn't care about their citizens having freedom, not in politics, not in economics, and not in any other aspect of their society. China honestly isn't losing any type of opportunity because the benefits of bitcoin don't offer any type of benefit to the ccp. People need to get over the china thing already. Bitcoin and china are incompatible. It doesn't matter to bitcoin if china bans it, and it doesn't matter to china if they don't have bitcoin. |
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After reading several posts on this forum many people seem to think that Bitcoin will always go up. If this were to be the case, why would people spend Bitcoin at all? In this theoretical time, wouldn't it just be a poor financial decision to do?
Or is it thought that in this future where there is widespread adoption the price would stop being so volatile and for the most part stabilize?
If the price would always appreciate, how would that stop you from making use of Bitcoin? Nothing would stop you from using it, that's not the question. The question is if you think bitcoin is always going to go up, why would you ever spend it? Because obviously if you think it only goes up, spending it brings the opportunity cost of losing future gains. |
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I think that the title is a bit misleading.
Especially with Buffet and others, it's likely that most of the 'unpaid' taxes simply came from the fact that they are unrealized capital gains.
When you don't dispose of assets, you don't get taxed on them - it's that simple. This is the case for everyone, high or low income.
Check the article again. It doesn't refer to "unrealized income", but the income or gain that was realized. Michael Bloomberg reported an income of $10 billion, and yet paid 2.9% of that as tax. In case of Buffet it is slightly higher. He reported an income of $125 million, and paid a tax of 18%. But even in the case of Buffet, the tax that he paid is three times lower than the marginal income tax for the highest slab in the United States. Democrats are proceeding with the tax increases, because they know that it will have an impact only among the middle class (esp. upper middle class). For the top 0.01% who comprise the ultra-rich, none of this increases matters. They will continue to avoid taxes. Actually the article is talking about unrealized income because it's comparing total rise in wealth over the time period they looked at vs. income tax paid. Since the vast majority of the wealth increases were unrealized gains on assets, the "true tax rate" that the article calculates is actually a tax rate on primarily unrealized gains. When you use the actual income reported by the people they looked at (Bezos, Buffet, Musk, etc.), the tax rates on income are many times higher than the "true tax rate" they reported as being in the extremely low single digits. The income tax rate paid was generally around 20-25%. Still far too low if you ask me, but nowhere near the 3% or so numbers they were touting when doing calculations based on unrealized gains. Bloomberg is the exception where his income rate actually is 2.92%, but the others are Buffet 18.96%, Bezos 23.05%, Musk 29.93%. |
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What is clear is that in a hyperinflation scenario, and in life in general, those who have financial assets will always be better off economically than those who do not, even if in a crisis those assets lose value and their income is reduced.
Which financial assets do you recommend in an hyper-inflationary economy? Stocks? Crypto? Gold? All? Since the stuff will get more expensive, the company that makes the stuff should be valued at a higher price too. Am I right? It makes sense. What about bitcoin abd gold though? They should also benefit from the massive FIAT printing but gold is going down instead of up and that's very strange. In the US, stocks have generally done well even in an inflationary environment. There are some sectors that do better than others. Banks and energy are two sectors that perform better during inflationary periods than others. But a hyperinflationary period may bring different results, as the US has never had such a period the effects on the stock market are unprecedented and impossible to know. |
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It is indisputable that the virus does not have the ability to mutate if it cannot be passed on, and it cannot be passed on if everyone takes the proper precautions. At this point, the virus is not likely to vanish or be defeated. This is very likely something that exists in the human population for the rest of our time on Earth, like influenza.
Even in developed nations such as the United States, there are sections of people who refuse to get vaccinated. Here in India, there is an overload of propaganda against the vaccines going on in social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp. Even I have received several messages claiming that vaccinated people will die within 2 years and taking a vaccine will make you impotent. I don't know the real reason behind this fake campaign. Who is going to benefit, if more people die from COVID? But as long as people refuse to get vaccinated, newer strains of the virus will be reported from various parts of the world. I don't know why these demonstrably false narratives are propagated, but it's clear to me that these types of disinformation campaigns are only possible because of the ease of mass communications made possible by social media. Older generations didn't have these capabilities, and society was generally smarter and better off because of it. |
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Bitcoin obviously can't replace oil because in no way can bitcoin fulfill the uses of oil as a fuel or in industrial applications. As for replacing gold, if you mean as a store of value this is also extremely unlikely. A store of value with thousands of years of history as such is not going to go away because there's a no medium to store value. Bitcoin could become a widely accepted a mainstream store of value, but in no sense will it replace it.
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It seems, in the USA, the interest in using crypto as a legal payment already increases as a poll already surveyed voters from California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That poll got a result of 28 percent in Arizona to 37 percent in both Texas and Wisconsin, voters said they would vote 'yes' to a ballot measure that would make cryptocurrency legal in the next election. That's quite a higher percentage to see if the voters are already aware of crypto and are interested in using crypto for the payment. What is your opinion about this? Does this lead the USA, as a giant country, to become crypto-friendly in the next year? Source: https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-about-third-swing-state-voters-want-crypto-legal-payment-their-state-1630387Doesn't seem particularly bullish to me. If 28 to 37 percent are indicating they want crypto when asked, that means that 63 to 72 percent are saying they don't. That's breaking nearly 3 to 1 against. Just doesn't seem at all like these results speak at all to the US being crypto-friendly. We're just not at a point where many people want us to be. |
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