This is just one of those taxes that are imposed on companies that do not really pay the taxes that are expected from them. To be honest, on this Europe, US and China are not that different: they let the companies get fat and implement all short of tax avoidance schemes and, instead of going through the costly process of investigating them and taking them to court on tax basis or setting more clear regulations to it, they "judge" and impose santions. Effective, expected anyway by the companies and less that it should actually be obtained if taxed properly.

The more irresponsible a government is and the less educated, the more they will want to combat bitcoin and make it as difficult as possible. However those that embrace the technology can take an effective competitive advantage by allowing the citizens and the institutions to invest and create new markets and new economic developments.

By no means should any government think that banning bitcoin is without consequence. Firstly the citizens will bypass the ban, as it is nearly impossible to completely stop it and secondly, other countries embracing the tech will take advantage.

my take is that many "investors" are not investors, but people who are placing a bet on crypto. Yes, it can be bitcoin or any other, including those that have a zero percent probability of success. If everyone thinks they will become millionaires then most are wrong or, what is even worse, everyone will be a millionaire and the the world will go into an hyperinflation until everyone is again... poor.

You see, in Spanish, Million is similar to "millon" and means the same, however "aire" means air. So, Millionaire would be a million ... airs.

Japan is no longer on deflation, there are clear signs of economic recovery and even though the Japanes CEOs are extremely conservative when they set their expectations, the growth is more clear if you look at the small caps. Many of them with a high technological component. Also, Japan is a country that is particularly well suited to embrace several of the key technological drivers expected by the future: mid and high tech manufacturing, robotics, AI,... they do not make as much noise, but they are certainly embracing the change.

There is inflation and that is the cause of a general index growth - simply the FED giving money to every zombie company out there - NASDAQ increase has a concurrent factor: COVID advanced work from home and app based services by 10 years.

When bitcoin was created, some of the side effects were not that well know. There is one that I find particularly interesting:

By giving individuals a choice to own an asset that is not printed, it generates a competition with all currencies across the world. Until a few years back, the people living in countries that had irresponsible monetary policies had to either live with it or try to exchange, many times in the black market, their local currency for USD or perhaps Euro at whatever the rate was in the street. That solution is much less valid now that US is also printing money like if there was no tomorrow and rising the debt ceiling to cope with an infrastructure programme.

However, bitcoin has now given the power to the people to defend themselves by holding bitcoin and - I am not sure how aware are governments about this - forcing the governments to either be responsible or get their currencies demoted to a secondary way of storing wealth. A sign of these is that it is only the most repressive and irresponsible regimes the ones that try, normally without success, to ban bitcoin.

Bitcoin is not the best tool to evade taxes. While it is in theory anonymous, in practice the users can be traced and eventually prosecuted if a government is decided and really is after setting an example. There are much better options such as privacy oriented coins like Monero or Grin or other based on ToR.

There is some people still thinking that bitcoin facilitates evasion, like if it was not easy enough with cash. Have you asked yourself what are the 500 euros notes used for? It is certainly not to buy bread.

One the most clear use cases for bitcoin is exactly what you describe. Venezuela, Turkey, Iran,... every country that falls into a serious economic disarray has now a sword to wield against the government - a choice of using the local coin or go bitcoin. This is probably an unintended effect of creating bitcoin, or perhaps and intended one as "Satoshi" kind of figured out the derivatives of doing what he was doing.

Anyway, as I said in many posts, many people have to thank bitcoin for giving them a glimpse of hope amidst irresponsible goverments.

Creo que Méjico culturalmente tiene la losa de la delincuencia y el narco como fondo de estas opiniones. Han oido hablar de la subida del bitcoin pero también han oído que es algo que se usa para el narco y lógicamente cualquiera que oye algo así allí lo primero q piensa es "mamasita, yo a eso no me aserco ni a 100 metros". Es una pena porque es un país que podría beneficiarse mucho del uso de bitcoin porque no tiene gobiernos particularmente efectivos y siempre está bajo la presión del "vecinito" del norte que no dejan que le coman terreno.

Un abrazo para todos los Mejicanos, excepto para uno que es policía y me exigió una mordida por que le dió la gana.

En serio que no dejo de alucinar con estas cosas. Vale, que la electricidad te sale gratis y todo eso, pero en serio que beneficio puedes esperar de minar con ordenadores así en plan chapuza. Incluso ponte que consigues 100 ordenadores. Para instalar el software en cada uno de ellos debes ir hasta el local, montar el numerito y luego estarán así expuestos hasta que alguien se de cuenta, que no va a ser seis meses vamos.

Es que no es rentable ni aunque cobres tu hora de "trabajo" a 5 euros. En serio, esto es como el Robobo de la Jojoya, si le echas 10 minutos en un excel y ves que no es rentable, por no hablar del riesgo de que te pillen y te acusen de alguna burrada de delito informático.

Clarísimamente se debe al uso de proxies. China no está en la lista por lo que veo y sin embargo alguien duda de que sigue habiendo minado en China? Malasia es una sorpresa para mi, quizá la electricidad esté barata? Respecto al resto de paises y en pariticular los más desarrollados, se me escapa completamente como USA que es un pais relativamente caro puede estar en la primera posición y sólo lo puedo atribuir a creciente interés de los fondos de inversión en este tipo de operaciones.

En el futuro creo que las tendencias de reducción de gases de efecto invernadero en ciertos paises pueden marcar la evolución y claro, USA pasa de todo eso asique...

There is a public list of how easy is to do business by country. This is published officially and has certain weight on the decisions many large companies take on regards to where they choose to open central offices and even on how they decide to conduct business and on doing so at all. Corruption, they can live with most of the times for the larger part, but unnecessary burdens, taxes, bureaucracy, union power, and other issues of the like are not accepted.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-20-easiest-countries-for-doing-business/

As you can see, the list matches well the list of cities you have listed.

As of now, BABA (the ticker for Alibaba company as listed on the exchanges) is not recovering. The actions by the CCP seem to have dealt a permanent blow to the investors trust in the system in the sense of treating investors fairly and ensuring the rule of law and an even playfield in the markets. I am surprised in fact that there are still Chinese companies that are not following this trend - perhaps investors are considering that this is a special situation that only affects DiDi, BABA and a couple others.

I am not speculating of what would bitcoin mean at that time, but rather on how it may behave under a secular debt crisis. Would it drop in price due to a general state of economic emergency and lack of funds or would it actually become the reference, as it cannot be printed? It is clear to me that bitcoin is not made nor has a clear use case on saving countries or governments that do not do their homework - El Salvador may prove me wrong.

I am talking about the current German generation an the orthodoxy, until COVID, of the debt management obviously. Whatever the Nazi government did was the result of the inflation and collapse of the Republic and thus the reason why it is now in the collective memory as a mistake (to put it softly).

The notion of debt super-cycles are relatively easy to understand: When a crisis arrives or a government has leeway to carry an irresponsible economic policy, bad debt is created. Bad debt means spending money you do not have in things that will not have a return on investment (e.g. getting a credit to buy a gaming console, unless you are a pro of that). That happens very often, is very easy to fall into it and only a few countries have citizens that understand that it should not be allowed (Germany for example is culturally adverse to loose policies because they still remember the hyperinflation during the Weimar Republic.

The problem with that rarely governments try to reduce the debt afterwards, so the world spirals into debt and eventually crashes big every century or so.

How would bitcoin do on a massive debt super-cycle crisis?

https://voxeu.org/article/debt-supercycle-not-secular-stagnation

You can choose any index, even the price of property and possibly the best would be a commodities index. They all tell the same story: while growth is stagnant and there has been a massive real economic impact from COVID, the cannons wielded by the central banks are sprouting all the printed money and that goes to either paying debts, buying goods, saving or - most commonly - into stocks investments 401k's and the like. With the massive amount of index investing, this graph is only natural.

Bitcoin is perfectly useful for tax evasion, as it is the US dollar, diamonds and many other stuff that has value. Tax evasion is not as much about choosing the vehicle as it is about actually willing to take the risk of doing it. The relation with bitcoin is that people who made a decent fortune with bitcoin may decide that they do not wish to pay taxes to a government that somehow did not put any into it and only gets the rewards. In that case, crypto is useful because it allows you to be pseudo anonymous and perhaps changing your fiscal residency before cashing out.

Kind of the arguments that are used to diminish bitcoin are actually counter arguments. Example: bitcoin is just a string of numbers. Sure, and gold is just a metal with not that many applications other than looking good and making great electrical contacts. The problem is that we are so used to certain things such as the money and gold that people even believe that these actually have any intrinsic value on themselves other than the one that comes from adoption, supply and demand. It takes a mental leap to break from that and not everyone is able to take it.

I do not think much about state issues cryptos. At the end of the day these are no more than the already existing electronic cash in the sense that it can be printed and miraculously multiplied by the banking system. It may carry also a loss of privacy and the main positive effect might be for the unbanked that could possible get an account on a central bank rather than having to go through intermediaries that always take their cut.

The digital Euro, Yuan or USD do not make much of a difference in my strategy with crypto nor outside.

Currently all the market is looking at Omicron variant. This may have a strong effect in the price of oil if it is effectively confirmed to be a variant of concern for OCDE economies and for China. If that is the case, the oil will go down, not severely due to the already not that good supply lines, but probably enough to pinch the bubble. In any other case or scenario, the price is set to be even higher during at least 1 and perhaps up to 2 years while production and energy mixes adjust themselves to the new situation.

There are several studies out there that will tell you that players tend to value very positively any freebie that allows them to play for longer rather than other types of deposit or recharge bonuses. There are other elements that are absolutely necessary such as building trust and having a good promotion project. Even the best cannot do much unless they let themselves be known. Other than these two, the more crypto you accept and the more coins they can use, the better for your project as you are expanding your user base at a not too high cost.