And the IRS's Response: When you gave them your private key, did you remember to pay your gift tax?
I didn't give them "my" private key. It was never my property to begin with! The bitcoins associated with this private key were mined communally in a mining pool. Guess who the miners were? |
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no, they are batman!
This is totally not true! Batman has shoes. Bitcoin has no shoes - therefore bitcoin cannot be Batman. QED. God you people have no logic skills at all. This is totally not true! Batman's shoes are really Bruce Wayne's shoes. Therefore Batman has no shoes and can be Bitcoin.  |
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 Legally speaking, it's safe from the grubby hands of any nation state, and that's good enough for us. Perhaps anarchists think differently than you do. “Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” -Oscar Wilde |
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Dear IRS: Bitcoin is like cash that exists, and can be spent, in two places in the world at once. Or 20 places. Or 10,000 places at once.
I have decided to share my private key with 28 of my most trusted friends. We come from 14 nations around the world.
I alone do not have the authority to spend those coins, only by a two thirds majority decision, can any coins be spent.
If Bitcoins are property, as you say, this private key and the blockchain address it accesses are now "communal property" of people all over the world
You can't tax it without United Nations authority, I guess.
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I think someone should clear things up a bit to the powers that be.
How can bitcoins actually be "owned" by anyone? There is no property on the Bitcoin network, although it could be used for administrative purposes of property. Nobody actually owns Bitcoin or bitcoins, were talking about a digital ledger with entries that are bound by a set of mathematical rules here.
- You can have access to a key-pair which is found and even though it's astronomically hard to find that exact key, it is not "owned" by you.
- That key gives access to a spot on the Bitcoin-train-network, but neither that spot, nor the network, nor the room (bitcoins) on that network is actually owned by any individual person.
- To be able to make use of the transportation-space on the Bitcoin-train-network you have to convince someone to send some of it to the part of the train you found the keys to. It just so happens that money is one of the easiest way to convince people, but that does not change the property aspect of anything.
Are train-tickets also considered property for the IRS? How about cellphone-network subscriptions? After you send an sms for example, can you still be considered "owner" of the digits or the network? Do you have to keep track of every good sms and keep a log of the monetary value you ascribe to that sms the moment you received it and file that in your tax-form?
Thank you for this brilliant and insightful explanation. I would add to that: If you wanted, you could share one private key among two people, or twenty people, or two billion people.... Now who "owns" the coins associated with that address on the blockchain? How will they tax THAT? This is the problem with laws being crafted by people who don't even understand the technology they are legislating upon... |
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Because the quantum computer has not yet been invented. Give it a few more decades.
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That's top dollar for a gaming rig.
Every single part...
You are saying the parts cost that much and you built it yourself?
Sound like a wild time... Indeed it will be. Star Citizen demands a top notch rig. |
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Rename thread title -> replace "Bitcoin" with "fiat currency" -> thread is now accurate and prophetic -> you will look very smart in the near future.
You're welcome.
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A capital gain is a capital gain. I don't think the IRS much cares if it is a pain in the ass for you to calculate. I imagine they care about as much as I care that their tax laws will soon be virtually impossible to effectively enforce. |
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I too have started purchasing less from amazon and started (for the first time ever) buying from Overstock.com, because they allow me to use a non-empire based form of money.
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I traveled back in time and used my Bitcoin to buy slaves, then I traveled forward in time to the nightmare world of the future and forced those slaves to build me a time machine so I could travel back in time.
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The longer you wait, the more business is going to your competition.
You tell me.
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The IRS will soon be as irrelevant as Blockbuster Video. They and the fiat empire upon which they are built are being rendered obsolete as we speak.
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When the USD collapses...?
The USD is already down ~97% in ~100 years.
How much lower does it need to go before we say it already collapsed? Wisest comment in thread. |
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On the other hand, the day the IRS can tell me how much wealth I have in my (vastly larger quantity) brain wallet is the day I pay taxes on my true wealth.
Spoiler: This day will never come.
Unless you mined those coins in your brain wallet yourself, the IRS doesn't really care what you have in it until you convert it back to fiat. That's when you calculate your capital gains. Tell you a secret... By the time I would actually need to convert my brain wallet wealth back to fiat, there will be no fiat left to convert back to. The IRS will soon be as irrelevant as Blockbuster Video, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. |
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Well, they just freakin' did it, so you are going to take them to court over the matter, right? Smart players will simply ignore the laws, as the technology already transcends the government's ability to enforce them, for anyone who knows what they're doing. Just like we did with copyright laws. You have law-breakers to thank for your $10 / month Netflix account instead of $5 per DVD movie rentals. Calling it now, within 5 years the IRS will have launched a propaganda campaign extolling the virtues of paying taxes and begging everyone to "chip in and do their part". This is going to be hilarious to watch. *popcorn* “Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is [hu]man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.” -Oscar Wilde |
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I have about 15 BTC in my Coinbase.com account, which is linked to my bank account. On this amount, I will pay taxes - it would be foolish to try to hide that money from the IRS. On the other hand, the day the IRS can tell me how much wealth I have in my (vastly larger quantity) brain wallet is the day I pay taxes on my true wealth. Spoiler: This day will never come.This comes down to the (un)enforceability of the tax laws on a pseudonymous currency. Cryptocurrency and torrent technology have a great deal in common... think about it. No more money for unjustified, pre-emptive wars of aggressive for corporate profit margins. Cut the bastards off.  |
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The concept of 'free market' is quite easy to understand - the unfettered and completely voluntary exchange between parties according to each of their desires and capabilities. Your definition of "free market" is about as close to reality as on-paper socialism was to the reality of soviet "socialism" under Stalin. Therefore, your definition is worthless, and totally without merit for any discussion. Look, the problem I have with debating capitalists about capitalism is this: In my experience, it is very much akin to debating theists about god. They vehemently defend the idea without critically thinking and reject any suggestion that an alternative could or would be better. I've long since learned my lesson about debating the indoctrinated believers of myths. Please don't take it as a sign of disrespect that I won't struggle to convince you how awful capitalism and "free" markets are. The truth is though, it's pretty goddamn awful. mgburks77 is spot on in his/her analysis two posts above. I'll leave you with this to think on: 850 million people on this planet are malnourished or starving RIGHT NOW. There is no argument in the world that can justify this cruelty and indifference, especially when you consider how much food our planet produces. We COULD feed them, we CHOOSE not to, because of the profit motive of capitalism. If you're genuinely interested in learning about anti-capitalism (which I doubt), read an Anarchist FAQ section C. |
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I see no evidence whatsoever to support such a belief. Now there's a sharp one. QFT. |
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