Education is probably the main thing, but it surely isn't the only thing that matters. In the first place, an ordinary person cannot easily learn the twists and turns of how specific sections or provisions of particular laws or processes can be used to come up with minimal or even zero taxes. That's something that's carefully learned over time.

Also, when you do things yourself, there's a tendency that people from the tax department or other government offices will be strict on you regarding the rules and fees and all. But when you pay fixers, for example, everything seems easy and smooth and cheap.

I'm certainly lucky that my country doesn't have efficient tax policies and implementation as regards Bitcoin or crypto or taxation in general. I'm not declaring any crypto assets and I feel like I'm not worried at all that one day they would come knocking on my door about it.

Over Twitter, all these platforms which offer news related to Bitcoin or crypto have accounts. Cointelegraph, Coindesk, Bitcoin Magazine, Decrypt, Bitcoinist, The Block, and the rest post tweets of their headlines. So it's just on Twitter where I scroll over the headlines of their latest news. If something interests me, I click on it and I'm led to their site. It's a hassle to visit each of these sites just to monitor the latest news. I don't directly go there anymore just to keep myself updated.

Also, there's this forum. Sometimes, I'm first informed of something here and then I just click on the poster's source for the actual news.

Tax avoidance is completely legal. The problem, however, is that this is something that is not easily available to ordinary folks. The rich have all the high-caliber accountants and lawyers to make sure their evasion only appears as a simple case of avoidance. Not to mention that the law has always been lenient to the rich and powerful. It has always been generous and tolerant to the elites. As a matter of fact, tax laws, policies, and regulations are always tailored for them.

Isn't this kind of service already available to Bitcoin owners? If I'm not mistaken, there are already crypto banks or crypto lending platforms which offer loans to Bitcoin owners if they are willing to send them as collateral. That's even happening in this forum. But the problem with marrying this kind of traditional financial service to Bitcoin being a new technology is that it somehow betrays the spirit of Bitcoin. Your Bitcoin isn't anymore under your control and the platform from which you borrow money could run away with it. Yeah, you got cash, but only around 25% to 50% of your Bitcoin's worth? Isn't this what happened to BlockFi?

Anyway, should Bitcoin adjust to this unfair taxing system or should this unfair taxing system be restructured instead?

Yes, that's part of it. Their exposure to Bitcoin isn't the kind of exposure that most of us here are doing. While we have actual Bitcoin, or actual access or control of our Bitcoin to be precise, they do not. Their exposure is limited through a brokerage. Strictly speaking, they don't have Bitcoin. They cannot send whatever Bitcoin they own to anybody anytime. They cannot use them to purchase goods and services. Simply said, what they have are mere numbers.

Well, this isn't the kind of ownership that Bitcoin is all about.

Every single user of Kraken shouldn't see anything contradictory with this. There is no contradiction whatsoever. They cannot raise that. Otherwise, they're hypocrites. And they cannot also mention that financial privacy and empowerment are what attracted them toward cryptocurrency. In the first place, they used a centralized exchange, a platform that is licensed and registered and submits to regulatory policies. So, what's actually contradictory is the fact that they're supporting Bitcoin at the same time used a centralized platform for it. What do they expect, that they can have their cake and eat it, too?

In all fairness, however, the problem may not actually be coming from blockchain analysts, or at least not solely from them. The bigger problem is when ignorant, careless, and biased personalities who are anti-Bitcoin through and through use data coming from these analysts without even digesting them, if at all they're capable of it.

I'm citing as an example the Wall Street Journal, particularly their reporters Angus Berwick and Ian Talley. The editors as well for allowing their articles to be published without being carefully verified. They're not only irresponsible in perusing data without understanding their complexities, contexts, and nuances, they're also spreading animosity against Bitcoin to the public. They're privileged individuals because, as media practitioners, they can shape public perception in one way or another.

Case in point as a result of this utter lack of responsibility is the initiative of more than a hundred lawmakers who immediately jumped their gun and cited the reports of these ignorant WSJ reporters in writing a letter to no less than the White House and the US Department of the Treasury that the terrorists Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have raised millions in crypto before the October 7 attack on Israel.

Elliptic had to set the record straight that "there is no evidence to support the assertion that Hamas has received significant volumes of crypto donations."^[1]

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[1] https://www.elliptic.co/blog/setting-the-record-straight-on-crypto-crowdfunding-by-hamas

This could be misleading. I hope people won't take this as if these three things are exclusively provided by gambling. I mean you can have your mood improved, your stress relieved, and your fears challenged even if you won't get involved in gambling. There are a hundred ways to do all these things without risking money and possibly getting dragged into something which could actually make you worse.

Gambling may give you these benefits, but make no mistake, it's also at the risk of being defeated by the urge to continue doing it beyond moderation. So, if you want to get all these benefits without taking unnecessary risks, you can do some other things.

Irreversibility is generally neutral. The goodness or badness of this feature depends on a person's individual circumstances. To me, I don't think it's a downside. As a matter of fact, it's generally a good thing. Once a transaction is settled, I won't have to worry about it because what already happened can't be reversed.

But I can see how it is also a bad thing from the perspective of another. Erroneous transaction is just one reason. What I have in mind, however, is the giant yet still growing e-commerce industry. It's a common problem here in my country that the goods sold online aren't exactly the ones that are sent to the buyer. That a payment system is irreversible might make it all worse. Because it means transactions shall be processed manually and it will certainly take a lot of time.

If you're specifically asking about transactions "in and out of banks," is there a way to avoid KYC? In the first place, that bank itself has all your details. There are a number of KYC-free recommended platforms, though, like AgoraDesk, Hodhodl, Bisq, non-KYC ATMs, Robosats, xchange.me, and so on, but if the money is sent or received through a bank, I don't see how that is a KYC-free transaction.

Personally, the best non-KYC transaction I prefer is face-to-face, but even this is risky especially when it involves a relatively large amount. So far, I admit I have a hard time selling Bitcoin without somehow passing through parties which require KYC.

I'm only reacting because while you said that Bitcoin is used mostly by normal people, you also said that "bad businessmen and government elites have a lot of money and more money is used in illegal activities because of that." That's probably wrong. I understand that business people own money more than the rest of the ordinary people, but I don't think the majority of the business people and their transactions are involved in illegal activities. I'm strongly of the belief that majority of the Bitcoin in circulation is used in legal transactions.

I don't think most people go through life believing they have sufficient understanding of money. Indeed, they're just putting faith in the system because it is something guaranteed by the laws and the government. Again, nothing wrong about it if only the laws and the government are genuinely working for the welfare of the people.

But, yeah, they're not. I agree that devaluation of money is tantamount to theft. It is a desecration of people's hard work and labor. But I don't think this tragedy has nothing to do with money. It has become like this because the fiat system is prone and accommodating to such tendency. Fiat money, in the first place, is soft money. Anybody who is in power can abuse the system. It is a weak monetary system that is susceptible to the very nature of men.

Frankly speaking, you can't expect everybody to be aware let alone understand the intricacies of money. The great majority don't care about it for as long as what they consider money can buy them what they need. For me, that's completely understandable.

However, at the very least, money should function in favor of everybody. At some point, when money loses so much of its value, people will begin to wonder what happened. While they balance it with working harder, getting additional jobs, tightening the belt, and so on, that's completely unfair.

Worse, this isn't because money is naturally like that. This is simply because the ones who control it are abusive and greedy and insensitive and dumb. Indeed, Bitcoin solves this.

For a number of decades, all attempts to develop a digital currency has failed. Satoshi learned from all of them and finally developed a perfectly working version. Well, that's indeed a little magical.

Of all the desirable traits of a hard and sound money, no single fiat currency has met them. Bitcoin came and offered durability, divisibility, scarcity, transparency, fungibility, being a store of value, and other characteristics of an ideal money. That seems magical as well.

But Bitcoin is real money. It isn't magic. Its creation follows a strict protocol. It isn't like how fiat is created, magically out of thin air representing nothing whatsoever.

I guess data sharing is generally captured in the terms of service. In the first place, how can Kraken comply with AML/CFT policies if they won't share collected data with the appropriate agencies? I guess this part is widely acceptable. The fact that a user complies with compulsory KYC is more or less an expression that he/she accepts it. But I don't think that includes the willingness to share how much one trades. That's another thing because surely a lot of users aren't declaring everything to their tax agencies.


Oh yes, of course, deleting one's account doesn't mean deleting one's information from Kraken's database.

I haven't been through a severe form of this, but I've certainly been through instances in which I could have gone home with good winnings but ended up with nothing instead. And this is because I wasn't able to control my urge to bet more even if it already seemed my luck has already expired.

But it seems your situation is a bit worse. I think you better stay away from logging on to your gambling accounts altogether. Keep your focus on something else. Try to be busy on other things. If you feel that this doesn't work, I recommend that you visit a professional.

Just because AllianceBernstein labels Bitcoin as a safe haven asset doesn't mean Bitcoin has no risk anymore. Moreover, this pronouncement doesn't signal a new age in Bitcoin perception. Furthermore, we simply won't change our sentiment just because of whatever AllianceBernstein thinks or says.

Finally, and I don't have to provide proofs or links as this is rather abundant and easy to search, this asset management firm isn't the first traditional company that calls Bitcoin a safe haven asset and superior to gold. AllianceBernstein may not be a latecomer but it's not an early bird either.

I'm afraid this is even wrong and unfair. This is almost agreeing to the wrong analyses. It's like saying there are more good people than bad people who use Bitcoin, but most Bitcoin are used by bad people. Or the majority of Bitcoin transactions are good transactions but the majority of Bitcoin are used in illicit transactions. I suppose these are both false.

Incidentally, a similar issue about false blockchain analyses data regarding the use of crypto by terrorist Hamas have become a topic since Angus Berwick and Ian Talley of the Wall Street Journal wrote a couple of articles, Hamas Militants Behind Israel Attack Raised Millions in Crypto and Why Hamas Uses Crypto to Raise Money, which irresponsibly, or rather ignorantly, used and misinterpreted blockchain figures.

Although there surely are general stipulations in the terms of service that would support this, I wonder if Kraken users would have agreed to a term that specifically mentions that the exchange shall share trading information of users with the IRS. Had this been specifically stipulated in the terms of service upon sign up, many would probably have opted not to proceed. This latest development is rather unfair.

This is another proof that whatever is agreed between a centralized platform and a user upon sign up is almost pointless. The demands of the government or the court always prevail. It's like an exchange saying they won't implement KYC or that only this and that data are required but once the government orders them to collect such and such information, they have no choice but to comply and whatever was agreed earlier between them and their clients will go to the trash bin.

You actually don't have to argue against Munger and Buffet. You don't need to prove them wrong. As a matter of fact, I'm sure both old dogs have already heard of the basic features of Bitcoin. They probably know, for example, that this new technology is decentralized and that it has a fixed supply. But they remain unconvinced and that's perfectly all right. If Bitcoin isn't their cup of tea then so be it. They have their own standards and so far they've been successful using them.