Im a US citizen and am still confused with the current crypto tax interpretation. In October of 2017 I traded some litecoin for another crypto. Then in January 2018 the tax bill passed and eliminated the like to like exchanges of crypto.
My interpretation is that since I made the trade before the law changed then I did not create a taxable event. Am I wrong in this interpretation?
Some forces are trying to consider Bitcoin as an asset so that they may be able to get taxes on everything a Bitcoin user buys. Bitcoin is not an asset but a currency which is favorable for transaction of money and a source of investment therefore it is a currency and not an asset. Bitcoin user should not pay tax on Bitcoins because this is your own money and not an asset. Tax is not a bad thing and all the money a government has in the account is actually the tax money that it uses for the defense and development of the infrastructure of the country. If government intervenes in the crypto and implements regulations in the use of Bitcoin technology, it can very soon implement a taxation law as well and all the people who earn from the technology should pay the income tax which I would never like. If everyone is paying taxes in crypto then i think crypto is not yet decentralized anymore and with the help of all kinds of regulation that the government are implying. Then we have to face the new face of centralized cryptocurrencies but above all most of the countries are not yet ready for this kind of situation and some are avoiding it at all cost for some reason. Paying taxes in crypto has nothing to do with the level of centralization, and everyone paying taxes in crypto would not mean the currency is centralized. The two things are completely separate issues, and not even linked in any discernible way. Centralization has to do with control, and it is unequivocally decentralized. If the government accepted tax payments in Bitcoin, it would be no different than a merchant selling products for Bitcoins - just another place to spend it. It speak nothing of centralization. You're right. This is not centralization but do you have any idea what will happen if the government will sell all the bitcoins they received as tax at the end of the year? You little mt.gox? Do you want the market to be constantly feverish? In addition, in order to take a tax in bitcoins, governments must recognize it as a currency. You believe that? Your response doesn't make sense. If the government is taking in Bitcoins as a tax revenue, why would they "sell" those Bitcoins as opposed to spending them like they do with any other revenue source. If the economy is denominated in Bitcoins, there would be no need to "sell" them, you would just spend them. That would have no affect on Bitcoins if everything is denominated in Bitcoins, it only potentially matters if everything is denominated in dollars, including Bitcoin. But that assumption doesn't make sense because you'd have to assume as a given that everything in the economy is denominated in BTC and the USD has been abandoned in order to even entertain the notion that the government is taking tax revenues in the form of BTC. Your response doesn't even follow the thread of what has being discussed, which was whether paying taxes in BTC has any bearing on centralization of BTC, and then you came in out of left field with a bucket of crazy about feverish markets and Mt. Gox. I have no idea what point you were trying to make, but it didn't come across. |
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I've heard that til 2021 the last bitcoin would be mined, and then I suppose we would get rid of those problems that you have listed here, but till that time, we can only manage those.
Nope. The last satoshis will be mined somewhere in 2140 and we all with a very high probability won't be able to see the shift from block subsidies to complete transaction fees. I would love to see it happen, but we don't even know if Bitcoin or crypto in general is still a thing by that time. I believe that if Bitcoin & co at some point are replaced, then it's not coming from other crypto currencies, but from a whole different technology doing everything in a far better way. I strongly hope that lightning network will work as we all hope it will work, because that helps the blockhain to remain relatively small even when we're decades away from now. The block rewards will be made up of mostly transaction fees for a very long time before the actual last satoshis are mined. There are two things working together to make transaction fees take up a larger and larger portion of the block rewards over time. The first is the continual halving of the block rewards and the genesis of new coins through this process. The second is rising transactions and the corresponding rise in transaction fees. If the last satoshis will be mined in the 2140s, the transaction fees will constitute the majority of the block rewards for decades prior to that, if Bitcoin remains viable that long. |
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Because of the trade war that Trump unleashed, the world economy is going through difficult times. But this situation is an excellent ground for the prosperity of cryptology
Nothing has had a chance to materially impact anything yet. The economy is too large for anything to happen quickly. It will take months for the first signs to really show or for growth to be materially altered. Even assuming it does (and I do believe there will be some visible effect if someone in this trade war doesn't blink), this means nothing for crypto. Crypto isn't going to solve a trade war, it isn't going to make the economy grow faster, and it isn't going to be more widely adopted on account of a trade war or slowing global economy, with or without a trade war. There's no reason to think it would, so what exactly do you think is going to happen? |
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Let's say you buy a $20,000 car and you have this car for 7 years. So $20,000/7 = $3000/year.
You will change all the 4 tyres every year plus fuel expenses every month plus maintainence/garage expenses for 7 years.
So your monthly expenses for a $20,000 car = $700/month (approx) and for $200,000 car = $4000/month (approx)
Your numbers a vague approximation.
My numbers are for car that runs 10 miles everyday or 3650 miles a year.Your numbers are grossly incorrect. If you're only putting 3650 miles a year on the car, you wouldn't expect to change the tires once over the 7 year period. Tires typically last around 50,000 miles, and for some reason you're assuming you change them every 3,600 miles. Next, 3650 miles in a year would not use nearly as much gas as you think. Let's assume your car gets a paltry 20 mpg, that would be 182.5 gallons per year at $3.50 per gallon would be just under $650 per year in fuel costs, or roughly $54 per month, and that's estimating things purposefully more adverse than they would probably be. Next, if the car costs $20,000 over 7 years, that would be $2858 per year, which is $238 per month. So where you concluded that a car would cost $700/month, what we actually have is less than $300/month. What isn't accounted for is other general maintenance, but for how infrequently you're driving the car (less than 26,000 miles over 7 years), it's going to be pretty inconsequential. |
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Bitcoin won't disappear and the common words that you will hear from the crypto community is that "Bitcoin is here to stay".
This professor is either no coiner or wants to see bitcoin at the bottom so that he can start picking up the weak handlers coin at a very low price. It's common when someone wants a lower price of bitcoin, they will call the media and cover their opinion which creates bad view though they don't have bitcoin to hold.
You obviously don't know anything about Robert Shiller. He's a Nobel winning economist who's work has focused on the tendency of capital markets to inefficiently price assets and create bubbles. He predicted the Nasdaq bubble and the housing bubble, and he says that Bitcoin displays the same characteristics common to bubbles. Shiller doesn't go out to the press badmouthing Bitcoin because he wants to buy it cheaper, reporters and economists constantly ask his opinion of it because they are familiar with his work on the creation of asset bubbles, so he tells them his opinions. What's more is that we know at this point that Bitcoin was a bubble. It crashed from $19,000 to $6,000 in a rapid collapse. The only thing left to determine is if it is still a bubble at these prices. |
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As we all know, stock market had been there for a very long time now and on the other hand, cryptocurrency is a fast rising trend when it comes to the world of trade and commerce. Some may prefer to invest in crypto because of high returns but some will still go with stock market and play it safe.
In your opinion, what will be the best option to invest your money on?
Stocks all day. Stock ownership represents a legal ownership in a business that creates profit. Profits over time is what makes businesses worth more over time, which is why stock prices rise. Crypto, by comparison, is only an asset that has no intrinsic value and is worth only what people think it is worth. Last December, when everyone was insane with hype, many people were in consensus that Bitcoin was worth more than $18,000. Then suddenly, they weren't and it wasn't. That arbitrariness is an inherent risk in an unproductive asset like Bitcoin. It doesn't produce anything, so the value is completely arbitrary. Stocks have inherent value equal to the representational cash flow each share represents. It's far easier to understand the value of them and where it comes from, and the predictability makes it a far superior investment to crypto. |
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Just that... do you think there is any re-distribution effect at all due to bitcoin?
Bitcoin specifically, and crytpo generally, doesn't do anything magical in regards to redistribution. Even if the whole world was denominated in Bitcoin, it wouldn't mean anything for redistribution. Redistribution takes active effort, and Bitcoin doesn't actively do anything on it's own. Asking if Bitcoin has a redistribution effect is the same as asking if the USD has a redistribution effect. The answer is no, because both are representations of wealth and don't address wealth inequality or wealth distribution. I don't know where the notion of Bitcoin having anything to do with wealth equality even came from, but many people seem to have this notion that it's a magic bullet that will solve all the world's economic problems, and that notion is silly and has no basis in fact. |
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Nasdaq is planning to launch cryptocurrencies in their exchange this year which is most likely to happen this year
Are you sure they're going to trade actual cryptocurrencies and not derivatives like is being traded on CBOT and CBOE? Those two exchanges have Bitcoin derivatives, but they're not actually linked to Bitcoin. They only mimic Bitcoin movements and settle in USD based on the price of BTC at given times. This is not actually trading or owning cryptos, only trading vehicles that are tangentially related to them. I would be surprised to see Nasdaq or any other traditional stock exchange getting involved in actual cryptocurrencies. It just seems to be outside their wheelhouse, and I would expect them, if anything, to buy an already functioning crypto exchange if they wanted to get into it. |
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I've been a bitcoin owner for years. I discovered a block pool mining with my then new Mercury. As mining became less profitable I used my best Bitmain product to mine and reduce heating bills. I was a hodl until this year.
Last year I was elated to see the rise up to December and had visions of buying a house for myself and one of my sons (the other doing very well). Then that slide from 12/17/2017. I held on through slides before, like when btc was down in the low hundreds but the steady drop at a rate of roughly 5%/week was just too much and I almost fully cashed out. Of course the buildup and fall was due to futures trading. Capitalism at its worst. In economics we learned futures were started in the Chicago Mercantile, betting on acts of God, the weather. But futures on other than crop yields is suspiciously like powerful forces in trading saw they had the power of gods to control future prices through media. And they did and do. Even Bill Gates said he could short Bitcoin and drive it down, but then his grandfather's family, Maxwell, owns one of the largest banks in the northwest. I wonder if that bank is bitcoin friendly.
So, I'd been watching the drop. It looked like someone was pumping value out of the ecosystem. Was it Bitmain? Not having confidence in the coins it mines? Mining and cashing in? But it wasn't just cashing in. There would be a big drop in value, then sometimes a relatively stable period, then a big jump up. Like catch me if you can, buy low and sell high. But the trend was always down, that 5% per week.
Then recently, June 29, the big drops changed to big jumps. Twice on June 29, once on July 2 and again on July 7. I couldn't bring myself to trust the rise because it wasn't due to a confidence change but due to big money pumping it up. Then yesterday a big drop. Who the heck is going to put confidence in coin that visibly being bounced around by some manipulator?
My question was Who is it? But maybe the subject should be Is it possible to ban bitcoin futures? If futures trading is what's pumping money to the top 1% so steadily then bitcoin with futures trading is no better than fiat.
soy39
The crash was just the market coming back to reality. Everyone was out of their damned minds last year, and if thought $15,000 or even $19,000 was a reasonable price for Bitcoin, you were too. It was clear to anyone not drinking the Kool Aid that Bitcoin had long since entered bubble territory. There's no conspiracy here to crash the market or keep the prices low. This is just much nearer the proper price (though in my own opinion, still seems greatly inflated) than it was last year during the irrational exuberance. Bitcoin is dominated by traders, not investors. There's a big difference. Investors want price appreciation. Traders don't care what happens to the price as long as their is back and forth volatility. Because Bitcoin is dominated by traders, they create volatility. Bitcoin isn't a proper investment asset, it's a speculative vehicle. Could make you money, but is just as likely to lose you money. Trying to derive meaning out of the movements is a fruitless endeavor. |
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Here is the thing with business, they're not going to accept a new payment method and go through all the motions of setting it up unless it's going to profit them. At this point in the game, Zuckerberg and the rest of the corporate structure at Facebook doesn't really care about the tech anymore -- they're all in it for maximizing the amount of money that they can make. If bitcoin is going to lead to them making a few more million dollars a year in advertising revenue / whatever revenue they make it in. Then they're going to do it.
If it's not going to help them at all, they're not going to accept Bitcoin. That's just the simple way of laying it out.
This is categorically false and you don't know what you're talking about. Zuckerberg only cares about the tech, he doesn't care about the money. He only monetizes the platform because it's necessary to fund the further development of the technology. He's obsessed with shrinking the world through technology and is rather zealous in his belief that Facebook makes the world better be connecting the world on a single platform. This is his sole driving force, and it's all about the tech. He's actually taken quite a bit of flack from investors for not being "Wall Street friendly" and not making driving profitability the sole focus as CEO. The only thing you're right about is they're nowhere close to adopting Bitcoin, and I'm rather doubtful they ever will. |
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The rule that only accredited investors, which means people who are already wealthy, are allowed to participate in certain ICOs is senseless imo. It's like saying "YOU'RE NOT WEALTHY YET, SO YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO BE WEALTHY." Stupid society, with obsolete rules, we're living in.
Disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen, and I've not read that law
It has nothing to do with being "allowed" to be wealthy and everything to do with protecting people who don't know jack about complicated investments from getting swindled. There is a presumption that people who are wealthy have the financial prowess to scrutinize various types of complex and non-traditional investments in the private space that are not regulated (as opposed to public securities that are fully regulated). If this presumption happens to be wrong and you have a rich idiot, the fallback position is that even if they lose their investment because they're foolish, they have the financial ability to weather that loss. People who are not accredited investors 1) are presumed not to have this financial acuity (which may be unfair in certain situations, but on the whole tracks pretty well), and 2) do not have the ability to weather the loss of their investment if they get themselves swindled in an unregulated investment. On the scale of risky, unregulated investments, ICOs rank right below "obvious Ponzi" in the risk department. The accredited investor rules are not stupid, they're the direct result of people who don't understand the risk inherent in private investing, lose all their money, and then complain to the government about how nobody was there to protect them from themselves. Hence, accredited investor laws. |
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What escape path for Bitcoin?
The value of Bitcoin is still very high . Some problems of bitcoin are difficult to solve as :
- Slow transaction speed
- consumes a lot of energy
- It is banned in some countries
- Price manipulated
Is there a sustainable future for bitcoin and cryptocurrency ?
Bitcoin will become the coin of payment as its purpose is created. Or is it just a game of whales? A financial game with winners and losers
Yes the bitcoin value is still high for me too, even though the market is falling. Those problems should be quickly overcome if bitcoins are the coins of the future, at least make bitcoin transactions faster and give high support to bitcoin in many countries, so I'm sure bitcoin will become stronger as well as its possible price alone will be stable and will increase faster after the fall of the market as it is now. Most of people are talking about the main reason which is the demand rate that controls the value of Bitcoin. The current value is 6k dollar which is still a low value and the conditions are favorable for the buyers. Moreover the low value is a benefit for buyers because it is very easy to get large quantity coins on the usage of low amount. All we need is to collect large quantity coins from this market which will payoff. This is not a low value, in fact Bitcoin has been below this value for 90% of its life (maybe more). You're comparing it to its insane all time high and concluding it looks cheap from here, while people were doing that when it fell to $15,000 and $10,000 too. Yet it continued to drop because it wasn't cheap at those levels, it was still insanely overvalued. The point is, you can't arbitrarily look at the price at any given moment and have any rational basis for whether it is over priced or under priced. This assessment is only something that becomes apparent with hindsight. You could be falling into a bull trap with this type of thinking, which is just looking at price trends and concluding that because it's fallen so much, it's about to start going up when in reality it has only paused its descent and will soon resume falling. Trading is far riskier than anyone buying Bitcoin at these levels understands or acknowledges. |
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BTC is here to stay, neither die nor lose its value. Talking about the bearish market, there has always been ups and downs in the past. Bitcoin has bounced back and never made the traders sad. So, even this time the hopes are high.
Bitcoin has already lost massive value, to deny that is to refuse to live in reality. The drop from $19,000 to $6,000 represents nearly a 70% decline. That's the bubble popping, that's the market crashing. Bitcoin not disappearing entirely isn't a great consolation prize. As for never making the traders sad, I don't know what person buying Bitcoin feels good about losing 70% of their investment in 6 months time (or ever really, but the speed of this crash is remarkable nonetheless). Even after this massive crash, you're not going to get rich buying Bitcoin at these prices. The easy money is gone, and it's not going to return. There's far too many people competing for Bitcoins at this point for you ever to see 100x returns, or probably even 10x returns from here, and that's what it would take (along with a massive investment and corresponding massive risk) to even get near the level of getting rich off Bitcoin at this point. You're far more likely to lose a lot of money than make a lot of money if you're buying at these prices. |
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These users who spreads fud always receive some attention and when they get noticed they'll continue posting. They want everyone to suffer bring their hopes down and feel bad about their investment. Others want you to stay away from Bitcoin and invest on different things like silver or altcoins. I sometimes think they're getting paid by a whale or the government.
Nah, I doubt whales or the govt are involved in the FUD campaign we see in this forum whenever there's a big drop, they have enough power to actually spread FUD on a major scale by using sites like cnbc, cnn, or bloomberg  and it's not like FUD threads in this forum are going to have a major impact on the market so why would they even bother to come here? People just generally blame anything they don't agree with as FUD without regard to the merit of the argument or not. Of all the things that get labeled as "FUD" by the hivemind on these boards, maybe 5% of it is. The other 95% is just rejection and mental shut down by people who don't want anything to interrupt the get rich quick and lambo dreams people buy into when they buy Bitcoin. Ultimately, people fail to recognize that at these price levels, the easy money is long gone and nobody is going to become a Bitcoin millionaire from this point on just by buying and holding Bitcoin, at least not without significant risk that doesn't justify the risk:reward profile. But if you try to tell them that, it's FUD of course! |
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If George Soros even puts just a billion into the market then we will see a price hike and a massive one at that because that would mean there is much demand and once people see prices start going up, then they will start buying in too thereby increasing the price.
Nobody puts a billion dollars into crypto, to even suggest anyone would gives you an idea how hyped up your own expectations are and how unreasonable they are as well. When Soros was calling Bitcoin a bubble, he was right. In case of have noticed, Bitcoin has crashed more than 60% since December and has stayed down. That's a bubble bursting. Soros isn't interested in Bitcoin as an asset, he's interested in Bitcoin businesses that capitalize off people who think it's not a bubble, like exchanges or transfer services. To not understand the difference is to be one who makes people like Soros rich. |
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I've read an article in the internet that cryptocurrency exchange is growing in number. As of now the number of exchange is already about 500 and counting. Other countries are now creating their very own exchange, does this means that cryptocurrencies is being acknowledged better now than ever before? And if it does, does having more exchange could greatly affect the prices of cryptocurrencies?
This is quite refreshing and motivating. This will probably attract more investors in crypto world and again will eventually lead to increase in price again. Exchanges make more money when there's more trading activity, which necessitates more traders. Having more exchanges doesn't necessarily help that. Access to exchanges isn't what's preventing the price from rising at this point. There are enough exchanges that nobody is at a dearth for access and the biggest exchanges are already submitting themselves to regulatory oversight in a bid to increase confidence in the system. |
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Banks can not afford increasing expenditure of the old technology anymore they will have to adapt to the change.Talking about technology and banking, Blockchain, will disrupt the financial domain with certainty. Much has been discussed, debated and discussed about this distributed ledger, both online and offline. So this innovative technology does not require a special introduction at this time. Calling it 'annoying' is a disparaging statement. To understand what a blockchain is, look at bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It has achieved many 'never heard' scenarios in the financial domain. Since technology has been introduced in the banking world, experts are always struggling to create safe and secure means of transactions. A person must go through a third party application or an intermediary or regulatory body to transfer money. But here is the digital currency - completely unfocused - and has broken all conventional banking laws. Today, a person can send money to anyone in the world immediately without having to go through the hassle of what I experienced. It has happened in many parts of the world. You can transfer money via WeChat, Whatsapp, and even Facebook Messenger right now. Believe it or not, blockchain is a breakthrough technology that can be applied to your domain-name. From agriculture, aviation to supply chains, finance, and the food industry, blockchains are everywhere. A lot of organizations around the world are already experimenting with this technology. Major financial organizations such as the SBI Holdings, Goldman Sachs and Citi group have already invested in blockchain. Back home, the State Bank of India (SBI) has grand plans in place to use blockchain for a number of processes, including the KYC system. South Indian Bank seamlessly carried out an international transaction using this technology. ICICI, YES Bank, Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra are some of the few banks that have hopped on to the blockchain bandwagon. While some banks are experimenting with this digital ledger and achieving impressive results, some financial institutions are gearing up to reform and redefine huge chunks of their banking processes.  Good for them and their customers! As far as my bank is concerned, I recall reading this article which showed that out of Fortune500 in last 50 years, 84% of them are dead today. In the next 10 years, I am happy to predict just a few banks will remain in Fortune 500. Most financial institutions will have either absorbed blockchain tightly OR they will be gone. Banking is nowhere close to being dead. If, and a big IF at that, blockchain is even able to disrupt the traditional banking industry, it will only be to the extent that traditional banks have adopted blockchain technology. The banks aren't going away, the banking industry isn't going away, and how either functions on a technical level isn't going to change this fact. Don't forget that every single crypto is too volatile to keep any significant value in for more than an hour, and you see exactly the type of folly expecting such an instrument to displace traditional banking. Perhaps the only thing crypto actually has a chance to replace wholesale is remittance or value transfer services, but expecting it to actually replace functional banking is far more than crypto can handle. As far as my bank is concerned, I recall reading this article which showed that out of Fortune500 in last 50 years, 84% of them are dead today. In the next 10 years, I am happy to predict just a few banks will remain in Fortune 500. Most financial institutions will have either absorbed blockchain tightly OR they will be gone.
Most companies fall out of the Fortune 500 because they're bought by other companies in the Fortune 500. They're not dead, they're subsidiaries of other companies now. I 100% guarantee no banks currently in the Fortune 100 will fall out of the Fortune 500 because of blockchain technology in the next 10 years. Even if that were going to happen, it doesn't happen that fast. Banks lower than the top 100 could fall out due to being replaced by newer companies and because those lower spots aren't very big by banking standards, but it also will not because of blockchain. |
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I think one of the factors that can affect the bitcoin price is bad news or FUD's that can holders sell their bitcoin because they think that the price of bitcoin will drop and the other factor is there are some group of a pump and dump that can manipulate the value of bitcoin and the other thing is there are many scammers out there that use bitcoin as their presentation that is why people didn't trust bitcoin because of this reason.
On the flip side of FUD (which is overused) is the perpetual hypers and the bandwagon mentality simple investors have. The reason Bitcoin reached $19,000 last year is because people without any critics thinking skills piled into Bitcoin thinking he gravy train couldn't be stopped. It was reckless and the price was undeserved. The price reached that level primarily due to hype and unrealistic expectations, and people who bought it that high pretty much got exactly what they deserved. |
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The legalization of marijuana has brought in millions (maybe billions?) in tax revenue to those states that have allowed it. Just imagine what each state and even the federal government could do with such extra money. Rather than wasting millions in tax money on a fight that can't be won ,right??
Or maybe you guys got another opinions??
Canada has legalized it on a national level and reached a revenue sharing agreement with their provinces to split the tax revenue. Because of this, there has been an explosion of investment in the industry there and Canada will soon lead the world in this industry. Such a policy is creating new jobs and the legalization will free police and courts from enforcing or otherwise dealing with pointless and harmless violations. Republicans in this country are far too concerned with legislating morality (and doing a poor job at it for having stupid and arbitrary priorities) for the US to seriously consider following in Canada's footsteps and so is ceding the development of an emerging industry to other nations. |
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I think now fixed deposit interest rates are less than 5% p.a in USA and Europe. In India fixed deposit rates are 6.5%.
Gold and Silver gives average profit of 8% to 12% per year. Silver will most likely give 20% to 30% profit each year from here on to reach $60/ounce.
Example:
Profit for gold and silver for year 2016 is 12%.
Profit for gold and silver for year 2017 is 0%
Profit for gold and silver for year 2018 is 8%
Profit for gold and silver for year 2019 is 16%
So average profit for 4 years is +9%
How secured/safe are investments in gold and silver if you decide to remove/withdraw your money from banks fixed deposits and invest them in Gold and silver ??
This isn't based on anything but speculation. Where are these percentages even coming from, are you just making them up? You're using a future number as a given (2019) which cannot be known, but assuming it will be 16% in order to get a 4 year average. First, 2019 can't be known. Second, 4 years is an extremely shallow data field to be extrapolating from. Third, metals are volatile, they don't only go up in value. The risk of being down when you need the money invested in them is high over short periods of time. Metals investing is not for people with such a superficial understanding of economics and investing. Proceed at your own risk, but there's no investable thesis here. |
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