Australia Says Bitcoin is Money – Japan says Bitcoin can’t be owned

[fuddudle]

Its highly unlikely that btc can have a globally consistent stance. Every country leans differently in terms of monetary policy, but all will not like having no power over a currency.

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[Darude Sandstorm]

It's funny how depending on the country you are, Bitcoin is a thing or another, but at the end of the day the algorithm and the way it works will still work exactly the same in Australia, Japan or Mars. Thats the beauty of Bitcoin and it shows how kinda dumb it is to try to regulate it.

Well this isn't unusual and is usually the case with many other laws not just with bitcoin. for example In some countries its legal to have sex with 14 years olds whereas its legal to marry them in some others. Bitcoin is tricky because we might all see it as a currency but govs might see it as a commodity and not a genuine legal tender because they didn't issue it.

[Hellacopter]

If Bitcoin is money, and it's, so it can be owned like we own the other currencies ,so i think saying that Bitcoin can't be owned make no sense in my opinion, and in fact people own Bitcoin and make trades with Bitcoin easily in many marketplaces

[Ceizer54]

It doesn't really matter what these countries think of bitcoins as long as Us(bitcoiners) solely believe in bitcoin..Bitcoin is controlled by us and decentralized that's what makes it unique..Everyone has different opinions but i would say bitcoin is everything--investment,commodity and ofcource currency 

[coinplus]

It doesn't really matter what these countries think of bitcoins as long as Us(bitcoiners) solely believe in bitcoin..Bitcoin is controlled by us and decentralized that's what makes it unique..Everyone has different opinions but i would say bitcoin is everything--investment,commodity and ofcource currency 

Exactly. Nothing to do what a government thinks about a bitcoin.
Some government will not bother about bitcoin until bitcoin get a attractive price. People look for government as long as we expect to convert bitcoin into fiat, but we head to a future where there is no need of converting bitcoin into fiat. Just use bitcoin as your fiat.

[nicked]

IIRC. Australian banks have been closing bank accounts of people and businesses that are associated with Bitcoin.

[neonshium]

IIRC. Australian banks have been closing bank accounts of people and businesses that are associated with Bitcoin.

That's the common thing banks do, this time bitcoin a reason. When people do not need to their bitcoin for fiat conversion and ready to spend for life requirements, no government will stop using people from bitcoin. But, it requires some time. We need to tolerate governments till that.

[Mickeyb]

Discrepancies of the law regarding bitcoin only makes it clearer. We need one unified, global bitcoin law.
I know this is impossible right now, and probably won't happen anytime soon, if ever. But it is laughable that bitcoin can be treated so differently.

Yes, but will this ever be possible when Bitcoin has so many use cases and can do many different things? To have one law and that everybody has agreed upon it? I am kind of suspicious about this.

The only way this would work if everyone would recognize all of the Bitcoin's use cases. That Bitcoin is a commodity, money, etc.

[isvicre]

Every country have different type of laws and lawmakers. So these things are nothing unexpected.
Bitcoin is too futuristic for today's standards.

[OrientA]

Every country have different type of laws and lawmakers. So these things are nothing unexpected.
Bitcoin is too futuristic for today's standards.

Bitcoin is not in wide use, so there is little research of bitcoin by various authorities. Gradually, with the wide adoption of bitcoin, there will be consensus about its properties by different states.  I believe bitcoin is money.

[Coin Republic]

The title of this threading is quite misleading. You can still own bitcoin in Japan. But if you lose it, or stolen by somebody, you cannot claim it back.

The Japanese will change the stance in a few year's time when bitcoin becomes popular in other countries.

[romjpn]

Japanese people are in fact trading Bitcoin quite hard now.
Just look at the BTC/JPY market volume. http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets
I live in Japan and I'm using Coincheck.

[erickimani]

fear of the unknown.. most governments are fearing that they will not be able to control their people because money owned by the central government is best used to control its citizens. yes they should regulate the usage of bitcoins for the purpose of security but not ban its use. I rest my case.

[Slark]

Its highly unlikely that btc can have a globally consistent stance. Every country leans differently in terms of monetary policy, but all will not like having no power over a currency.

I know that people and laws differ from place to place. But I never imagined that Bitcoin will be viewed so differently.
How one country can view BTC as money and other say that it is not money at all? These interpretations are so random to the point I don't trust any of them.

[OrientA]

fear of the unknown.. most governments are fearing that they will not be able to control their people because money owned by the central government is best used to control its citizens. yes they should regulate the usage of bitcoins for the purpose of security but not ban its use. I rest my case.

The best way to use the money owned by the central government to control its citizens is through inflation. Inflation can make people poor if these people trust the government and save the money.

[mixan]

fear of the unknown.. most governments are fearing that they will not be able to control their people because money owned by the central government is best used to control its citizens. yes they should regulate the usage of bitcoins for the purpose of security but not ban its use. I rest my case.

But regulation is not what bitcoin needs right now. It is a growing project that is not fully developed and does not have a strong hold on everybody's idea of what it should be.
Let it mature and become equal to the rest of world's currencies then speak of regulatory laws needing to be put in place.

[garrytaylor1]

I cant get my head around this regulation.

[Nagle]

If Japan says bitcoins can't be owned, do they mean japanese yens on a bank account can't be owned either?

That decision has been misunderstood. This was about how bankruptcy works when Bitcoins are involved. The court ruled that Bitcoins are fungible; that is, specific Bitcoins combined in a wallet lose their individuality. The question was whether people who deposited Bitcoins with Mt. Gox were entitled to get those specific Bitcoins back in the bankruptcy, if Mt. Gox still had them, or whether they were just creditors of Mt. Gox, in which case they get a proportional share of the liquidated assets.

To understand this better, consider renting a car to a company that goes bankrupt. You can get the entire car back. Now consider lending them money. You only get back a fraction of the money, in proportion to what's left.

There are cases between those extremes. If you stored wheat in a grain elevator, with the wheat stored in a common silo, and they went broke, that works like lending them money. Grain is considered fungible; quantities of it are interchangeable. Bitcoin is now being treated more like wheat than like cars.

This is only meaningful in bankruptcies.

[StateOfAffairs]

Well, as interesting as this is I don't think I'm going to be moving to Japan or Russia soon!

Australia, either!!

[garrytaylor1]

I think itll be a while before bicoin is got a real value attached to it.