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September 18, 2013, 09:53:18 PM |
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As I understand it, many countries tend to tax their citizens through their bank accounts. For instance, Argentina has a 0.6% tax on all transactions. And that is at the National level, it could increase with fees and such at the local level depending on which country and how it's being done. This tends to happen in places where there is a lot of people paid in cash. To avoid this, many people move their currency into Bitcoin so as to avoid this kind of taxation. It's another reason why many investments were planted in Cyprus. Tax avoidance is a major reason why people float their cash into Bitcoin.
If you lived in the United States and had a friend that lived in, say, Libya. And your friend needed money, right away, how would you give him money? Say he needs a car and some money to pay a bad debt. You could try to wire him the money, but the fees are crazy and it would require him to have a bank account in Libya and trust that the bank wouldn't "lose" his money. Not only that, but if you move more than $10,000 the U.S. Government is notified by the bank and could put a hold on your accounts and conduct an investigation to make sure you weren't trying to do something illegal.
For businesses, it's clear that accepting Bitcoin is MUCH cheaper than accepting credit card. It is also agnostic to the business you are running. If you want to run a porn site, Bitcoin does not care. Visa does. It also does not require the same level of security requirements, because there is no "Number" to steal or private information about someone to acquire. There is no authority that is going to inspect your network and computer systems to make sure you are compliant to accept Bitcoin.
Bitcoin's only real negative is the difficulty in moving fiat in and out of it. Hopefully more people will build things like Bitcoin ATM's that convert the FIAT into Bitcoin and avoid the process of linking bank accounts to exchanges. If a service like Paypal picks up Bitcoin, that will also go a long way towards expanding the adoption of the currency. If this were done, there would be less reasons for people to have to understand Bitcoin's complexity and instead just use it like any other currency. "Oh, this store takes Bitcoin? I'll transfer that with my Bitcoin app." scan a barcode and never have to look at a hash. Recharge it at an ATM by scanning a barcode, etc.
There is room for fraud, there is plenty of fraud with FIAT/Cash. Bitcoin is no different. People just need to treat it like cash when making transactions and they won't find themselves so easily scammed. They've just become brain dead thanks to the insurance credit cards provide, but don't realize that the credit cards have raised the cost of everything by 3% or more.
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