I want to appeal to those who have been living only on bitcoins for some time. The @darthcoin experience is especially interesting, but other opinions are welcome. What difficulties do you experience using bitcoin on a regular basis?
Thanks for the detailed answer. Yes, this is the time to learn new skills to grow your income and it's just perfect when the income goes directly to BTS.
Now I myself found myself in a situation where I no longer have the strength to endure work for hire. I want to completely abandon this way of earning and make money on my blog, consultations, and become as independent as possible from the traditional financial system.
What difficulties do you experience using bitcoin on a regular basis?
lack of understanding of how LN works by merchants. There are many aspects that they should take in consideration.
Bad node operators for public routing nodes. Their lack of knowledge about how to run a LN node is affecting all other users. In special when you are about to pay a merchant.
most of the merchants and other users still do not consider BTC as cash in their accounting. And this creates a not necessary frustration for nothing. Most of the merchants do not start accepting BTc exactly because they do not know how to treat BTC in their accounting. I always say: is fucking cash, nothing else. Don't complicate things more than is necessary.
merchants that start accepting BTC should consider first to HODL it as reserves. Later, slowly if they want to use it, to pay suppliers and employees is ok, but in the meantime, BTC received must be a reserve for long term. Many of them, I talked about, they only want to get rid of the BTC in exchange for fiat. They are fucking insane.
Some yes, they listen my advice and now after few years they are very grateful that they listen my advice.
Just to the point of treating it as cash. Try explaining that to an accountant :). Believe me, I tried and will keep trying, however, In most places, it is viewed as an asset, so you are basically being paid in an asset which complicates things (it is not like you get paid in Tesla shares or something). The sad truth is that most of us still have to live inside the system in order to run a business and unless the laws and regulations start treating bitcoin as cash, then it is hard to treat it as such without raising red flags in the tax office.
I know, I know, fuck the system :), but that is where the change has to happen in order for people to start treating bitcoin as cash on a larger scale.
I think your consent is sort of a given if you live in a certain country and follow that country's rules. Otherwise, you are just leaching off all of us slaves who pay taxes.
That is not the solution to get more people to use bitcoin. I can totally see how you convert customers by saing: "just don't pay taxes and accept bitcoin" hehe.
What I have heard that some small businesses do: receive bitcoin in the owner’s personal wallet. Take fiat cash from the owner’s wallet and place into the business cash drawer. The sale is accounted for as a cash sale and the business doesn’t keep a bitcoin balance.
LOL such a dumb and useless move.
I am amazed how in 2023 people still do not make the difference between legal tender, money, sales currency, payment methods and put them together in the same bag.
FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE!
When you make a sale, as a business, you create a sales ticket/ invoice.
That invoice in your accounting ledger is expressed in a currency, usually a local currency. That damn currency is used ONLY to express the value you get for the goods or services you sell and register in your accounting.
That sale, HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FORM OF MONEY YOU RECEIVED for that invoice.
Dammit guys, money is money, currency is currency, legal tender is TOTALLY other shit.
I don’t follow. Yes, it doesn’t matter for the invoicing itself. Bitcoin can be seen as both “money” and a “payment” method in this context.
If the business keeps bitcoin in its balance, then it will have to account for it and account for capital gains/losses when the business spends it. In addition, accountants are scared of bitcoin and usually they don’t want to be involved with it. Of course, accountants are state agents that are afraid of losing their licenses or getting in trouble with their local tax agency. Yes, business owners are hiring and paying accountants to sodomize them and deliver them to the state.
For a business owner that hasn’t gone yet full agorist, this might be a good way to acquire bitcoin and the customers also benefit since they can pay directly with bitcoin.
I know of a merchant who does this because the tax authority approached him and told him that he accepts btc because he wants to evade tax so he decided to take btc into his wallet and put fiat in the books.
We don't have to consent to anything from a government! ALL interactions from a government are voluntary or in others words, offers to contract with them. Learn about Private Membership Associations or Private Clubs and become your own jurisdiction. Take Bitcoin in the private as a merchant. Because that is all governments are...a club of members that try to get you to contract with them. Then they gain jurisdiction over you. Once in your own jurisdiction in the private, you are no longer liable for anything a government demands. We must as a species stop taking the offers of governments!
Most businesses are oriented around cash flow. They do not have reserves inside the company. Most companies are run at zero profit, the officers all drain the cash to zero and only leave a small portion as a buffer. Credit is used to cover low cash balances for payroll or purchasing materials for an order. To hold a monetary asset inside the company that isn't part of operations or cost of goods sold for a year would look crazy to a business owner. As soon as businesses start to pay for their expenses with bitcoin, or need to do foreign exchange without dollars, then they will begin accepting bitcoin in exchange for their products. The problem is that we as consumers are asking companies at the end of the supply chain to accept bitcoin, when its businesses closer to the raw materials that we should focus on orangepilling, then the rest of the economy will follow suit.
I studied Finance at uni in the U.S. and when you boil down what they taught us it all came down to cash flows. Getting my mind around being the bank and holding my own reserve was, and at times, still is a challenge.
That's because you show them you want to "get rid" of your BTC.
Change your strategy into making them to DESIRE to take your BTC because they realize are valuables.
For now the only disadvantage is that not all merchants accept Bitcoin payments. Besides that everything works perfect for me, and the feeling to be sovereign is priceless.
For me its opportunity cost, I don't see the point in spending my bitcoin while I am still earning South African rands, it's a hot potato burning a hole in my pocket, the fact that people accept it means I can still get rid of it and get something for it.
I can access groceries directly for bitcoin here, I am close to ATM too, if I needed the physical cash too
But I still choose to spend the bad money and whatever I don't need goes into bitcoin. Prior to bitcoin I invested in fiat assets that are just bleeding away in any case so I don't see a need to acquire any more of that.
I am all too happy to be the exit liquidity for South Africans who need to get out of bitcoin for any reason
You don't have to agree with me. You just have to follow the "bullshit".
Is everywhere 😂😂😂 and we must call out the bullshit and always stay on the truth side.
For me its opportunity cost, I don't see the point in spending my bitcoin while I am still earning South African rands
Sometimes you can save by paying in BTC. Not sure about South Africa, bet at least in Europe and USA one way is paying for Amazon stuff through Purse.IO. Than you just pay with BTC and then buy more sats with fiat. Same is with airBaltic and probably other airlnes, where you can save few euros credit card processing fee that way.
We don't have credit card programs like that, the ones we have are points based and a waste of time, and I prefer using cash unless I have no choice when I am shopping online
I wasn't talking about credit card programs, airlines sometimes add some fixed fee like 5-6 EUR just because you are paying with any card (likely because of chargeback risks, etc).
I have to disagree on this one. Cash in person is private by default, without having to take any special care. However, cash is already being increasingly restricted and in a few years from now, cash might not be possible anymore and the only choice will be between bitcoin and CBDC or, to put it another way, between freedom or slavery. That’s the reason to get up to speed with bitcoin, learn how to acquire and use it, etc.
No, it isn't wrong. Keep savings in BTC, buy small amounts of cash using P2P platforms like HodlHodl or RoboSats for short term needs.
Cash is more private, because there is no permanent electronic records. Closest to that level of privacy we have with Bitcoin would be BTC backed chaumian ecash.
Keep using fiat cash is LITERALLY supporting fiat to exist and therefore, banksters and govs.
YOU ARE LITERALLY AGAINST FREEDOM.
Learn how to use Bitcoin,, your lack of knowledge is disturbing.
I will send you 100 sats.
Please find back my real identity and where I live.
If you are able to do that I will reward you 1BTC.
If not... HFSP and STFU and don't say anymore that bitcoin is not private. You have no fucking idea how to use BTC.
Inability for me to track you down doesn't mean state level actors like various three letter agencies can't do that if they really want to target you. Bitcoin is fairly private if you use it correctly. But it's not perfectly private, cash has benefit here by not being electronical.
LN isn't absolutely private also, there are a lot of known issues that yet need to be fixed.
So you are just talking shit without proving that bitcoin is not private.
The story that "some agencies" can track means NOTHING. Is just a cheap scaremongering.
If bitcoin tx would not be private ANYBODY would be able to track it.
Btw, there is also BTC backed physical electronic cash, which has the same privacy properties - OpenDime sticks, which one person can pass to another, with no permanent record about this anywhere.
Yes, there's a record, and I would repeat my question: are you able to track me payment to you of 100 sats?
Show me you can find me and then that means Bitcoin is not private.
I have spent big part of my life past few years working on improving Bitcoin privacy, mainly as a JoinMarket dev, I would say I have some knowledge on the topic.
So you are working on how to make bitcoin more private but you are not able to track my 100 sats payment.
So how do you know your code is working? Something doesn't add up here.
Realizing that, is still progress.
Not everybody can do that.
If you try to make progress into moving out from fiat world is a good thing. Is not an easy process, I know that from my own experience.
Important thing is that you know what are you doing.
THERE IS NO DISADVANTAGE OF BITCOIN CIRCULAR ECONOMY. Everybody should embrace it.
BITCOIN CIRCULAR ECONOMY DO NOT START IF YOU DO NOT SPEND A BIT