IMF Paper on Taxing Bitcoin Sees 'Quasi-Anonymity' as Greatest Challenge \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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IMF Paper on Taxing Bitcoin Sees 'Quasi-Anonymity' as Greatest Challenge www.nobsbitcoin.com/imf-paper-on-taxing-cryptocurrencies/

325 sats \ 8 comments \ @lpop4254 10 Jul 2023 bitcoin

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268 sats \ 6 replies \ @siggy47 10 Jul 2023

This quote really bugs me:

The good news for tax authorities, and regulators, is that contrary to the vision of the original [Bitcoin] designers - a core role has emerged for centralized institutions of various kinds in the transacting of crypto assets, notably exchanges through which they are bought and sold."

This must change. More P2P.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @orthwyrm 10 Jul 2023

I think it's great. Tax burdens will push markets away from centralised services and towards P2P trades.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury 10 Jul 2023

I am not bothered -- I see this as the inevitable evolution. Unless you think that btc will simply destroy the modern state (which I think has zero probability of happening, and which would be apocalyptic, were it to happen) then we should expect some gradual process by which new institutions arise, and old institutions adapt, to include btc in the usual ways of social organization, including taxing economic activity surrounding it.

I do think that what we consider to be the scope of the modern state, and the nature of its institutions, will change, though; and that btc will be a key aspect of that change, hopefully as a check on some of its excesses.

20 sats \ 2 replies \ @l0k18 10 Jul 2023

Intermediaries in money is only a modern phenomenon. I think you can say around 800 years since the first inception of gold vaults for the crusaders, and 400 years since the widespread use of paper money.

Words like "dilute" had a literal meaning when governments committed the gigantic fraud of debasing currencies. Literally, mixing cheap garbage metal with precious metals in greater and greater proportion until they are just plated steel slugs. Go get a magnet and put it on some coins. Almost all countries now don't even hardly use copper and tin in the money, just mostly cheap and worthless nickel and aluminum, and only enough copper to be yellowish.

The era of the modern liberal democratic state rode in on the magic carpet of paper deposit certificates and will fall through the holes in it in the same way. Regressions through massive loss of wealth have happened before in history and are likely to happen again, and soon.

But maybe we get to have a way to not get drowned with the ship.

not being "bothered" by the brazen crime of con artists called "politicians" and "experts" and "bankers" is kinda not gonna work out well in your favour.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury 14 Jul 2023

Maybe. And thanks for your concern about my well-being.

I think you (and many) are missing a pretty important fact that the "magic carpet of paper deposit certificates" and the ensuing debasement proved a massive competitive advantage for societies that organized around it, at least in the short term. The collision between a state made up of ideologues with hard money vs. a state with near-infinite warmaking and coordination capacity due to being able to print it -- well, I guess we haven't seen it in its pure form, as far as I know. Maybe in imperial Rome. But the thought experiment doesn't end well for the purists.

Bitcoiners talk about fiat like it's a great stupidity, and maybe from certain assumptions it is, e.g.,maybe the world would be better if everyone played by hard-money rules. But they don't. There is great game-theoretic advantage to defaulting. Unclear to me if the world ever undergoes a phase transition where that stops being true.

If you think nation states will maximally slink away, whimpering, once btc is ascendant -- if you think btc can become ascendant w/out integration with existing systems -- I'd say the burden of proof is on you. I'd much rather some compromise -- yes, one involving taxation -- emerged, before we put the "Mad Max" vs "new heights of human flourishing due to gentleman btc farmers" to the test.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @l0k18 14 Jul 2023

the shift from metal coins to paper in the last 400 years, stemming from the need for rich people to take their gold to donate to whatever jesus thing they were fluffing their public image with, the debasement problem got really really easy to do, and really hard to get people to see the hidden taxation that diminishes us all.

Bitcoin is precisely the answer to this, a question that has recurred first as dilution of gold and silver with cheap base metals, and now with the oversupply of certificates of debt.

Nation states are nothing more than an elaborate cloak for feudal oligarchs to appear to not in fact be feudal oligarchs. Sooner or later nobody is afraid to point out the emperor is naked.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @siggy47 10 Jul 2023

My concern is with regard to financial privacy. Kraken has already been ordered to turn over information on user accounts. Governments will use tax compliance as an excuse for surveillance.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @l0k18 10 Jul 2023

more straightforward is a compelling case for corrective taxation of carbon-intensive mining."

"corrective". As though it is criminal or incorrect to make a profit without giving an outsized share to an organisation that never ever spends less than it steals, I mean earns. You know, like how pickpockets and con artists earn.