pull down to refresh
26 sats \ 21 replies \ @028559d218 24 Mar \ parent \ on: Replacing Cash With CBDC Would Pose A Grave Threat To Our Rights and Freedoms econ
99.99% of Bitcoin users if using Lightning will never do this.
My guess is that 99.9% of Bitcoin users are probably ignoring this or will ignore this.
Look at the zaps and sats on Nostr... are people declaring those for tax purposes?
My understanding is that while Lightning is technically traceable, it is very difficult.
If there are as many Bitcoiners as there supposedly are (according to Coinbase there are ~20% of the US population) there is no way the enforcement can take place for every zap, and every sat and channel close. It is completely impossible.
It would be like the government in the US deciding to 'confiscate all the guns'. Aside from the legality of doing so... there are over 300 million guns in individual homes and the manpower and resources to go 'door to door' doesn't exist. Or go door to door to collect seed phrases and lightning nodes (which is just software after all).
I say this especially considering the 'war on the federal government', for better or for worse, being waged by the Trump administration. I would imagine most federal employees are just trying to keep their jobs... not pay attention to Bitcoin Lightning transactions of little consequence
Agree it would be difficult if not impossible to track and trace LN zaps but LNs are centralised and can't those centralised operators of LN be served with enforcement orders or the like?
SN itself appears to have been forced to implement CCs to avoid potential legal consequences of mediating LN payments- perhaps that was more under the Chokepoint2 Biden administration but its stuck.
Yes it seems doubtful if many if anyone is recording every LN zap and reporting it for tax- it is simply too absurdly onerous - and that is my point- they have deliberately made lawful Bitcoin/LN MoE use effectively impractical...while not doing so explicitly but rather very slyly!
Every time we do use it we are exercising peaceful civil disobedience against the fiat debt slavery bankers cartel and their colluding - client governments.
reply
I think the capital gains stuff is really about 'traders'.
And specifically 'traders' who never take self custody but just buy and sell looking at some charts on coinbase or Kraken or somewhere else. Click to buy Click to sell rinse repeat...
Smart Bitcoiners 'don't sell' (for obvious reasons) not only because it's a dumb idea, but because selling is trading and 'trading' is a losing strategy.
And imagine all the 'shitcoinery' that needs to get reported to the 'authorities' - trading, selling, staking, NFTs, memecoins, tokens based on farts, dogs, penguins, Elons... more staking... 'safemoons', 'reddit moons', 'airdrops'... it's all complete nonsense of course.
But it's all 'taxable events'!!! I mean can you imagine the complexity???!!!
Who is going to parse and report all that stuff? Bitcoin is simple by comparison and if you're not trading does anyone care?
With regards to Lightning... it's easy to spin up a Lightning node and connect to 'another' node in almost any country. I don't know how nodes get served with 'orders' much less how they get enforced on individuals for using software.
Phoenix for example isn't even 'in' the United States - are they going to get served an order by the Americans?
reply
The capital gains tax certainly captures traders but it also makes 'legal' MoE use of Bitcoin whether L1 or LN effectively impractical- it results in Bitcoin being effectively only practical to use as a SoV/speculative commodity- and not a MoE...and in achieving that outcome (which they largely have) they (the fiat operators- ie banks and governments) protect and preserve their precious fiat MoE hegemony.
Think of the importance of SWIFT as a US strategic lever ~ to understand the importance of MoE hegemony.
My admittedly limited understanding of LN is that it is centralised and as for the US exerting its jurisdiction over others there seems to be a variety of ways this has been and could be done - effectively most of the developed world is both militarily and monetarily subservient and tributary to the US.
reply
Dude (and I apologize if you're not a dude I shouldn't assume)...
The US is doing absolutely everything it can, as fast as it can, to reduce its influence, dependence on, and relationships with all its traditional allies. The US is trying to make the rest of the world - developed or not - as distant from the United States as quickly as possible.
Everything else is "Europe's fault" or "Canada's fault" as to why the US isn't as prosperous as it used to be... and why China is growing faster economically than the United States.
My admittedly limited understanding of LN is that it is centralised
My understanding is that while it's not as decentralized as 'on-chain'... it is decentralized it's not just a big liquid or something. There are tons of apps, node implementations, open source node software, android implementations etc...
If the US controlled everything like it did 40 years ago... maybe the US could go door to door tracking down every lightning company, LSP, liquidity provider, node company, Lightning implementable, android repository etc...
But now? Now way. The Europeans will say 'screw you' 'none of your business' and the US is too politically chaotic and determined to tariff itself 'for freedom' to do anything constructive.
I wish this weren't the case, as the US in my opinion used to be a totally different country.
reply
Agree US is rapidly changing its stance toward the rest of the world but at the same time Trump is heavily leveraging upon the legacy of institutional and protocol dominance that the US has enjoyed for decades.
He is blatantly breaching FTAs and other international law in a way few other countries would dare to and that few are prepared to challenge but rather most cower to, although China and the EU are pushing back.
USA under Trump can do this because of its legacy dominance, and Trumps willingness to trash traditional/conventional expectations and assumptions.
The reserve currency status of the USD is perhaps the most important of these legacy strategic assets and levers by which to control and dominate.
IMO this is becauseTrump recognises the imminence of potentially losing several of these levers of empire- China is enabling trade payments for Russia and Iran- not just N.Korea.
With the Saudis joining the mBridge protocol which enables trade payments via Chinas CBDC Yuan the threat is now urgent and well advanced.
Trump is urgently seeking to buy time by using all the threats, bluff and shock tactics he can, and maybe he can buy some time...but it is a rearguard defensive action of a retreating empire seeking to preserve as much of its advantage as it can while the economic momentum is heavily in favour of the global trade leader- China.
USA still have the legacy advantage in the complex of post WW2 institutions of global monetary and trade governance- the World Bank, WTO, IMF, BIS, SWIFT...but China now dominates global trade and logically should, must and is increasing its own institutional and protocol structures. Chinas development bank now finances much more global infrastructure and development than the World Bank. Chinas military capacity is advancing rapidly across many fronts while the US still leads in many areas that lead is reducing across most.
Trade dominance goes hand in hand with Empire - military and monetary power projection.
It has since Roman times- since Jesus reportedly answered- 'whose image is this?'
Look at the alignment of monetary systems and military from Roman times to today.
The Five Eyes Network and the Western Banking Network.
They are the tertiary structures of empire.
China is reverse engineering them both and while Bitcoin does theoretically present a neutral and equitable alternative- its use as a MoE is obstructed heavily if subtly and slyly in the 'liberal' west and quite overtly and explicitly in the East.
Use of Bitcoin as a speculative commodity/SoV is of little threat to the nation state (KYCed and taxed it even brings some benefit) and the bankers monetary power, but use of Bitcoin for MoE, is.
reply
I don't think ultimately that it's 'the government' or 'the banks' really preventing Bitcoin as a MoE.
I mean their tax treatment of it doesn't help for sure.
But if people, even in the United States "The Empire" really wanted to use Bitcoin for Medium of Exchange they would just do it. I don't think Americans, a great great many of them would care about 'taxes' for daily payments, goods and services, daily expenses etc if they really wanted to use Bitcoin. I think they would just use it and... not care.
Supply follows demand and I never see 'Bitcoin accepted here' stickers advertised almost anywhere... despite supposedly 20% of Americans "owning Bitcoin" (I'm not sure I believe that number). I think that number is actually way way smaller and the number of people who 'use' Lightning a fraction of that even those "20%" Americans...
As far as Mr Trump's plan and US hegemony... I honestly don't believe Mr Trump is that smart.
I don't believe he has "a plan" except to pander to a domestic political base... and/or whatever he thinks they want based on what he sees on TV.
I don't believe Mr Trump has any idea what the BiS is or what it does... or the 'Five Eyes' or even the IMF anything like that. What the executive branch (white house) is doing I think he makes up... more or less on the spot there's no plan except 'what he feels' from day to day.
It's like the new "Gulf of America" renaming. How does that make the US military or economic situation any better? It's just marketing