I understand the US aspects pretty well. The people making the transaction need a dollar equivalent to be able to report to the IRS. Superfluid created a process through which people could negotiate that value after the transaction (the seller wants it smaller, the buyer wants it bigger). Currencies that have dollar equivalencies (Berkshares, etc.) don't have to bother with this. On Jan 23, 2011, at 10:11 PM, Michel Bauwens wrote:
european LETS faced the same tax issues in the 80's-90's but they all seemed to have solved them ... but they do pay some kind of taxes,
do we have an expert on these aspects here?
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 12:16 AM, Douglas Rushkoff <[email protected]> wrote: Fascinating. Sounds like he got the same attack that Paypal did in the early days, when the banks went after the company for earning its profit on the "float."
The thing that could bring Bitcoin to its knees in the US is the tax law. Ultimately, the network operator would be responsible for tax reporting when people are making exchanges of value and not using cash. I found all this out while working with the Superfluid guys. If I administrate trades for you like ebay does, in US currency, I'm not obligated to produce 1099's. If I don't do the value exchange in dollars, I must report the dollar equivalency to the IRS.
This law has yet to be enforced, but it surely would be if any of these currencies scaled up.
On Jan 23, 2011, at 11:59 AM, magius wrote:
Bitcoin and Opencoin are "sons" of David Chaum's Digicash both. Chaum is one of the most important cryptographers and freedom fighters in the world and invented in the eighties the first digital cash, that was refused, attacked and destroyed by credit card companies societies, that instead wanted to propagate a model not based on anonimity. The big difference between them is that Bitcoin is a complete currency system instead Opencoin is the system to make a currency (a digital mint). Bitcoin you need to use as-it-is, with Opencoin instead you can create your own currency system.
_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
-- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/ mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation