[P2P-F] Bitcoin @ EFF

[Douglas Rushkoff]

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.
> 
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