Is Bitcoin Money?

[ClaytonB]

That is still a taxable event according to the IRS. It is bartering and you owe taxes on the USD equivalent of the transaction. I linked to it the other day somewhere around here. just fwiw.

The irs has plenty of ways of collecting.

Yes, but the only people that really file taxes on the cash paid to the babysitter and the cash earned during the garage sale are people with tons of other assets that they can't afford to put at risk over a trivial non-compliance with tax diktat. Most of the people who stand to benefit the most from Bitcoin either are not in the US at all (e.g. Venezuelans) or are US persons with few or no assets for the IRS to seize.

Unless you have assets to seize or owe an astronomical amount of taxes, the IRS is more or less powerless against you. Yes, the tyrants who wrote the tax code really meant that they can throw you in prison for years over some small amount of unpaid taxes. No, that's not actually going to happen because there are other, more pressing matters that beltway-critters need to expend their "political capital" on. In short, the informal economy is going to go right ahead trading real goods in Bitcoin no matter what the IRS or anybody else thinks about it.

This invokes one of the laws of power - it's better to change the rules you can't enforce than to let the masses flaunt your rules. I think the IRS wants to see whether they can tax Bitcoin, so I think they're going to hold the line on "any Bitcoin exchange is a taxable event" rule, for now. But if they can't find a way to tax it and people are just openly flaunting IRS tax rules, the IRS will be damn fools not to change their guidance accordingly. But then, the government is filled to the brim with damn fools.

[Mordan]

Yes, but the only people that really file taxes on the cash paid to the babysitter and the cash earned during the garage sale are people with tons of other assets that they can't afford to put at risk over a trivial non-compliance with tax diktat. Most of the people who stand to benefit the most from Bitcoin either are not in the US at all (e.g. Venezuelans) or are US persons with few or no assets for the IRS to seize.

Unless you have assets to seize or owe an astronomical amount of taxes, the IRS is more or less powerless against you. Yes, the tyrants who wrote the tax code really meant that they can throw you in prison for years over some small amount of unpaid taxes. No, that's not actually going to happen because there are other, more pressing matters that beltway-critters need to expend their "political capital" on. In short, the informal economy is going to go right ahead trading real goods in Bitcoin no matter what the IRS or anybody else thinks about it.

This invokes one of the laws of power - it's better to change the rules you can't enforce than to let the masses flaunt your rules. I think the IRS wants to see whether they can tax Bitcoin, so I think they're going to hold the line on "any Bitcoin exchange is a taxable event" rule, for now. But if they can't find a way to tax it and people are just openly flaunting IRS tax rules, the IRS will be damn fools not to change their guidance accordingly. But then, the government is filled to the brim with damn fools.

I don't understand how the us tax code became what it is today.

I am so surprised so many libertarians here are not embracing crypto. Makes me think those naysayers are gov moles and shills working for Hillary and Co.

[gaazn]

Bitcoin is like high quality diamonds or baseball cards that are all graded the same, but the grades are all the same and not determined by DeBeers or authenticity companies. And its a lot more mobile.

Questions:

Is if people stop mining for whatever reason or SHTF, then does the bitcoin have much value since its highly dependent on energy. Or is that when everyone moves on to the next thing?

Do exchanges have the ability/power to move away to another cryptocurrency as the exchange currency?

I do see if bitcoin has potential to be like a ticket/token/membership to an exclusive club, or to buy experiences like meeting the Pope, going to moon or Mars, etc. but then those groups could just create their own tokens...

[Brian4Liberty]

[Brian4Liberty]