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The IRS has decided to treat cryptocurrency as an asset (like gold) instead of a currency.
by jefftk 7y ago
The IRS has decided to treat cryptocurrency as an asset (like gold) instead of a currency.
- blhack 7y agoWhich I think is a mistake. The tax code should be accommodating; it should not be adversarial. Many people do not treat bitcoin like gold, they treat it like a paypal account.
- Analemma_ 7y agoStrongly disagree. In terms of both actual usage and the rhetoric I most commonly see on crypto fora (“digital gold!”, “store of value!”), commodity, not currency, is the correct categorization.
- blhack 7y agoMaybe there should be a third category then.
- lawn 7y agoJust because some people are loudly shouting it's only a "store of value" (i.e. they only speculate with it), doesn't mean others aren't using it as money. Furthermore that's only the Bitcoin maximalists and it doesn't apply to all other cryptocurrencies (since Bitcoin is only really useful for speculation).
- kosievdmerwe 7y agoWell a lot of people are treating cryptocurrencies as speculative assets. ICOs wouldn't have been such a big thing if people didn't do that. So why shouldn't the IRS do the same?
- patrioticaction 7y agoThe ICO market crashed and trading volume on crypto exchanges keeps dipping lower and lower and lower. Its main use-case has shifted back to currency after a failed bid as a security.
- kosievdmerwe 7y agoThis is a relatively new change though, as in the last year/couple of months. So I wouldn't expect the IRS to have shifted it's treatment. Especially in the context of 2018 taxes.
- mirekrusin 7y agoCan you refer me to the source of "crypto exchanges [volume] keeps dipping", please? I'm looking at BTC volume and it's not dipping at all. There was a sharp drop in Jan '17 when Chinese exchanges were forced to close. Other than that volume correlates to the price.