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I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. I've been banned from Paypal. I've run into many verification issues over the last decade wi

I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. I've been banned from Paypal. I've run into many verification issues over the last decade with banks because I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Like physical cash, it doesn't need to be superior in all ways to be useful at all.

rualca 6y ago
> I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. Just because a random guy barters bitcoins for goods/services, that by no means implies that bitcoin is anything close to money. There is a very specific definition of what money is, and bitcoin's volatility alone rules it completely out.
- newdude116 6y ago
  Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money, except if you consider money credit. Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.
  - bluedevil2k 6y ago
    The US government would not accept BTC as payment for anything, so it is definitely NOT a fiat money.
    - phpwutz 6y ago
      The actual only criteria of fiat money I learned in austrian high school was "government will accept taxes in that currency". We have quiet a long history of taxes here, ranging from cows or sacks of grain to gold to gold coins to gulden to reichsmark to schilling to euro. Probably a good measure of centuries more than the US (which basically got kickstarted with the UK system at the time). Funnily enough, the above definition was the only thing holding true through the centuries. Thing is, if your government accepts taxes in a certain currency (even if it's a foreign one, that's perfectly fine too) it creates a stability by itself which fosters the usability (call it user friendlyness if you like) of the currency. In that sense, I'm fairly sure that unless you are personal friends with the president you cannot pay your taxes in Euro the same way you cannot pay them in ₿, Pesos or ¥ because the currency the US claims their taxes in is USD. Please prove me wrong or gib a better definition if I'm wrong :) Happy New Year everyone!
  - rualca 6y ago
    > Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money. Bitcoin is obviously not money, and among the many reasons the fact that it does not serve as a store of value nor a means to defer payments, which is a single requirement that comprised the very definition of money, is just one of them.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money No, it's not. It’s too volatile to be an efficient store of value or a useful unit of account for general purposes; it's got some use as a competitive medium of exchange for certain circumstances (but again not really with the generality of any major fiat currency.) It's commodity that seems to (retrospectively, at least, and there is some reason to expect this to continue for the near future) have good investment performance if you are in a position to wait out down periods, which makes it nice as a component of an investment portfolio. It's good at things that aren't the purpose of money, but mostly not good for things that are the purposes of money, except for a narrow subset of one of three major purposes of money.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  It's not one guy bartering, it's a lot of services offering it as a payment option, treating it effectively like a foreign currency with a different set of payment providers
  - rualca 6y ago
    > It's not one guy bartering It takes two to barter. > treating it effectively like a foreign currency They really aren't. They accept bitcoins in exchange for goods/services, just like we see in any barter system. Calling bitcoins "foreign currency" is just a desperate attempt to hide the obvious consequences of it's volatility, which eliminates it's role as money, not only as a store of value but also as unit of account. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
- sunshinerag 6y ago
  oh what is this very specific definition of what money is does the non-random guy on internet have?
  - rualca 6y ago
    > oh what is this very specific definition of what money is does the non-random guy on internet have? Each and every single random guy on the internet who wants to buy stuff with money cares about money, and the properties that allow something to work as money. Specifically, properties like being stable in its value within the market, and reliable both as a means of deferred payments and meet debts. Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is nothing of the sort. Far from it.
    - sunshinerag 6y ago
      >> Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is nothing of the sort. Far from it. For some random guys on the internet. yes. Some other guys are using it without waiting for it to be everything the previous system had. (deferred payments etc.).
Trasmatta 6y ago
Do you live in the US? If so, how do you deal with the tax implications of buying lots of things with crypto? It's my understanding that each of those is considered a taxable event that you have to report on your tax return.
- gruez 6y ago
  >It's my understanding that each of those is considered a taxable event that you have to report on your tax return. Isn't that trivial to do from a reporting point of view? Just export your wallet history and do a lookup on that day's price.
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    Yeah I guess so, it still seems like it could be a major pain. Especially if somebody, say, transferred money between wallets and didn't keep good records. Or messed up the cost basis somehow. Or didn't think to set aside the necessary taxes every time, and then finds themselves with an unexpectedly large tax bill at the end of the year. It's another reason why using a cryptocurrency is still a gigantic hassle in comparison to fiat.
reaperducer 6y ago
I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Every state I've lived in (13 so far) has an ID card that looks and acts exactly like a driver's license, with the only legal difference being that it is not valid for driving. Unless you're not in America, in which case someone else can chime in.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  If you don't live in the US, then it becomes difficult to prove state residency as they want things like pay stubs, cellphone bills, and rent payments. Or you need to find someone who can prove residency and then claim (lie) that you reside (domicile) with them. I don't have any of that. But maybe you can appreciate that I don't want to have to jump through those hoops just to be able to send someone $100 digitally.
  - aplummer 6y ago
    > But maybe you can appreciate that I don't want to have to jump through those hoops just to be able to send someone $100 digitally. Surely you store fiat currency somewhere, and isn't there a "transfer money" button where you plug in an account number and institution and the money arrives shortly after?
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      for almost 1/4 of the population of the US that isn't actually true.
      - jen20 6y ago
        While I assume you're talking about those without bank accounts in this statistic, it's also not true of most bank accounts in the US either so far as I can tell. The inability to make transfers immediately and without fees between accounts held at different banks is bizarre for those used to UK banking.
  - doingmyting 6y ago
ojhughes 6y ago
You also need a valid ID verification to buy BTC from the main platforms now
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Yeah, Coinbase changed the other year, only for US citizens, where a passport is insufficient, you need to prove state residency (i.e. for most people, a driver's license). But one of my points here is that, while I'm sure some people here are chomping at the bit to nail me with a gleeful "see? ironic!", I simply don't have to use Coinbase. I can, for example, exchange Bitcoin locally the same way I can trade USD for pesos with my roommate. I was SOL at one point when I was simultaneously banned from Paypal while my bank at the time spontaneously rejected further access to my own account, the two institutions I was depending on to operate abroad. It's what made me turn to Bitcoin, and I began considering how ridiculous the state of our financial status quo where I have precarious access to my own money. I can appreciate that my outlier needs make it hard for people to relate to me the same way most people don't understand why an HNer cares about Linux when Windows works for them, but I think most people here are disappointingly eager to reject any possible upside of "digital cash". Even if its upsides are exceedingly niche for most people, that's not reason to dismiss them. To me it's like reading an HN thread where everyone dismisses Purism's smartphone because Android and iPhone do the job for 99.9999% of people, and who the hell could possibly care about separating the CPU from cellular baseband? Or maybe they're claiming that only criminals would care about that. Well, that very few people are in a position to appreciate it has no basis on whether we deserve the option. This is my last comment on this particular submission.
  - uep 6y ago
    Are you primarily engaged in illegal actions for your source of income? Your other comments in this thread seem to imply that is the case. No judgement, but if so, I think this is a pertinent piece of information. It is not difficult for most citizens in first world nations to keep and maintain a bank account.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
louwrentius 6y ago
The kind of problems you have are not solved with crypto currency, let’s be real about this.

rualca 6y ago

> I use Bitcoin where ever possible, so your opening claim is wrong. Just because a random guy barters bitcoins for goods/services, that by no means implies that bitcoin is anything close to money. There is a very specific definition of what money is, and bitcoin's volatility alone rules it completely out.

newdude116 6y ago
Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money, except if you consider money credit. Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money.
- bluedevil2k 6y ago
  The US government would not accept BTC as payment for anything, so it is definitely NOT a fiat money.
  - phpwutz 6y ago
    The actual only criteria of fiat money I learned in austrian high school was "government will accept taxes in that currency". We have quiet a long history of taxes here, ranging from cows or sacks of grain to gold to gold coins to gulden to reichsmark to schilling to euro. Probably a good measure of centuries more than the US (which basically got kickstarted with the UK system at the time). Funnily enough, the above definition was the only thing holding true through the centuries. Thing is, if your government accepts taxes in a certain currency (even if it's a foreign one, that's perfectly fine too) it creates a stability by itself which fosters the usability (call it user friendlyness if you like) of the currency. In that sense, I'm fairly sure that unless you are personal friends with the president you cannot pay your taxes in Euro the same way you cannot pay them in ₿, Pesos or ¥ because the currency the US claims their taxes in is USD. Please prove me wrong or gib a better definition if I'm wrong :) Happy New Year everyone!
- rualca 6y ago
  > Than indeed, bitcoin would not be money. Bitcoin is obviously not money, and among the many reasons the fact that it does not serve as a store of value nor a means to defer payments, which is a single requirement that comprised the very definition of money, is just one of them.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Well bitcoin is as much money as FIAT money No, it's not. It’s too volatile to be an efficient store of value or a useful unit of account for general purposes; it's got some use as a competitive medium of exchange for certain circumstances (but again not really with the generality of any major fiat currency.) It's commodity that seems to (retrospectively, at least, and there is some reason to expect this to continue for the near future) have good investment performance if you are in a position to wait out down periods, which makes it nice as a component of an investment portfolio. It's good at things that aren't the purpose of money, but mostly not good for things that are the purposes of money, except for a narrow subset of one of three major purposes of money.
wongarsu 6y ago
It's not one guy bartering, it's a lot of services offering it as a payment option, treating it effectively like a foreign currency with a different set of payment providers
- rualca 6y ago
  > It's not one guy bartering It takes two to barter. > treating it effectively like a foreign currency They really aren't. They accept bitcoins in exchange for goods/services, just like we see in any barter system. Calling bitcoins "foreign currency" is just a desperate attempt to hide the obvious consequences of it's volatility, which eliminates it's role as money, not only as a store of value but also as unit of account. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money
sunshinerag 6y ago
oh what is this very specific definition of what money is does the non-random guy on internet have?
- rualca 6y ago
  > oh what is this very specific definition of what money is does the non-random guy on internet have? Each and every single random guy on the internet who wants to buy stuff with money cares about money, and the properties that allow something to work as money. Specifically, properties like being stable in its value within the market, and reliable both as a means of deferred payments and meet debts. Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is nothing of the sort. Far from it.
  - sunshinerag 6y ago
    >> Bitcoin, or any cryptocurrency, is nothing of the sort. Far from it. For some random guys on the internet. yes. Some other guys are using it without waiting for it to be everything the previous system had. (deferred payments etc.).

Trasmatta 6y ago

Do you live in the US? If so, how do you deal with the tax implications of buying lots of things with crypto? It's my understanding that each of those is considered a taxable event that you have to report on your tax return.

gruez 6y ago
>It's my understanding that each of those is considered a taxable event that you have to report on your tax return. Isn't that trivial to do from a reporting point of view? Just export your wallet history and do a lookup on that day's price.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  Yeah I guess so, it still seems like it could be a major pain. Especially if somebody, say, transferred money between wallets and didn't keep good records. Or messed up the cost basis somehow. Or didn't think to set aside the necessary taxes every time, and then finds themselves with an unexpectedly large tax bill at the end of the year. It's another reason why using a cryptocurrency is still a gigantic hassle in comparison to fiat.

reaperducer 6y ago

I have no proof of residency once my driver's license expired. Every state I've lived in (13 so far) has an ID card that looks and acts exactly like a driver's license, with the only legal difference being that it is not valid for driving. Unless you're not in America, in which case someone else can chime in.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
If you don't live in the US, then it becomes difficult to prove state residency as they want things like pay stubs, cellphone bills, and rent payments. Or you need to find someone who can prove residency and then claim (lie) that you reside (domicile) with them. I don't have any of that. But maybe you can appreciate that I don't want to have to jump through those hoops just to be able to send someone $100 digitally.
- aplummer 6y ago
  > But maybe you can appreciate that I don't want to have to jump through those hoops just to be able to send someone $100 digitally. Surely you store fiat currency somewhere, and isn't there a "transfer money" button where you plug in an account number and institution and the money arrives shortly after?
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    for almost 1/4 of the population of the US that isn't actually true.
    - jen20 6y ago
      While I assume you're talking about those without bank accounts in this statistic, it's also not true of most bank accounts in the US either so far as I can tell. The inability to make transfers immediately and without fees between accounts held at different banks is bizarre for those used to UK banking.
- doingmyting 6y ago

ojhughes 6y ago

You also need a valid ID verification to buy BTC from the main platforms now

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Yeah, Coinbase changed the other year, only for US citizens, where a passport is insufficient, you need to prove state residency (i.e. for most people, a driver's license). But one of my points here is that, while I'm sure some people here are chomping at the bit to nail me with a gleeful "see? ironic!", I simply don't have to use Coinbase. I can, for example, exchange Bitcoin locally the same way I can trade USD for pesos with my roommate. I was SOL at one point when I was simultaneously banned from Paypal while my bank at the time spontaneously rejected further access to my own account, the two institutions I was depending on to operate abroad. It's what made me turn to Bitcoin, and I began considering how ridiculous the state of our financial status quo where I have precarious access to my own money. I can appreciate that my outlier needs make it hard for people to relate to me the same way most people don't understand why an HNer cares about Linux when Windows works for them, but I think most people here are disappointingly eager to reject any possible upside of "digital cash". Even if its upsides are exceedingly niche for most people, that's not reason to dismiss them. To me it's like reading an HN thread where everyone dismisses Purism's smartphone because Android and iPhone do the job for 99.9999% of people, and who the hell could possibly care about separating the CPU from cellular baseband? Or maybe they're claiming that only criminals would care about that. Well, that very few people are in a position to appreciate it has no basis on whether we deserve the option. This is my last comment on this particular submission.
- uep 6y ago
  Are you primarily engaged in illegal actions for your source of income? Your other comments in this thread seem to imply that is the case. No judgement, but if so, I think this is a pertinent piece of information. It is not difficult for most citizens in first world nations to keep and maintain a bank account.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago

louwrentius 6y ago

The kind of problems you have are not solved with crypto currency, let’s be real about this.