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Sounds like a nightmare - if Amazon did accept BTC, if you purchased something in BTC would Amazon send you a 1040 at the end of the year for capital gains? If
by endisneigh 5y ago
Sounds like a nightmare - if Amazon did accept BTC, if you purchased something in BTC would Amazon send you a 1040 at the end of the year for capital gains? If you made returns you could see capital losses? Would they be obligated to send you BTC or the denominated fiat in USD (or whatever currency) at the time of purchase. If they can choose then obviously they're going to choose such that it's in their advantage.
I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it used to be that on eBay it was a nightmare to do a similar thing with foreign currencies. You'd have a foreign transaction fee and an additional currency conversion fee.
Some people complained additionally that when you received a refund it was received in the seller's currency so you had to pay again to have it converted back to the original currency.
- wmf 5y agoBitcoin is bad but all of those were solved years ago by BitPay.
- endisneigh 5y agoDon't understand your response - I didn't say these things were problems. It's more of a matter of what Amazon will decide to do. Even with Bitpay the questions would still stand.
- wmf 5y agoSorry, I thought you meant it's a nightmare for Amazon to figure out how to accept BTC. I agree that buying stuff with BTC is a nightmare which is why in reality virtually no one bothers (and the few people who do spend BTC just "forget" to do the paperwork).
- gruez 5y agoIt's already a solved problem. Most bitcoin payment processors allow you to get paid in USD (basically doing the conversion for you). If you decide to accept bitcoins directly, you don't get capital gains/losses unless you sell.
- acdha 5y agoWhat does that give you other than higher fees?
- gruez 5y ago1. the fees can be lower, especially if you're talking about high value and/or lightning network transactions. I sampled two processors and they both charge 1% fee (compared to 3%-4%) and offer free fiat/crypto withdraws. 2. not having to worry about chargebacks
- acdha 5y agoChargebacks are a great point - they’d love to shift that to the buyers
- wmf 5y agoTransaction fees are paid by the customer, so fees may be lower from the merchant's perspective.
- Anon1096 5y agoI believe the parent comment is referring to sending customers a tax form, not Amazon. Someone who bought Bitcoin for a dollar a decade ago and now buys a GPU with that Bitcoin would absolutely have to pay capital gains on the increased value of the Bitcoin as it's effectively liquidating it.
- endisneigh 5y agoYes, exactly. I believe people are misunderstanding my comment. No matter what processor you use, depending on how Amazon decides to refund you it will absolutely become a hassle for the customer. It's just inherent - it's not really a "problem" tho, not anymore so than trading stocks. If you bought Bitcoin for a buck a decade ago and bought a GPU for Christmas and decided on New Year's Day you'd like to return it, but Bitcoin changed price you'd have to deal with a lot of tax stuff. There's no payment processor that can resolve this.