4 ms·

I like a well written bitcoin story. As soon as this story opened with the red herring of Silk Road, I sighed in disappointment. To my knowledge, bitcoin is no

I like a well written bitcoin story. As soon as this story opened with the red herring of Silk Road, I sighed in disappointment. To my knowledge, bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by my country (or any other country), therefore it has no special properties. I'm an individual citizen buying something for one value and selling it for another. This is well established in civil law and tax taw. When I see a story about bitcoin I read it once, then read it again substituting the words pet rocks for the word bitcoin. I ask 'is there anything specific to bitcoin about the concerns being raised?' and the answer is almost always no. If I buy some pet rocks at a garage sale in August and sell them at my garage sale in September for more money, I record the profit or loss, report it on my tax return and pay the appropriate income tax on it. This is not advice, but its what I'm going with until I learn otherwise.

omni 14y ago
I'm sure supporters of Bitcoin would (at least in the US) like to argue for Bitcoin being a currency in this case, as it would allow users to record capital gains and losses rather than standard P/L like you'd get from selling rocks. The tax benefits on capital gains are much greater. edit: This statement is false. Thanks for the clarification, nullc.
- nullc 14y ago
  Er. Something doesn't have to be a _currency_ to report capital gains on them! http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2011_publink100010476 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2011_pu... "For the most part, everything you own and use for personal purposes, pleasure, or investment is a capital asset. Some examples are: [...] Any property you own is a capital asset, except the following noncapital assets."
tbrownaw 14y ago
To my knowledge, bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by my country (or any other country), therefore it has no special properties. I would expect that the laws would be written so that anything people (try to) use as a currency would be treated as one, rather than having a list of currencies that someone has to keep up-to-date.

omni 14y ago

I'm sure supporters of Bitcoin would (at least in the US) like to argue for Bitcoin being a currency in this case, as it would allow users to record capital gains and losses rather than standard P/L like you'd get from selling rocks. The tax benefits on capital gains are much greater. edit: This statement is false. Thanks for the clarification, nullc.

nullc 14y ago
Er. Something doesn't have to be a _currency_ to report capital gains on them! http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2011_publink100010476 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p550/ch04.html#en_US_2011_pu... "For the most part, everything you own and use for personal purposes, pleasure, or investment is a capital asset. Some examples are: [...] Any property you own is a capital asset, except the following noncapital assets."

tbrownaw 14y ago

To my knowledge, bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by my country (or any other country), therefore it has no special properties. I would expect that the laws would be written so that anything people (try to) use as a currency would be treated as one, rather than having a list of currencies that someone has to keep up-to-date.