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Japan Considers Treating Bitcoin As Conventional Currency (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Regulators in Japan are considering officially recognizing bitcoins and other digital currencies as valid methods of payment. The Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA) is in the process of deciding whether to make legislative revisions to regulation that currently regards virtual currencies as objects rather than traditional forms of payment. Under the new proposal, consumers will be able to purchase goods and services using bitcoin and other digital currencies, and also use them as an alternative to legal tender through purchases or trades. The new definition will be submitted during the current session of the Diet, Japan's legislature, which concludes on 1st June this year.
and more tax
Wasn't the whole point of digital currencies to avoid the need for a government to bless (and therefore control) a particularly unit of money?
>> consumers will be able to purchase goods and services using bitcoin and other digital currencies
I believe this is already possible - no government blessing necessary, thank you.
the venn diagrams of bitcoin, katana and anime enthusiasts are basically a single circle
My god, it's the network police.
Surprise!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Japan was the home base for Mt. Gox.. Maybe this is fallout from that fiasco.
..and seeing as how I managed to pull a Sexconker move (failed to check the AC box), I guess I have to put up with the shit attitudes from cunts anyway. Such is life.. or war, as the case may be. FML.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I'm more or less just having a shitty day, know what I mean? Probably should have stayed in bed and called in sick.
:-)
Just for the record: Only some of you out there are cunts. The rest of you are a-ok in my book.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Japan is already forcing people to horde cash with their negative interest rates.
http://fortune.com/2016/02/23/...
Something like bitcoin could prove disastrous for their banking system.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
--Bilbo Baggins
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
BitCoin isn't anonymous. Every transaction is recorded and public data. It is pseudononymous, just like the name "kheldan" on Slashdot. When someone attempts to actually use their BitCoins for some purpose other than trading between wallets for personal entertainment, there is a link between the wallet and an exchange of goods or services. Some of the more capably paranoid can do a passable job of not linking their transactions to their legal identity. (similar to how many Slashdotters manage to avoid admitting their real name, job, and skillset whether they wear a number or not)
Bitcoin should not be anonymous.
Like it or not, BitCoin may be anonymous, but it is 100% tracked. What's generally unknown is who owns which wallet, but EVERY transaction is tracked FOREVER in the coin's block chain so every transaction is tracked. Once you put a wallet to a person, the whole transaction history for that wallet is available.
Those who fear having their finances known need to seriously consider that BitCoin may be anonymous, but as soon as somebody figures out your wallet id which you need to share with anybody you transfer a coin from or to, they can go get your entire history. I'm not so sure I'd be considering this currency anonymous...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Sure, they are physical objects, but so are pieces of paper (er, cloth in some countries) and shiny base-metal coins.
If you are going to treat BC like currency, then treat "commodity" metal like currency and, for that matter, allow anyone who can guarantee the safety of their safe and insure it against theft or destruction the option of "printing" paper- or electronic-currency that is denominated in physical quantities of gold or silver (e.g. a "pre-mined" e-currency controlled by a bank or other institution, with the smallest fractional unit equal to 1 microgram of gold, or paper "gold certificates" backed by the bank or other institution that holds them that were valued in grams-of-gold).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
but as soon as somebody figures out your wallet id
That's why you don't keep all your bitcoin in a single wallet. I make a new wallet every time someone wants to send me bitcoin, so until I spend it, there's only a single input into the wallet. And when you spend part of the wallet(s), you can send the change to a new wallet.
If I can't roll it up and use it to snort a line, then it's not money.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Wasn't the whole point of digital currencies to avoid the need for a government to bless (and therefore control) a particularly unit of money?
Only to those whose grasp of reality is a bit tenuous. There have always been currencies not controlled by a particular government, not to mention bullion and other de-facto currencies. The fact that it isn't a fiat currency is irrelevant. There is absolutely no chance that governments will not get involved in regulating anything resembling a currency. Anyone who thought otherwise is delusional.
I don't think you know the definition of the word 'fungible.'
For most of recorded history, gold has made a terrific currency - the kind you can power regional empires on.,/quote>
Gold has served as a currency adequately at times (and poorly at others) but I dispute the "terrific" part of your thesis. There are very good reasons why it is no longer the basis of any modern currency.
The biggest criminals in the world are the banks and governments.
The biggest money launderers are the banks.
The biggest supporters of terrorism are governments.
Regulating bitcoin does not stop any of the above. It might inconvenience some small time criminals, but the people it hurts the most are the average citizens. You give governments complete control over a person's financial state, and you will see what crimes against humanity they will commit. This "we're doing it to eliminate crime" is nothing but a lie that the government uses to convince simple minds to go along with the plan.
Bitcoin should not be anonymous. All bitcoin exchanges should be like banks, or part of existing banks, and tracked like every other financial transaction
When I walk into my neighborhood bank and ask for change for a $100, they don't ask for ID.
If I go to the effort to put on a good disguise first, as long as I look like I'm not wearing a disguise they don't blink an eye.
Now if only I could figure out a way to fool the heatmap-reading cameras into thinking I'm someone else....
By the way, until the terrorism-inspired (well, that's what THEY say) "know your customer" laws, American banks were a lot more lax about requiring ID on passbook savings accounts. Now if you want to do anything other than make change or buy a one-time-use/disposable low-denomination "Christmas gift" debit cards like the ones you can buy in grocery stores, you have to provide your thumbprint and at least one (or two?) government IDs.
Thank you Mr. Terrorist. I feel a lot safer now that I have to put my $100 bills under the mattress and face the increased risk being burgled or robbed. *sarcasm*
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's not cheap. A very small negative interest rate is still less costly than renting a safe place to store cash and insuring it against loss, particularly for large amounts.
If I were in Japan and I had lots of cash, I would be looking at "investing" money I didn't need in the next 2-3 months in a "market basket" of Japan's equivalent of money-market accounts, commercial paper, short-term high-quality bonds, and in market-baskets of currencies of other countries, in the hopes that the ups and downs of these investments would even out to something slightly higher than inflation.
By the way, for many years or decades, US banks and money-market accounts have paid effective negative interest rates after you factor in inflation, and that's before factoring in taxation on the nominal interest. There's not much before-taxes practical difference between a 5% inflation rate and a slightly-less-than-5% interest rate and a 0.01% inflation rate and a slightly-less-than-0% interest rate. Psychological difference, yes. Taxation difference, yes (sub-0% interest is actually better in most cases), but practical difference, no.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
as somebody figures out your wallet id which you need to share with anybody you transfer a coin from or to, they can go get your entire history
That's not how Bitcoin works. You can have any number of wallets, and most Bitcoin clients support the new "HD" (Hierarchical Deterministic) wallet format, where many "IDs" are generated from a master key using a one-way function. A single key can provide an infinite stream of distinct addresses, one for each transaction. Without the master key there is nothing to link these addresses together. You don't give people "your wallet ID", you give them an address unique to that one transaction. When you spend the bitcoins later you send the change to a different unique address; if you do it right then it won't be obvious to third-parties which output was the expenditure and which was the change.
The one case that is more difficult to avoid is when you need to combine multiple inputs together to cover a single larger expenditure. The fact that the inputs were used in the same transaction is fair evidence that they are controlled by the same entity. This is where schemes like CoinJoin and mixing services can help to preserve anonymity, by combining many unrelated inputs and redistributing the sums to new addresses in standardized denominations, thus breaking the link between the inputs and the outputs. It is possible to implement this using blinded signatures such that even the mixing service doesn't which inputs are linked to which outputs.
Then there is the fact that "your entire history" is limited to your transactions on the blockchain, which are still pseudonymous for both senders and receivers—it would take a whole lot of old-fashioned detective work to determine the real-world identities of everyone you've traded with even after their (one-time-use) Bitcoin addresses are known.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
For Japan it's just one more way to bypass the banking system.
To be a good substitute for a bank deposit, something must be liquid and it must have either no loss of value or an acceptable upper limit on the loss of value compared to putting money in the bank.
Bitcoin is just too volatile. If I put 10,000 Yen in the bank now then withdraw it in 6 months, how much is it going to be worth? Almost certainly at least 9,900 Yen. If I buy 10,000 Yen worth of Bitcoin, how much will it be worth 6 months from now? Maybe 20,000 Yen, maybe 5,000 Yen, who knows?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Will the Dogecoin mascot mean it will become popular in Japan?
If you think Dogecoin will become popular in Japan, increasing its value, send 50 Dogecoins to D9scjyKETYZesSmhjCR4vye4bc6iDqXPd6.
If you think Dogecoin will NOT become popular in Japan, doing nothing to its value, send 100 Dogecoins to D9scjyKETYZesSmhjCR4vye4bc6iDqXPd6.
I have no idea who kheldan really is, so you are effectively AC to me.
I have no idea who kheldan really is
..which is exactly the way it's supposed to be, friend. ;-)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I don't think I've ever seen anyone quite melt down this much on Slashdot. Presumably, it's a new day when you read this. You need a hug? 'Cause I'll let you hug my g/f. She's cute but only a little squishy 'cause she's kind of skinny. I'm not very squishy at all but I'll give you a hug.
Anyhow, I'm inclined to disagree. The USD is used in crime all the time. Yes, there's some chance that monitoring our activities will result in a safer society. However, I'd rather accept the risk and have more liberty to move about unobserved as well as conduct transactions with less scrutiny. The government needn't know everything and yes, that means that sometimes good people get hurt. There will never be a truly safe society and that's okay. We're humans, we're fallible, and we're going to have bad shit happen.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
If bitcoin is controlled somehow (and how would that work?), criminals will find some way to transfer value that isn't controlled. People can get really ingenious when they're doing stuff you don't want them to.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes