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Swiss City of Zug Will Accept Bitcoin For Public Service Payments (techweekeurope.co.uk)
Slashdot reader Mickeycaskill writes: The Swiss city of Zug, famed for its financial sector and low tax rates, will accept Bitcoin as payment for public services up the value of 200 Swiss Francs.The city council hopes the use of digital currencies will help stimulate the local fintech sector and promote the region as a financial hub. If the trial is successful, the value of transactions could be increased and other towns in the canton will join in.
"We want to express our openness to new technologies," said Mayor Dolfi Muller. "We will invite FinTech companies in Zug to meet with the City Council to exchange ideas. Our goal is to provide the best environment for their development."
"We want to express our openness to new technologies," said Mayor Dolfi Muller. "We will invite FinTech companies in Zug to meet with the City Council to exchange ideas. Our goal is to provide the best environment for their development."
One should be able to pay electricity bills with Bitcoins.
That would give an important perspective.
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin. Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Primary source
Sorry, everything in German. /.er fluent in Goethe's mother tongue (Official media is written in Schriftdütsch, not in dialect).
The English version of the City Website only contain tourist-oriented information. These news aren't translated.
But might be useful to other
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Maybe they should also consider taking the South African Rand while they're at it. At least it's more useful
Swiss City of Zug
Clearly not a real place. Nice try, Craig!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Money laundering for utilities isn't likely...
Money laundering with bitcoins in general is a bad idea.
Once again, just to remind you that the whole central modus operandi is the exact opposite of anonymity :
The whole purpose for which bitcoin was created was to eschew the need of a central authority (As opposed to credit cards - on which MasterCard and Visa have a near-monopoly - online payment processor like PayPal which are more or less the defacto standard), to avoid situations such as MasterCard and Visa deciding to freeze WikiLeaks' donations or the various snafus of PayPal. They wanted something more like cash (which can freely change hands without problems) or somehting remind a little bit the SEPA system used by european banks (you can easily and (relatively) quickly exchange money between any random accounts, as long as both banks are member of this system).
This works by instead spreading the official ledger book (aka the blockchain) accross all peers of the network. There is no such things as anonymity in the bitcoin network, everyone can check all the transations ever. On purpose. So anyone can check that all transactions seem legit and the whole network can agree on it, without the need of a central authority.
At best you have some pseudonymity: The transaction aren't expressed using real citizen identities, but using cryptographic keys (So on a quick glance, you'll transaction validated by "key 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61", not by "real identity John Doe, address: ...").
On a quick glance the real-life identity behind each cryptographic transaction isn't revealed, but isn't beyond the Big-data analysis and computing power of a well motivated State. (by following all the various "money threads" formed by all the numerous cryptographic transaction, it's possible to cluster them, and boil down to a list of potential suspects).
So money laundering using bitcoins isn't a very intelligent decision. If a state-level agency (or any other entity with access to similar level resources) decide to go after your ass, they'll find you.
Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
Yup, indeed.
Whether in fact bitcoin managed to actually achieve independence from central authority is open to debate:
Everyone *can* indeed check the blockchain.
But currently, most of the "mining" computing power is at the hand of a few chinese guys.
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin.
And actually somewhat useful:
a bill paid by bitcoin is stored forever in the blockchain. It can be checked by anyone.
No risk of losing the proof of payment and getting into administrative troubles.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
WTF is Amurika? I thought it was Amedica!
200 Swiss Francs? That should be enough for a sandwich and coke, there.
85/83 = 1.02409638554217
We've all read the stories of hackers locking up the data of hospitals and demanding ransom payments in Bitcoin, because it's untraceable. If flagrant criminals can clear payments in Bitcoin, why can't US-designated "rogue" regimes use Bitcoin to get around being shut out of international banking? For example, why couldn't Argentina pay their bondholders in Bitcoin, when international bankers refused to process their payments?
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin. Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
What power to bitcoin (BTC) folks? Billing is still calculated in Swiss Francs (SF), a real-time exchange rate of SF to BTC is determined at the time of payment, the current BTC required for payment specified, payment made, BTC converted to SF (or Euro if that is more convenient).
In other words bitcoin is used only as a transaction method. Its not used as a currency, prices/rates are not denominated in it, the power company is not holding bitcoin, etc. Bitcoin holds no "power" over the power company.
One thing the article left out is how Zug will convert BC to SF. I would guess they want to do that immediately since they would not want to expose themselves to BC's volatility but rather ensure the expected revenues are matched by actual ones. Since it is a small trial the volatility wouldn't be enough to make much of a difference but large scale adoption of BC for payments would require them to address the volatility and conversion to SF issues.
Good question.
I would imagine they'll simply resort to a payment processor? And thus defer to them the gory details of handling the BTC-CHF conversion ?
- They use payment processors for handling credit cards anyway (Six Payment is wide speard in most physical shops in Switzerland, Datatrans is popular for on-line payments)
- There are a few payment processor that both can handle CHF *and* BTC (Random example among the bitcoin-oriented payment processors, Coinbase is available in Switzerland) (Another more classical example: Sum Up is a start-up for classical credit card payments, focussing on using Apps on smartphones/tablets a.k.a. mPOS - thus perfect for small businesses on the move like food-trucks - which is partnering in Switzerland with UBS - one of the three biggest swiss banks, that's some cred - and apparently they've started featuring bitcoin, using Bitpay behind the scene for the BTC processing)
- Nearly any shop that I know which handles BTC (random example: Humble Bundle) uses a payment processor and defers to them the handling of BTC, the shop it self only receives its local currentcy on the bank account, like with credit card processors.
The only exceptions are shops ultra specialised in bitcoin technology (e.g.: butterlfy labs, they price all their mining hardware directly in BTC)
It will be interesting to see if other cantons / cities get on the train as it leaves the station or merely get pulled along into it by Zug...
I see what you did here... :-D
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]