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Bitcoin Becomes Legal Payment Option In Japan, Prices Spike (investopedia.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Investopedia: A bill to amend Japan's Banking Act has finally come to fruition, recognizing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as legal tender. The bill has far-reaching repercussions for the digital currency world as well as the way that cryptocurrencies can be traded and exchanged. The Banking Act was modified after a long process of debate and dialog which saw proponents of digital currencies arguing on their behalf. Now, after months of discussion, the bill has come into effect as of the beginning of April. Section 3 of the bill has been modified to including wording on virtual currency and is being called the Virtual Currency Act, according to reporting by Brave New Coin. Digital currencies like Bitcoin have finally received definition and recognition as a means of payment by the Japanese government. The Banking Act's Payment Services Act has also moved to define a digital currency as "property of value," meaning that it is usable for payment in the broader marketplace and that it may be bought or sold. At the same time, the Japanese bill distinguishes between digital currencies like Bitcoin and "electronic money." Digital currency, in this case, is not issued by a specific entity and may be used by any accepting individual, while electronic money can be linked to a specific issuer and can only be used by that issuer or persons specified by the issuer. Along with the recognition of Bitcoin and other digital currencies is the stipulation that profits from trading of those currencies may be considered as "income from business activities or miscellaneous income." This makes Bitcoin subject to various taxes, including capital gains tax.
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Dear Lameness Filter,
I am not the one that is yelling, it is the pump and dump people that make Bitcoin prices every time there is an article like this.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
FYI, "legal tender" means that people are obligated to accept it in repayment of debts. If I owe you 10 ounces of silver, and I try to give you an equal "value" of Federal Reserve Notes instead, you can't refuse to accept it and then sue me for nonpayment. The courts will consider my offer of the legally-privileged notes as a full defense against that suit.
Merely having the option to accept something doesn't make it legal tender.
See that "Preview" button?
...for fraud. This is serious folks. Bitcoin is all about hiding transactions and avoiding taxes.
You mean like cash?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
No.
The legalization leads to regulation and documentation.
Anonymity is out the window.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Bitcoin isn't anonymous.
Seriously, it might be AWESOME to see some small nation switch to Bitcoin for its currency, so people would finally shut the fuck up when they see it crash under the load.
3.5 TPS. That's it. You can't run a small TOWN on 3.5 transactions per second.
And, unless I'm missing something (whoosh?)... you've got it completely backwards.
In that case, then what's the point of using Bitcoin?
1. Bitcoin cannot be inflated away.
2. For international transactions, Bitcoin transactions are way cheaper.
My company employs a graphic artist in Karachi. We pay her in bitcoin, which she then converts to PKRs for a transaction cost of less than 1%. Using a normal bank would cost 3-6%.
You do know that bitcoin doesn't need to take over all transactions in order to be successful, right?
Wait for the price to rise another order of magnitude or two and the world will be scrambling to move all of their settlement activity to it.
See that "Preview" button?
Cash can be regulated and tracked. Bitcoin not so much.
My mistake. I didn't realize you were from bizarro-world, where everything is backwards and the women wear goatees.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Let's say bit coin becomes legit. How long before we got greedy copy cats sniffing money and start breaking in?
You're late to this particular party. Really late. Bitcoin has been legit enough for long enough that the number of copycat cryptocurrencies is fast approaching infinity.
How many forms of money will it take before money becomes worthless?
All of them.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
In that case, then what's the point of using Bitcoin?
The point of bitcoin (the protocol), is that it is distributed.
There's (theoretically) no central authority.
Any two endpoint can exchange currency (usually BTC) as long as they both follow the protocol.
(anonymity was never a point. And goes against the way bitcoin works as every single (full) node on the network needs a local copy of the whole ledger to be useful. So ever node gets to see every transaction ever done).
You can run a perfectly functional digital economy with yen or any other real currency.
Yeah, and how do you send those yens around ? Say you want to send me 1'000¥.
You'll need to use some system like PayPal (where we need to both have an account) and further down the line you'll need a credit card (so you'll need to also have a card at MasterCard or VISA).
So for our transfer to work, there are a couple of companies (PayPal, MasterCard, etc.) that have central authority over any transaction we attempt.
They could even block us (that actually hapenned to WikiLeaks and was part of the reasons bitcoin got popular).
As opposed to the bitcoin protocol :
- you could be using anything - e.g.: local bitcoin to buy a faction of BTC for some ¥s in your local market. or e.g.: use some exchange platform (whatever has currently replaced MtGOX and BTC-e)
- I could be using some coin processor to convert them to real money (e.g.: BitPay or Coinbase) or simply store them into my local wallet (e.g.: Bitcoin Classic)
As long as the end-point we each chose follows the protocol, the transaction can happen.
There's no single central "Bitcoin Inc." that could control the transaction (massive mining pools aside) and freeze your account.
There's no single BTCcard that we all must obtain in order to do the trasaction.
And unlike PayPal, nobody can block donations to wikileaks.
The closest to this type of freedom of choice is european payment system like SEPA.
As long as your and my bank follow this system, we can send money accross accounts.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So I suppose Linux distros should stop distributing over BitTorrent if they don't want to be known for piracy?
>You do know that bitcoin doesn't need to take over all transactions in order to be successful, right?
I love how you idiots redefine what Bitcoin has to do every time any one of its fatal flaws is pointed out.
Luckily, there are so many flaws to point out it's rare anyone bothers to name them all simultaneously, so you always have somewhere to move your goalpost to.
I doubt that the CPC would ever do this as they like money. Considering the huge amount of computing the PRC has dumped into mining if the CPC decided to shut it all down could the slack be picked up elsewhere?