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Venezuela Will Force Bitcoin Miners To Register With the Government (themerkle.com)
schwit1 shares a report from The Merkle: No one will be surprised to hear the Venezuelan government isn't too keen on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Since Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can't be regulated or controlled by the government in any official capacity, they could damage the country's brittle economy even further. As a result, the government has imposed new rules for anyone mining cryptocurrency. To be more specific, all miners will now be taxed and required to register with the government. Being taxed is not entirely illogical, but the registration requirement is pretty worrisome, to say the least. The government shouldn't need to know who is doing what in regards to crypto trading and mining. Nevertheless, authorities want to know who is mining, where they are located, and what type of equipment they use. "That'll put food back on the shelves," adds schwit1.
I wonder how they'll track miners.
They could track them by electricity use. Venezuela gives away electricity for almost nothing, less than 1 cent/kwhr, which makes it an attractive place to run miners, as well as other activities that squander energy.
Even 2011, Venezuela was awful; it just was able to paper it over with huge oil exports. Then the bottom fell out of oil prices and Venezuela's lottery prize ran out.
To be fair "these days" was referring to 2011, when that article by Sanders was written. A time when the Venezuelan economy was rebounding. Two years before Maduro was even sworn in.
To be really fair, when someone predicts something and their prediction turns out accurate, then their hypothesis is *probably* correct.
Like if, for example, someone in 2011 said "Socialist policies don't really work, mostly", and Sanders points to Venezuela as an argument that they do indeed work, the future collapse of Venezuela provides support for the statement "Socialist policies don't really work, mostly", not for whatever counter-argument Sanders was attempting to make.
Another example to clarify: if I were to say, right now, that BTC is not really a currency and you point to its use by $fraction of retailers as proof that it is a currency, any future decline in BTC acceptance by retailers adds support for my assertion, not for your counter-argument. A future rise in % BTC acceptance by retailers may provide the support for your counter-argument, but current cherry-picked examples do not.
Predictive power beats single-data-point examples when proving or disproving a hypothesis. Pointing to a single example only works when the assertion is an existentialist one ("All $FOO are unworkable" needs only a single counter-example to disprove, while "$FOO is not long-term viable" cannot be disproved with a single counter-example).
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Black Unemployment Rate Lowest in 17 Years
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Except Bitcoin is going through hyperinflation right now. With massive swings in value, outrageous transaction fees, and weeks to process transactions.
The sad thing is that, even though those points are true, it's still more stable and reliable than Venezuela's currency.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The Chavez family has billions in assets. Is that getting redistributed at all?
To be fair "these days" was referring to 2011, when that article by Sanders was written. A time when the Venezuelan economy was rebounding. Two years before Maduro was even sworn in.
To be really fair, when someone predicts something and their prediction turns out accurate, then their hypothesis is *probably* correct.
Like if, for example, someone in 2011 said "Socialist policies don't really work, mostly", and Sanders points to Venezuela as an argument that they do indeed work, the future collapse of Venezuela provides support for the statement "Socialist policies don't really work, mostly", not for whatever counter-argument Sanders was attempting to make.
Another example to clarify: if I were to say, right now, that BTC is not really a currency and you point to its use by $fraction of retailers as proof that it is a currency, any future decline in BTC acceptance by retailers adds support for my assertion, not for your counter-argument. A future rise in % BTC acceptance by retailers may provide the support for your counter-argument, but current cherry-picked examples do not.
Predictive power beats single-data-point examples when proving or disproving a hypothesis. Pointing to a single example only works when the assertion is an existentialist one ("All $FOO are unworkable" needs only a single counter-example to disprove, while "$FOO is not long-term viable" cannot be disproved with a single counter-example).
The FUBAR otherwise known as the Venezuelan economy is what happens when you over-leverage your economy and bet on oil prices permanently remaining at an all time high. Conflating Bernie's brand of social democracy with Chavista style socialism and then pointing at Vesezuela as an example that Bernie's ideas don't work is simplistic to say the least.
Unemployment is down? Great. How about earnings?
People need money. Not employment. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who finds enough things to do with my time, what I need is money. If you allow me to hold slaves, I am fairly sure I can ensure 100% of them will be working.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That's the inherent flaw of centrally planned economies, though. A small number of idiots can tank an entire country. In a capitalist country, a large number of competing idiots have to simultaneously ignore facts and reason, and all make the same move, in order to tank the country. Our closest recent example was the banking crisis, and even then, there were still winners - all the smaller banks that were like "lol wtf?" at the sub prime mortgages and stayed out of that game. As well as any individuals with precious metals stashed away. When things are traded at what they are worth, it's difficult to make wealth disappear. In this regard planned economies make David Copperfield jealous.
Venezuela, for all practical understanding, is a failed state! But the most insulting thing I've read this morning was this little nugget
"Since Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can't be regulated or controlled by the government in any official capacity, they could damage the country's brittle economy even further"
Dude, it's DONE!!!! It's OVER. Christ almighty, let it go people. The only way Venezuela will change with with a revolution, that or the government can remain a festering rotting corpse.
"...damage the countries brittle economy" You can't break what's already broken. In fact, starting over is the only answer. Pull the plug already on the Bolívar and be done with it!!!
Life is not for the lazy.
In Finland the taxman has sent letters to persons asking them to declare their income from bitcoin. Be it mining or just a trading wins, the taxman want's his share (30%) of the profit.
How do they know? Oh the joys of modern and organized society: They ask companies who do bitcoin business (sell/buy) for their ledgers and identify persons from there and then contact those persons. In modern western society, every transaction leaves a trace. Just a matter of getting the data from the right place. Thus as soon as you want to convert your (semi)anonymous virtual currency to real world currency, you create a trace which can be picked up.
EU is very hard on money laundering, all bank transfers are more or less monitored. For example, a person made a 65€ bank transfer and wrote to recipient as "isi" (That's "daddy" in Finnish). The person was contacted by the bank tp clarify the transaction, just incase the person was attempting to give money to embargoed recipient (Isis?)(*). One might laugh on this stupid false positive, but it does give out the fact that even the smallest money transfers are monitored.
(*) https://translate.google.com/t...
I don't know who this schwit1 is, but his comment "That'll put food back on the shelves" is completely moronic. The reason Venezuela has no food on their shelves is because the official exchange rate doesn't match the actual value of the bolivar, which means that it's basically fucking impossible to import anything, whether that is actual food or materials needed for farming. So given they can't exchange the bolivar for anything without going to jail, they'll need some other currency. Unlike the bolivar, bitcoin isn't experiencing hyperinflation, in fact the opposite is happening. Either way, unlike the bolivar, bitcoin is actually worth something, which means that they could import any goods they need with it. THAT will put food on the shelves, not Maduro's (and Chavez's) stupid policies which took food off of shelves to begin with. This is just another policy that will keep food off of shelves.