Bitcoin currency (merged topics)

[David in MN]

SO just to be clear, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash run the same fundamental software, mine the same, and operate almost identically except that Bitcoin takes hours to resolve and costs upward of $40 while Bitcoin Cash costs nothing and resolves immediately? I'm no genius but I think I know who wins this currency war. Bitcoin shot itself in the foot not doing its last fork.

For what good my handicapping is since I don't do crypto right now, Bitcoin looks like its going the way of the dodo, Etherium scares me, and I have a hard time deciding who looks better between Dash and Bitcoin Cash. But if Bitcoin craters as I expect it has the possibility to poison the entire well.

Last, I'll just reiterate that those "investing" in coins should be very careful. These have the potential to be up 70% in a day or two and fall just as fast. And with no underlying value (even a badly run company has capital and book value) the possibility of vanishing overnight is massive. You're holding a penny stock, not a blue chip.

[FreeLancer]

SO just to be clear, Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash run the same fundamental software, mine the same, and operate almost identically except that Bitcoin takes hours to resolve and costs upward of $40 while Bitcoin Cash costs nothing and resolves immediately? I'm no genius but I think I know who wins this currency war. Bitcoin shot itself in the foot not doing its last fork.

This last weekend's Bitcoin Cash craziness, coming on the heels of the SegWit2x cancellation, marks the beginning of a civil war.  Powerful actors with serious money to throw around, like Roger Ver and the industry NYA signatories, have launched a concerted attack against Bitcoin.  It's a battle between those who want to force changes that favor transaction volume (the buy your cup of coffee side) on the blockchain and those who want to preserve decentralization and censorship resistance (the be your own bank side) of the original concept. 

I'm coming down on the store of value, digital gold, be your own bank side, and as such $40 dollar transaction fees (although I've never paid anywhere near that much) and one hour times to reach 6 confirmations doesn't seem unreasonable to me.  The fact that transferring $10,000, $100,000, or $100 million costs the same $5-10 fee makes me think that Bitcoin will ultimately be used to store and transfer large amounts of purchasing power anywhere on the planet, regardless of borders, banking laws, or which blockchain Bitcoin Jesus throws his reputation behind. 

Since building new blockchains over the last couple years (Ethereum, Dash, etc.) has so far failed to gain sufficient dominance over BTC, the new strategy appears to be hard forking (Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, maybe SegWit2x eventually) the original blockchain.  Who knows how it will work out, but 2018 will be the year of the hard forks.  There's already a web page for a Bitcoin Cash+.

But if Bitcoin craters as I expect it has the possibility to poison the entire well.

True.

Last, I'll just reiterate that those "investing" in coins should be very careful. These have the potential to be up 70% in a day or two and fall just as fast. And with no underlying value (even a badly run company has capital and book value) the possibility of vanishing overnight is massive. You're holding a penny stock, not a blue chip.

Also true.

You're holding a penny stock, not a blue chip.

Maybe.  Civilization hasn't been down this particular road before, so it's difficult to distinguish whether it's a bubble or a technological adoption curve at this point.

[David in MN]

You have the choice of a checking account that charges $10 per check and one that charges $0.001. It's not even really a choice.

I'm so confused over this "store of wealth" claim. Historically stores of wealth are precious metals, bonds, and CDs precisely because they don't change in value that much. Pre-Fed the Us dollar was a store of wealth. That's one of the purposes of a currency to begin with. It's why we need crypto. Modern currencies aren't stores of wealth.

Even if I accepted the notion that Bitcoin BTC is the new gold, it's still a fool's errand. Guys like me will trade 6 figures for $5 to the miners but the miners of BCH are getting a quarter penny off a candybar sold in India. If crypto actually takes off, who has better positioned themselves?

Bitcoin originally positioned itself as the ultimate frictionless currency. Crosses borders, low transaction cost, decentralized. Doesn't feel that way anymore. Seems like it has abandoned its core values.

[FreeLancer]

You have the choice of a checking account that charges $10 per check and one that charges $0.001. It's not even really a choice.

Depends on how much value is placed on transaction immutability, resistance to censorship, and degree of decentralization, qualities that don't come free.  And how much would a checking account actually cost if it wasn't run on the back of a fractional reserve banking system?

I'm so confused over this "store of wealth" claim. Historically stores of wealth are precious metals, bonds, and CDs precisely because they don't change in value that much.

When was the last time a de novo currency/asset/store of wealth (and designed to ultimately be deflationary, no less) arrived on the scene?

Bitcoin originally positioned itself as the ultimate frictionless currency. Crosses borders, low transaction cost, decentralized. Doesn't feel that way anymore. Seems like it has abandoned its core values.

Like I said, it looks like we're entering into a cryptocurrency civil war over these very questions.

[David in MN]

Let me put it another way... For you BTC holders, would you have bought in when you did if transaction costs were as high as they are now and took as long to resolve? In 2011/2012 when I got in I would never have accepted these costs. They'd completely violate the claim of currency. No way I'd have accepted a "currency" that can't buy a candy bar.

I have fully come to understand that BTC is a store of wealth strictly because it is worth money and hard to trade but no other store of wealth has ever acted that way. Well, maybe tulips. I just don't understand why being non-usable is an asset. I'll admit I have an Austrian bias (like Mises) but even if I grant that the Blockchain is the biggest invention of the past decade why would you use it to power a currency with a goal of no turnover? We got decentralized accounting and then limited it? That was the whole point, wasn't it?

BTC can't live up to its own white paper.

[FreeLancer]

BTC was far from frictionless when I was acquiring my current holdings through Gox and then transferring it to a Bitcoin-QT wallet. That was all a pain in the ass. Coinbase is easy.

[FreeLancer]

BTC has been at record levels above $8000 for the last 24 hours, currently at $8250 with a market cap of $138 billion.  It was ten days ago when the price dropped down below $5500 and Bitcoin Cash was being hailed as the new king.  Who knows which direction the roller coaster is going next, some are predicting $10,000 per bitcoin before the end of the year. 

Unexpected article from Bloomberg about preppers and cryptocurrency:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-20/can-bitcoin-survive-an-apocalypse

[FreeLancer]

Just look at all the YouTube shills for every crapcoin and ICO you can imagine.

Today a bunch of these guys are reporting that they were simultaneously hacked within the same 24 hour period:  https://youtu.be/nv-uV_Ny-I4

The exploit hinged on socially engineering cellphone providers into transferring the target's numbers to cloned phones, from which the attackers could then request a Gmail password reset via SMS, thus commandeering the target's email, YouTube channel, Google Drive, and Chrome browser settings with any saved passwords for online accounts.  Depending on the degree of compartmentalization of passwords and second factor authentication, some of these guys lost serious money.  It sounds like these guys share private numbers and emails between themselves, so breaking into one phone might yield valuable personal information that could be linked to another victim.  If you're running an Android phone and store all kinds of information in it that's linked to a Gmail account, that's a potential single point of failure for your entire digital life.  Not good.


Trevon James is claiming he had 111 BTC ($900k) stolen from his Exodus wallet:  https://youtu.be/VwIAAw5iTIA

This is BTC he's been accruing from his involvement in Bitconnect (widely suspected to be nothing more than a pyramid/ponzi scheme), which he's been pumping hard on his channel.  Like a lot of these guys, he has a habit of over-screen-sharing his online trading and desktop wallet balances on his videos. 

The Exodus wallet, like many others, is a hierarchical deterministic wallet that's backed up by a 12-word passphrase, which is known as a seed and is randomly generated for you to record to a piece of paper for safe keeping (not electronically!) when you create the wallet.  If, for whatever reason, such as a loss of the computer or a hard drive failure, all the addresses and private key pairs can be regenerated from the seed after installing Exodus software on a new machine.  Exodus is relatively new and has the benefit of allowing people to store multiple different cryptocurrencies on a local machine where you control the private keys.  It also links to shapeshift.io and allows you to exchange one type of currency for another within the wallet software itself.  I've used it and I like it, but I wouldn't concentrate my holdings in it, either.  Same can be said for pretty much every other type of wallet out there.  You can't keep everything in one basket and any single wallet needs to be designed to minimize the chances of it being breached through a single point of failure.

Some other YouTubers are reporting that Trevon stored his Exodus backup seed in his Google Drive, so once he lost control of his Gmail account it was game over.  All the thief had to do was restore an Exodus wallet using Trevon's 12-word seed and then transfer all the BTC out to his own wallet. 

Maintaining absolute control over one's private keys is job number one when you own crypto.  There is no legal recourse, no do-overs, no insurance policies.  You're on your own. 

[FreeLancer]

BTC is now over $9000, which pushes the market capitalization to $151 billion.

Total crypto market is $284 billion.

[FreeLancer]

There are now 15 cryptocoins with market caps greater than $1 billion. 

Since Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold are both forks of Bitcoin, a single Bitcoin valued at $2800 on July 31 could now be converted into $11,481.  The combined market cap of these three currencies is $192 billion.

[FreeLancer]

Kinda sorta hit $10,000 today..........although Coinbase and Coindesk prices are still lagging behind.









.......and about 2 days to $10,000.

[FreeLancer]

And less than a day to $11,000.

[David in MN]

It's a little hard to trade in something whose 'support' line is vertical.

Roger Ver on Dave Rubin's show was maybe worth a listen if you are a crypto beginner. Full disclosure, I 100% agree with Ver (which makes me nervous) and I am chewing a pencil this morning considering buying Bitcoin Cash. It might be the best upside.

[FreeLancer]

Bitcoin ain’t for trading. It’s for hodling.

And you best hodl on tight, because it’s guaranteed to be a wild ass ride that could obliterate every penny you put in to it.

And don’t let anything Ver says be the deciding factor in going with B Cash.  He’s been behaving badly of late and I’m wary of anyone’s judgement when they can’t control their emotions.  And don’t call it B Cash, he goes ape shit when you say that.  He ain’t Jesus anymore, not since he let all his millions go to his head.

[David in MN]

I agree with his central argument that making a currency costlier to use is generally not a good thing. I'm in a place where I wouldn't even call Bitcoin a currency anymore. Even its fans call it a "store of wealth" showing they have no clue about finance as wealth storage is meant to protect downside, not grow on the upside.

All that said, I wouldn't be shocked to see $20k. It's just a confidence game. Once we hold $10k it has to shoot to the next level. Nobody's selling.

[FreeLancer]

Until the IRS decides to treat crypto as a currency for tax purposes, it’s going to function like the asset they say it is, at least for those with large amounts.  Tracking capital gains is cumbersome for those of us who want to stay on the right side of the law.

Bitcoin Jesus renounced his citizenship so he doesn’t have to worry about the tax man, unlike the rest of us.

[Smurf Hunter]

Until the IRS decides to treat crypto as a currency for tax purposes, it’s going to function like the asset they say it is, at least for those with large amounts.  Tracking capital gains is cumbersome for those of us who want to stay on the right side of the law.

Bitcoin Jesus renounced his citizenship so he doesn’t have to worry about the tax man, unlike the rest of us.

For easier math, if I bought BTC @ $10K each, and sell @ $20K each - how does one calculate the CAP gains?  Do I pay my income tax rate on the profit, or if instead I prove I held it for N years (long enough to be considered long term by IRS), do I pay that?  Or maybe option C - I tell no one, and cash out of BTC into some offshore haven?

[David in MN]

Explains it pretty well. It's sticky depending on what you actually did with your crypto.

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/25/are-bitcoin-profits-taxable.aspx

It's pretty much what I did. Pain in the ass because you have to generate the documents yourself. Made my tax attorney laugh which worried me. Not that I did it wrong but because I require her to be a soulless mercenary for my money.

[FreeLancer]

I paid taxes on my 2013 sales and used a program that calculated the short and long term cap gains from an imported file of Mt Gox transactions. I had to step my CPA through it and he did a little research on his own before he’d sign off on it.

This year all the gains are long term and I’m just going to use an average cost basis of $44 per coin.  That’s to the IRS’s favor, so they better not hassle me over it.

The big conundrum now is if/how/what to report to the IRS in terms of new coin ownership resulting from a bitcoin hard fork. Personally I don’t think it should be reportable until it’s sold, but some say it is.  If so, how do you determine the cost basis, the price on the date of the fork, or the date you actually were able to redeem them?

[David in MN]

I paid taxes on my 2013 sales and used a program that calculated the short and long term cap gains from an imported file of Mt Gox transactions. I had to step my CPA through it and he did a little research on his own before he’d sign off on it.

This year all the gains are long term and I’m just going to use an average cost basis of $44 per coin.  That’s to the IRS’s favor, so they better not hassle me over it.

The big conundrum now is if/how/what to report to the IRS in terms of new coin ownership resulting from a bitcoin hard fork. Personally I don’t think it should be reportable until it’s sold, but some say it is.  If so, how do you determine the cost basis, the price on the date of the fork, or the date you actually were able to redeem them?

It's not reportable until sold. You still hold the asset. What I would do is calculate the spread at the fork. If you get 1 new coin for every 2 old coin the cost basis is 66% old coin and 33% new coin applied retroactively to the original purchase.

This is no different than the accounting I did when I sold Kraft after being an Altria shareholder. After the divest I just calculated what percentage Kraft represented that day and applied to my original purchase.

Bear in mind your "cost basis" is a goofy thing. You can (with stocks) claim that you paid the highest price it reached on the day you bought. That can be some funky wiggle room and I don't know if it holds true for crypto.

There is another accounting method where you pay gains annually but almost nobody uses it as the complication offsets any savings and the IRS will question why you're not reporting full sale (ask me how I know).

My bottom line is that I wouldn't sell without a cost basis or you look like a fraud. So selling a spinoff coin while keeping the documents on the original coin looks shady. If you do my rough percentage math it looks better and it's a little more honest. It seems screwy because you claim you bought something that doesn't exist but it's the best accounting you can do. Sorry for the added math and IRS worksheets.

Hope it helps but consult a tax professional, not a super-nerd daytrader with a CPA for a father. My taxes are a hot mess even though I try to be as honest as possible. It requires advice from dad and an attorney. You probably feel my pain here.

[Smurf Hunter]

Theoretically if instead of cashing out of BTC and into USD, you bought hard goods or services using BTC, is there anything to legally report to the IRS?

Legally that's barter, right?

[David in MN]

Theoretically if instead of cashing out of BTC and into USD, you bought hard goods or services using BTC, is there anything to legally report to the IRS?

Legally that's barter, right?

That's where it gets really messy. You would still need to claim capital gains. Technically barter is taxed. If you literally trade produce with the neighbor it should be taxed as income. Sometimes people do. As an example if I build you a deck and you give me several rifles in trade it might be worth it to report. Most often it's a small enough dollar amount that people don't report and the IRS wouldn't care.

This is the gray area of tax code. If I bought a couple Bitcoin for $1 and then used them to buy a car, I'd damn sure claim it. I would live in dread of an audit. I'm not really wworried about swapping produce with a neighbor.

My advice with the IRS... Be as honest as possible. When I got audited they owed me money. I do the best I can and then try to overpay by $50. They know I'm a lousy target. But $50 to avoid an audit seems like a bargain. Once you go through the process of sending registered mail and copying secure documents... it's a mess.

Goes without saying this is not financial advice.

[FreeLancer]

After doing a little digging around, it looks like there's a fair degree of consensus that all Bitcoin Cash (BCH) generated from the fork is considered income for owners of Bitcoin (BTC) private keys, as of August 1, and this income is reportable in 2017, whether you actually take control of the new BCH, to sell it or trade it, or not.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/08/04/how-to-report-bitcoin-cash-and-avoid-irs-trouble/#65759e173066

https://bitcoin.tax/blog/how-to-tax-bitcoin-cash-bch/


Forbes is using an August 1 price of $266 and Bitcoin.tax is using $277 as the initial BCH basis. 

So, for example, 10 BTC held in private keys you controlled on July 31 generates 10 BCH on August 1 with a value of $2770 that must be reported as income in 2017, even if you don't do anything with it in 2017.  Even if you don't know how to actually use your BTC keys to gain control of your newfound BCH wealth, you still owe the tax man.

If you sell for USD or exchange the new BCH for another crypto this year, then capital gains applies.  So, 10 BCH, valued at $5770, exchanged for 1.3 BTC on August 18 produces $3000 of short-term gain, which is taxable as regular income. 

It looks like any BTC held at Coinbase on August 1 won't produce any reportable BCH income in 2017, because Coinbase isn't making those BCH available to account holders until January 1.  But holdings at Blockchain.info on August 1 is reportable because account holders retain control over their private keys (even if they don't know it), plus they made it possible to hit a button and transfer out BCH holdings last month.

It's really weird to be paying taxes on something you had no control over acquiring.  And what about the poor suckers who got scammed into thinking they were redeeming BCH but had their BCT and BCH both stolen in the process?

And then there's the more recent Bitcoin Gold fork, too.  It forked weeks before you could even take control of it and there's still hardly anybody exchanging it.



Crap, this little development isn't going to do anything good for my marginal tax bracket, but I don't see any legal way out of it.  The blockchain is immutable, its transactions are searchable, and with enough motivation its addresses can be linked back to meat space.

Gotta pay to play if you ever plan on converting substantial amounts of crypto into fiat.

[FreeLancer]

The opposing view on crypto from rawdogletard:  https://youtu.be/7Dmt5e7mrvo

He's entertaining.......

[David in MN]

After doing a little digging around, it looks like there's a fair degree of consensus that all Bitcoin Cash (BCH) generated from the fork is considered income for owners of Bitcoin (BTC) private keys, as of August 1, and this income is reportable in 2017, whether you actually take control of the new BCH, to sell it or trade it, or not.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/08/04/how-to-report-bitcoin-cash-and-avoid-irs-trouble/#65759e173066

https://bitcoin.tax/blog/how-to-tax-bitcoin-cash-bch/


Forbes is using an August 1 price of $266 and Bitcoin.tax is using $277 as the initial BCH basis. 

So, for example, 10 BTC held in private keys you controlled on July 31 generates 10 BCH on August 1 with a value of $2770 that must be reported as income in 2017, even if you don't do anything with it in 2017.  Even if you don't know how to actually use your BTC keys to gain control of your newfound BCH wealth, you still owe the tax man.

If you sell for USD or exchange the new BCH for another crypto this year, then capital gains applies.  So, 10 BCH, valued at $5770, exchanged for 1.3 BTC on August 18 produces $3000 of short-term gain, which is taxable as regular income. 

It looks like any BTC held at Coinbase on August 1 won't produce any reportable BCH income in 2017, because Coinbase isn't making those BCH available to account holders until January 1.  But holdings at Blockchain.info on August 1 is reportable because account holders retain control over their private keys (even if they don't know it), plus they made it possible to hit a button and transfer out BCH holdings last month.

It's really weird to be paying taxes on something you had no control over acquiring.  And what about the poor suckers who got scammed into thinking they were redeeming BCH but had their BCT and BCH both stolen in the process?

And then there's the more recent Bitcoin Gold fork, too.  It forked weeks before you could even take control of it and there's still hardly anybody exchanging it.



Crap, this little development isn't going to do anything good for my marginal tax bracket, but I don't see any legal way out of it.  The blockchain is immutable, its transactions are searchable, and with enough motivation its addresses can be linked back to meat space.

Gotta pay to play if you ever plan on converting substantial amounts of crypto into fiat.

I believe it because I trust Forbes but that in no way makes any sense. You would think it would be handled the same as a stock split or a divestiture. If you pay the tax on it as income, why would you then pay capital gains afterward? It's taxed income presumably sitting in the bank... And the .gov doesn't count crypto as a currency so how is it income?

I appreciate the correction (my assumption was wrong but I do feel it to be better accounting) but this makes me more confused than ever. These are the endless tax speed bumps that drive me crazy. Why I'm sure I've committed a felony somewhere.

[FreeLancer]

I agree it makes zero sense.

Another consequence of this tax regulation is the fact that by declaring the BCH as income you've automatically signaled to the IRS exactly how much BTC you held at the time of the fork.  For the 99% of bitcoin holders who weren't going to ever pay taxes on it anyways, it probably doesn't matter.  But it will matter for the rest of us.

And this isn't just a BTC problem, either.  BCH already is facing 3 planned hardforks less then a year into its existence.  Just about any blockchain can be forked and these negative tax consequences forced on the holders of the parent chain who opposed the fork.

[Carl]

  My dad called me an idiot when I paid about $9 each for my supply of bitcoin.....I might sell it ,or trade it for gold soon.

[FreeLancer]

  My dad called me an idiot when I paid about $9 each for my supply of bitcoin.....

Been there.  Wife, parents, in laws, coworkers, cousins, friends.  Ponzi, pyramid, multilevel, tulip mania.  I've heard 'em all.

....I might sell it ,or trade it for gold soon.

Keep at least one. 

Everyone needs some skin in the game.  It's the best way to learn. 

[David in MN]

I got told all kinds of crazy stuff. But I was a true believer that having a global currency with low costs was a guaranteed success. Bitcoin was going to bury Western Union. The opportunities for a frictionless currency were abound.

If it still was that way today I'd still have it. As it stands Bitcoin is clunkier than gold. It's lost its original value proposition and (in my mind) violated its own white paper. It was the solution for a metal currency (hence they called it a coin) but now it's not as good as metal.

It's a currency that can't be used as a currency and a store of wealth that's the best speculative investment. Like always us Austrians can't tell when...

Even the core belief of Bitcoin... that it is limited in production is a lie. They've already proven they can just fork off and create more. If the core developers own the currency why not inflate? Why are we limited to Bitcoin Cash? Why not Bitcoin Supra or Bitcoin Plus?

[Smurf Hunter]

Keep at least one. 

Everyone needs some skin in the game.  It's the best way to learn.

The people I know who wouldn't be upset about losing $9K on a speculative bet, also don't need the money.  If/when people bought it at 3 digits or lower, sure.  The ROI is like a lotto ticket.  You spend beer money on the chance to live the dream.