Comment by sadturnip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sadturnip | Hacker News Reader

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Can someone explain to me this, as i could not find any real answers from my few minutes of searching. Lets say i have a blog and suddenly people start sending me BAT.

1. How does this impact my taxes? Wouldn't this be considered an income?

2. If i don't collect it where does it go?

3. If my content is being hosted on something like youtube or github do i get it or does the site hosting it get it?

4. How do i go about claiming that i own this, and how is this even verified?

After reading their FAQ, basically to collect any money you need to sign up for an uphold account. In order to become verified on Uphold i need to provide a random company a copy of my passport/drivers license/etc to verify my identity. On top of this they also take 1.95% conversion fee for working with BAT. Ontop of the 5% that Brave already takes by default.

On top of this if you are lets say a Twitch streamer sign up for Brave Rewards, but Twitch doesn't sign up as a publisher on Brave. According to the documentation you apparently get nothing? Where do those tokens go if someone donates?

The tokens get set aside (tracked only in the user's browser) but nothing happens until you verify on https://creators.brave.com/

Once you verify, the tokens will leave the user's wallet and are put into a wallet (called a card) with Brave partner Uphold. If you want to convert the tokens to your local currency and put into your account, there's a "Know Your Customer" process that the government makes sure is enforced

Tax-wise, I'm not sure how that works (great question). Besides manually converting to your currency and depositing to your bank, Uphold has a debit card that will automatically do the conversion if you use it when shopping

> there's a "Know Your Customer" process that the government makes sure is enforced

Which government, the US one? Who is the customer here, the person being paid?

According to Wikipedia: Australia, Canada, India, Italy, South Korea, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States, Luxembourg, Singapore, and Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_your_customer#Laws_by_cou...

I don't think that's supposed to be a comprehensive list

All first world countries and many others with developed financial systems put laws in-place on their financial institutions (like banks) and all money transmitters. They are required to get specific licenses and one of the key parts of these various licenses is "Knowing Your Customer". The intent is to prevent money laundering. Essentially, governments regulate these financial institutions and require them to know who exactly they are dealing with (sometimes there is a minimum amount that is interesting for them, other governments require it for everyone regardless of value).

People can't suddenly start sending you BAT.

They can attempt to send you BAT in the browser, but it shows that you're an unverified creator, so the browser essentially 'holds' the BAT and attempts to send to you for a period of time (I think 90 days).

You sign up at https://creators.brave.com/ for your website / reddit / github / twitter / soundcloud / etc and verification happens depending on the platform, then you're shown as a registered creator in the browser when someone visits.

You get the BAT donation and just like any income would have to consider tax implications.

How might multiple owners of content / distribution work? Some example scenarios:

1. Github.com wants X% of BAT for hosting the FOSS project.

2. A set of core contributors want X%s of BAT, with the owner getting Y%.

3. #1 and #2 combined.

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