Hacker News Reader

Comment by sausman | Hacker News Reader

_It appeals a lot to technogeeks who happens to also be libertarians, people who worries about economic policies of governments, and so on._

I fit that description and agree that private currencies such as Bitcoin would be awesome, but aren't there laws in place to secure the government's monopoly on money? ( http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul619.html )

Does Bitcoin circumvent these laws by being completely virtual?

View on HN

It is impossible to have monopoly on money.

Simply put, money is whatever market participants agree on.

Sure. But the government can still insist that all transactions paid in BitCoin are subject to a sales tax, which is payable only in legal tender (not BitCoin).

Money is whatever the market participants agree on, and laws are whatever the government agrees on.

It requires cheap trackability to tax.

Of course, BitCoins are easily trackable, thus doomed. It was possible, though, to design them without this property, ensuring that costs of tracking offset the potential tax gains.

EDIT: It would be fun to consider the arbitrage opportunities rendered possible by such sales tax.

My understanding is that it's easy to track the transfer of bitcoins to accounts, but very difficult (impossible) to figure out who is behind an account unless they choose to reveal their identity. Since accounts can be generated on a whim, and with no identification, the upshot is that taxation would be unenforceable.

They do not think so[1]. It is easier to fail than with the old-fashioned money, given that all the transactions are publicly logged.

http://www.bitcoin.org/wiki/doku.php?id=anonymity

Reply on news.ycombinator.com