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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

> who is buying crypto and not expecting to make a profit from it?

Me. I put my savings in Bitcoin because I dislike the tradfi system.

All I want is to be in control of my savings and to be able to freely transact with anyone anywhere in the world.

I am still affected by the exchange rates to USD and EUR. But the hope is that in the future I will be able to use BTC directly more often and not even have to touch USD or EUR.

Perhaps one day even my country will get with the times and allow me to pay my taxes in BTC directly instead of having to exchange it to government funnymoney first.

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> Perhaps one day even my country will get with the times and allow me to pay my taxes in BTC directly instead of having to exchange it to government funnymoney first.

Something tells me your government cares more about their funnymoney than yours.

I can't imagine a government wanting to take on the volatility of bitcoin for a tax payment. What possible compelling argument is there for them to do that?

El Salvador is a clear counter example.

I can certainly imagine why a country with a history of poorly managing their own currency (and that for whatever reason doesn't want to be aligned to USD) might choose to use a more "neutral" fixed supply currency.

Right now every state that lets you pay taxes with crypto immediately converts it into USD. So the govt is not taking on any volatility risk.

there is no universe in which a (edit: financially sound) nation will accept tax payments in a denomination over which it has no influence or control

(edit: nations that peg their currency to the euro or the dollar are clearly exceptions to what i'm describing here)

this is literally money 101 type stuff, wars have been fought over this stuff, and it's insane that crypto folks don't seem to understand any of it

There's a lot of nations that either directly accept tax payments in foreign currency: for example, Montenegro uses Euro. Salvador, Zimbabwe, etc use US Dollar. In other forms, Danish Krone and Bulgarian Lev is pegged to Euro.

That's why Bitcoin is so powerful: they can't do anything about it and, if people choose to use it, the government has no choice other than accept it as the standard.

a government that accepts tax payments in BTC would be abandoning its financial authority to the bitcoin network, over which it has no influence whatsoever

this is suicidal for any nation with even a nominal amount of financial autonomy

maybe it's something that failed states like venezuela or somolia would consider, but it's a complete non-starter for anyone else

the idea that "the people" can force countries to accept tax receipts in BTC is absolute unhinged nonsense, read a fucking book

> the idea that "the people" can force countries to accept tax receipts in BTC is absolute unhinged nonsense, read a fucking book

Government money will worth shit if people stop putting their savings in it. Unless you think the US government will make it ilegal to possess BTC, then it is just a matter of time for people to migrate to a better store of value.

the US government probably won't make it illegal to possess BTC, but it will never accept e.g. tax payments in BTC

also, the instant there is a non-trivial amount of commerce conducted in US jurisdictions via BTC, you will immediately see aggressive counter-measures (lawsuits, criminal charges, etc.) from the federal government

germany's minister of finance said it succinctly when there was this facebook libra thing going around

> One of the core activities of a sovereign State is to issue a currency. We will not cede this task to private companies.

https://gpil.jura.uni-bonn.de/2019/10/germany-opposes-facebo...

Why do you care about paying taxes in funny money? I never understood complaints about inflating money by gold bugs or cryptocurrency advocates. The presence of a mismanaged currency is your opportunity to profit so you should be cheering for its collapse. The only situation where you end up losing out is if you have a fixed income in the mismanaged currency. You want your tax bill to inflate away so the government accepting Bitcoin for taxes is not that meaningful to you.

I mean, if I follow the same logic I should advocate for collapsing the economy with tight money policies because I can then work on financial innovations that undo the government intervention.

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