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196 sats \ 9 replies \ @elvismercury 13 Nov \ on: Square terminals to allow pay in $, receive in btc tomorrow bitcoin
I have complex thoughts that I have yet to fully articulate.
One I can articulate is that it's interesting that anyone who does this just ignores the capital gains reporting issue. This is clever, I think - the old strategy of turning everyone into "criminals" means they can't possibly persecute them all, which could set precedent for the de minimus exemption we've all heard about.
Of course, this depends on anyone actually using this option, which they will not, at any kind of scale, for years. But zero to one is hardest. It's the beginning of a real grounding for btc, which is exciting even in theory.
The fiat debt slavery bankers cartel owns the US government.
Has for many decades.
This will be stomped on before it gets any scale.
Remember Elon Musk offering to sell his Teslas for sats?- that got shut down very swiftly.
The fiat debt slavery bankers own the US government...and most other governments for that matter.
Good on Square for at least trying to get this up and running- but I believe it will be shut down if before it can truly give people freedom of choice that might threaten the fiat cartel.
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100%
This is exactly why I push so hard for a real revolution from the Bitcoin community.
Everyone keeps saying "it will happen eventually. We're so early." But I call bullshit on that. The fiat debt slavery cartel will always take steps to prevent it from happening. Thus, it will never happen until enough Bitcoiners stand on their ideals, refuse to use fiat, and start using Bitcoin as money instead of just larping about it.
If we don't push back with some actual forcefulness, this isn't going to happen naturally because there is a powerful enemy working against it.
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You guys are talking past each other.
The merchant can choose to convert a portion of their fiat sales into Bitcoin. In this case, the customer doesn't need to worry about capital gains taxes. The merchant only reports a tax event if they ever buy dollars with those Sats. (they literally tax you for buying their currrency, WTF?!)
Then there is the case where someone pays with Bitcoin, and the merchant chooses to have it all converted to fiat. This is where the customer is supposed to report the "sale" to USD. Although, I could see how this could also be considered a merchant sale of Bitcoin as the transaction has already happened.
What if it's a purely Bitcoin to Bitcoin transaction? The government would see this as "barter", probably. I dunno, maybe someone can answer?
Responding to you here caused me to realize how little I know about this. I thought it was pretty straight forward, but the way Square is doing this brings up a bunch of new tax questions......
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The key part (or at least, the part I'm interested in) has nothing to do w/ what the merchant does, and pertains only to the user's gains (or loss, possibly) of btc's fiat value, which is what the govt requires reporting on for tax purposes.
Until your comment, I hadn't even considered the additional headache that the merchant would get if they kept whatever btc they received in these sales -- imagine that accounting nightmare, where every candy bar's worth of sats needs to be tracked for gain / loss! But since all this is automated by Square, maybe it's less bad than it seems, e.g., it's all aggregated.
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That's true; the interesting issue here is wrt what sort of taxable event it is, and for who.
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