<story><title>Every important person in BitCoin just got subpoenaed by NY financial regulators</title><url>http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/12/every-important-person-in-bitcoin-just-got-subpoenaed-by-new-yorks-financial-regulator/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pnathan</author><text>Unpopular opinion of the day: bitcoin is real money, and the government &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; regulate it and control it as such.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the end-game is this: bitcoin addresses are taxable, with occasional tax agents spot-checking large accumulations of bitcoin to determine if said addresses fall within their jurisdiction.  Bitcoin has the unusual ability to have a very tight trace on where a given virtual coin goes: that just makes the ability to watch the money easier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DougWebb</author><text>A bitcoin address is just a container for some amount of BTC. Holding an amount of currency isn&amp;#x27;t taxable, and exchanging currency often isn&amp;#x27;t taxable either. (I&amp;#x27;m generalizing across jurisdictions, but I think what I&amp;#x27;m saying is true for most of them.)&lt;p&gt;If you move money from one pocket to another, or one savings account to another (that you own), that&amp;#x27;s not taxable. Very many transfers between bitcoin addresses is just like that: the &amp;#x27;change&amp;#x27; from a transfer goes to a new address owned by the same person.&lt;p&gt;Even when the addresses are owned by two different people, the transfer often isn&amp;#x27;t taxable. You don&amp;#x27;t pay a tax when you pay a bill, but that&amp;#x27;s a currency transfer between two parties. Even when you buy something it isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily taxable; in many jurisdictions many products are sold tax-free based on either the type of product or where the buyer and&amp;#x2F;or seller are based.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think there&amp;#x27;s a way to enforce taxation on bitcoin that&amp;#x27;s not already being used to enforce cash sales taxes and cash income, despite the tracability of the coins, because the address owners may not be identifiable, and the nature of the transfer is definitely not identifiable from the blockchain.</text></comment>
<story><title>Every important person in BitCoin just got subpoenaed by NY financial regulators</title><url>http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/08/12/every-important-person-in-bitcoin-just-got-subpoenaed-by-new-yorks-financial-regulator/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>pnathan</author><text>Unpopular opinion of the day: bitcoin is real money, and the government &lt;i&gt;will&lt;/i&gt; regulate it and control it as such.&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the end-game is this: bitcoin addresses are taxable, with occasional tax agents spot-checking large accumulations of bitcoin to determine if said addresses fall within their jurisdiction.  Bitcoin has the unusual ability to have a very tight trace on where a given virtual coin goes: that just makes the ability to watch the money easier.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know why this should be unpopular, except among people who see the Internet as a new Wild West. The basic advantage of Bitcoin, that its controlled by an algorithm rather than a central bank, exists whether or not financial regulations apply to Bitcoin. Does it destroy the utility of a crypto currency for exchanges and processors to be required to detect e.g. money laundering?</text></comment>