

Australian Tax Office targets Bitcoin - Sealy
http://www.afr.com/p/technology/ato_targets_bitcoin_users_oawpzLQHDz2vEUWtvYLTWI

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jwilliams
This is not just about tracking funds - there is also the implication that
Bitcoins are actively traded.

Australia has a capital gains tax - for example, you get taxed if you make a
profit on shares (with a bunch of rules around it). Similarly, a loss is
deductable.

FX gains are exempt if they are of a "private and domestic nature". So if you
change some money to travel overseas, then make a profit on it -- that's
usually not considered in scope. However, if you're actively trading, then it
is taxable.

 _Mr Tee heralded Bitcoin as a “green” tender, compared to “the energy costs
of manufacturing, transporting, storing and maintaining the infrastructure
behind fiat currencies and banking systems”._

Isn't there an energy cost with mining? That is presumably increasing? Maybe
it's a lot less, but I'd shy away from calling it "green".

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to3m
<50MW globally, apparently ([http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-
bitcoin-min...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-
mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html)). $147,000/day.

Well, this is certainly more than nothing, but still isn't actually a great
deal. For example, something else that cost $147,000 would be 12
seconds'-worth of US petrol consumption
([http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10](http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=23&t=10))
at wholesale prices
([http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_refmg_dcu_nus_m.htm](http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_refmg_dcu_nus_m.htm)).

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Tloewald
Ok well how much conventional economic activity does 50MW create? That 12s of
US gas consumption might theoretically generate say 29% of US GDP for 12s,
which comes to $16,000,000 (29% is transportation as a proportion of US energy
consumption, US GDP ~ 1.4E+13).

Does that 50MW generate $16M worth of bitcoins per day? In any event, I
strongly suspect currency production is one of the overall economies more
energy efficient activities given that most currency is created electronically
by banks based on a fairly simple set of calculations.

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contingencies
Background: Australians are the biggest recreational drug users in the world.
[https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-
analysis/WDR-2012.ht...](https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-
analysis/WDR-2012.html)

