

Bitcoins Fail Currency Test in Scandinavia’s Richest Nation - T-A
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-12/bitcoins-fail-real-money-test-in-scandinavia-s-wealthiest-nation.html

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swswsw
It is funny how much the title could change the story perception.

If they titled it "Norway classifies Bitcoin as asset instead of currency".
The tone would sound very different.

Another example is this:

"42% of Americans Know What Bitcoin is" [1]

vs.

"6% of Americans Think Bitcoin Is an Xbox Game" [2]

Both articles are talking about the same survey.

[1] [http://www.coindesk.com/americans-think-bitcoin-is-xbox-
game...](http://www.coindesk.com/americans-think-bitcoin-is-xbox-game/)

[2]
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/6-of-a...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/6-of-
americans-think-bitcoin-is-an-xbox-game/282325/)

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skylan_q
_Bitcoins were dealt a blow in Norway as the government of Scandinavia’s
richest nation said the virtual currency doesn’t qualify as real money._

I don't see how this is a blow to bitcoin. All this does is leave the door
open for people to use bitcoin and escape the tax system without being
punished. If the government of Norway didn't accept the physical phenomenon of
gravity, would gravity have "failed the test"?

The market is bitcoin's ultimate test. Not the government's recognition of it.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _All this does is leave the door open for people to use bitcoin and escape
> the tax system without being punished._

Norway ruled that Bitcoins are an asset subject to capital gains taxation. I'm
not sure how that leaves the door open for people to dodge taxes.

~~~
skylan_q
_I 'm not sure how that leaves the door open for people to dodge taxes._

Sales taxes...

~~~
tedunangst
They don't charge sales tax on barter transactions?

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runarb
Yes, one pay vat on barter transactions in Norway[0].

But unsure how this works in practice. There are also some minimum that has to
be reached before one has to add vat.

0: [http://www.frilansinfo.no/hva-er-en-
barteravtale](http://www.frilansinfo.no/hva-er-en-barteravtale)

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imrehg
That is actually more likely a good than a bad thibg. Here in Taiwan bitcoin
was just recently classified as commodity like gold, instead of currency. This
makes bitcoin businesses and local exchange, bitcoin atm possible, since if it
was currency, one would have to get a bank license to do pretty much all that.
Let's hope it stays this way, and things kick off. We will be doing some
bitcoin+law events here in the Taipei Hackerspace.

~~~
jnbiche
Agreed. Here in the U.S., we would probably be in a much better position if
FinCEN hadn't decided Bitcoin is a currency earlier this year.

~~~
dobbsbob
3rded. Commodities have no regulations in my country. A currency would req
piles of government approval to trade

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LukeHoersten
It's funny how media outlets often use pictures of gold coins with the Bitcoin
logo on it to illustrate Bitcoin. If it doesn't have a physical representation
they make one ;-)

~~~
yincrash
These photos are usually of
[https://www.casascius.com/coins](https://www.casascius.com/coins). I wonder
if he has made more from press usage than coin sales

~~~
jnbiche
Speaking of the dubious benefits of government regulations, Mike Cadwell just
had to shut down his casascius coins business after FinCEN sent him a cease
and desist letter accusing him of unlicensed money transmission. Note that
Mike never accepted U.S. dollars for his casascius coins, so the only premium
he got for his coins was in exchange for his coin's design and metals. So
people were sending hims Bitcoins and in return they got Bitcoins plus a
pretty gold/silver/bronze coin, clearly marketed as non-legal tender.

How anyone could consider this money transmission is beyond me. It's sickening
hyper-regulation. And even more sickening is that the FinCEN rep stood in
front of congress not even a month ago and assured congress how careful FinCEN
was to not stifle innovation with overregulation. Admittedly, casascius coins
aren't high technology (although they're very attractive), but the fact that
FinCEN was so quick to crack down here does not inspire confidence at all.

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hrkristian
This is not really surprising, but it does raise one very important question
for me.

I have transferred funds to Mt.Gox and traded, will the authorities now
automatically assume these are in the form of BTC, and tax me accordingly?

~~~
Mithaldu
Don't ask hackernews, ask a bookkeeper who is familiar with your local tax
laws.

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ftwinnovations
_“At the end of the day, I think people want something backing a currency.”_

And what, pray tell, backs all the world's fiat currencies? Absolutely
nothing.

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ryanthejuggler
It irritates me when people talk about "bitcoins", plural. Bitcoin is so
divisible that it really seems like more of a "stuff" that can't be
pluralized, like sand or water[1].

I forgot where I read it but there was once a description of data that derided
the term "datum", singular, to mean one data point. "To anyone who's ever
worked with it, data is a _stuff_." Wish I could find the book or article.

[1] Yeah, you can use "sands" or "waters" in a somewhat poetic manner, but
that definitely stands out as a special usage.

~~~
keevie
"datum" is pretty common in academic literature. Even more common is treating
"data" as grammatically plural: e.g. "The data show..."

There are plenty of examples of plural mass nouns though, and they all have
slightly different meanings than the usual sense of the word. peoples, monies,
sands, waters, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun#Multiple_senses_for_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun#Multiple_senses_for_one_noun)

language is complicated, and the rules aren't necessarily rationally
intuitive.

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pyalot2
Norway fails bitcoin test.

