
Japan to regulate Bitcoin trades, impose taxes - trendspotter
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Japan-to-regulate-Bitcoin-trades-impose-taxes
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jccooper
Just in time for Japan to have no exchanges to regulate. (Other, I guess, than
LocalBitcoin. Which may or may not count, and would be hard to deal with
anyway.) Or does someone know of one that doens't show up on any of the
charts? Gox is the only JPY exchange I've seen.

Question is: does this help or hurt MtGox's chance of resurrection? Probably
makes it less likely to happen, but somewhat more likely that people will come
back if it does.

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Cless
> Japan's consumption tax, which is set to rise to 8% on April 1

So they're actually going through with this, when the economy has been
depressed for over a decade...?

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thirsteh
Only in America is a tax increase equated (without any further investigation)
to depressing the economy, and a tax break (once again without investigation)
equated with letting the peacock that is the economy fly free.

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fennecfoxen
> Only in America is a tax increase equated (without any further
> investigation) to depressing the economy

That's not strictly true. There are other countries who harbor economists
possessed of half a brain and theory describing the basic principles of how
quasi-rational actors behave in various situations. They just usually don't
get listened to. :)

Promising free lunches for everyone is much more popular and gets you elected!
:D

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fivethree
Theory is dumb when all empirical data disagrees with it. Good thing the
Austrian's figured this problem out by ignoring data. It's the true hacker's
way.

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fennecfoxen
I'm sure you have _multiple_ studies with mountains of data which clearly
demonstrate that the economy is at its most prosperous at a marginal tax rate
of 100%. Oh, man, you guys are so cute. :)

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Cless
So the only possible marginal rates are 0% and 100%. Good to know.

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fennecfoxen
Clearly.

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MattyRad
Is anyone else skeptical of the government's ability to effectively tax
bitcoin? The scale of doing so both technologically and physically seems far
too complicated for such a minute market.

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dangrossman
It doesn't need to be any more sophisticated than the taxing of every other
asset that gets traded. When you realize a gain or loss from buying or selling
gold bars, train engines or copy machines you're expected to report that.

If you make a lot of money buying and selling Bitcoin, you're probably going
through exchanges that are licensed and can be subpoenaed for records if your
own are in question. If you are accepting Bitcoin as payment on a website,
you're probably using something like Coinbase to facilitate it, which means
there are 3rd party records of your income.

If you're trading drugs on Silk Road #3, maybe that won't be taxed, but
neither are most cash transactions on Craigslist; the government doesn't
attempt to put an auditor in every home to catch every transaction that's
supposed to be reported.

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celticninja
plenty of options to take BTC without the need for a 3rd party payment
processor, that will ultimately require honest traders to report accurately,
not much difference to how a cash business works now e.g pub, restaurant,
builder etc.

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icu
IMHO this is a watershed event. It recognizes that Bitcoin has perceived value
enough that the regulator is compelled to protect consumers. Never mind how
regulation can be gamed internationally, the recognition is so significant I'm
going to investigate speculating on Bitcoin's future having kept out so far.

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gamblor956
In the US, they regulate penny stocks, and those things are only worth a few
pennies. The issue isn't the value of the commodity--it's the potential for
avoidable loss due to market manipulation.

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wyager
>they regulate penny stocks, and those things are only worth a few pennies

You understand that the value of something is not tied to the value of its
base unit, right?

If you want to be pedantic, the value of a base unit of Bitcoin is about
$.000006.

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devindotcom
So I'm guessing this will work on the retailer/exchange side? Any transaction
of guaranteed value (i.e. not just shifting wallets, but something like
BTC->goods or BTC->cash) will just have a built-in extra cost in JPY
equivalent, if the party gaining money is definitely in Japan?

Sounds great to me, though the volume will be _very_ small to begin with. This
is a great opportunity for sites and services to demonstrate legitimacy in the
eyes of the law _and_ their users. Of course there will be some dark exchanges
and the like for those who'd rather not have a tax record attached to their
wallet, but for lots of people this will be very beneficial.

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dluftdfreheit
> Banks will be also be prohibited from handling bitcoins while securities
> firms will be barred from brokering bitcoin trades, the Nikkei reported.

Really? Maybe a silly question, but if banks aren't allowed to handle
bitcoins... who is? Only individuals? Does this really outlaw ALL bitcoin
banks?

Yesterday a kind reader posted a translation of a Mt Gox audio statement from
Japanese. I'd be really eager to learn more about what's going on here but I
keep running into language barriers.

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MBCook
Are they actually regulating _bitcoin_ or _cryptocurrencies_?

What's to prevent everyone from just moving to Dogecoin or Likecoin or some
other substitute to stay off book?

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mildtrepidation
Well, the existing value in Bitcoin, for one. I'm mining dogecoin largely to
learn a little bit about these currencies, but if everyone did move over, by
the time it reached the same value Bitcoin has it'd be regulated too.

From what I've read, I doubt the Japanese government (mostly Aso, whose game
I'm guessing this is) actually understands that there are _other_
cryptocurrencies.

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Lamza
This is actually a good thing.

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lcasela
Why? Leave it be.

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bcj
Regulating the sale and trade of goods is a thing that governments do, as is
taxing the income and assets that an individual controls.

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lcasela
But what gives them the right to regulate a market they did not create?

