Hackers have managed to get $70 million worth of Bitcoin, revealing the risk of all electronic forms of money to which cryptocurrencies are not exempt. The prices keep soaring and requests to add it to Socrates have been coming in so we are complying. With the futures about to begin, this should make it a more transparent market. The problem now is a single trade can be registered just buy one coin to put up prints that do not reflect volume. A future contract will help reveal the true depth of a market.
If we accept the quotes as real, then Bitcoin’s market capitalization is now larger than that of major US banks Citigroup or JP Morgan standing at about $ 220 billion. The problem that emerges is the reclassification legally of Bitcoin. Because it is pretending to be a currency rather than a stock, governments can simply take the latest print and declare that to be a profit and tax you on that number. If the governments would accept Bitcoin as legal tender in payment of taxes, that would be fine. However, if they demand their own currency (dollars) which then forces one to sell Bitcoin to pay the tax, then the price will collapse and they will force you to pay the tax on the inflated number. You can claim you lost money selling it below that figure and they then allow a tax credit but spread out over 10 years. Bitcoin should swap everything to shares and that will eliminate the clash with the government.
This post was published at Armstrong Economics on Dec 8, 2017.
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