RE: BLOODY IMPORTANT QUESTION: should we consider STEEM-ENGINE tokens a security or utility?
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I think if you use fiat to buy tokens to give to an entity for the express purpose of getting a return (whether over time or at some future time) that is greater than what you invest, then convert that back to fiat, it would be hard to claim it is free from taxes. But I believe you are asking about the case where you have accumulated tokens (in this context any cryptocurrency) with no clear traceability to fiat, invest those tokens, receive a greater amount in return, and retain the value in tokens without converting it to fiat. At this time, I do not believe there is any accounting mechanism available to a government that could assess you with a tax liability.
Assuming that such an ability does or soon will exist, it begs the question of where does mining crypto fall in to this, especially when it takes the form we have on steem (leomm, palm, etc). That is much harder to clearly track!
@jdkennedy, i think the issue is not an issue at all , its clear as springwater in fact : i always use the same metafor. Unless it's a stablecoin, pegged to a fiat value , you can't tax anyone on the tokens they hold b/c the fiat value can be either 1% or 1000% or more or less within one years difference.
For instance :
what they DO pay , is a part of the money they made USING it, and that money, albeit somewhat unstable too (if you check forex markets those charts look like wild mountain goats running around sometimes), that is what's being taxed. It's the global answer to everyone's question and as simple as that. Which leaves honest declaration of income ofcourse, but that already was so before any cryptophile came up with crypto"currency" (just like you could say the internet did not invent pedophiles and al capone or Pablo Escobar did NOT need bitcoin to do the deed, they did it in simple, flat, plain, fiat dollar, but that's another topic)
So that answers that question and i don't see how it could be seen any other way. You can't tax something that is as volatile as a cryp-token compared to its fiat value, you CAN tax the fiat people get from trading it, or doing whatever it is their business does. There's no need for extra layers, but there IS need for transparency. I'd like to see the world's governments and banks keep public ledgers on a public blockchain ( = lmao ) , or megacorp maybe, apple and googles books on a public chain, zero alterations, visible to anyone in the world who cares to look. The expenses of parliament and the senate, the income of the ministers ... the reason why not one gov't in the world has adapted it i assume ... it would be hard to cheat ... the original anonimity myth has (luckily) subsided by now (i mean, anonimity on a public ledger ? = lmao²)
So if you're talking stablecoins that are rigidly pegged, those people have a problem coming :D, if you're talking volatile coins and people who speculate on it ? Well they have 24/7 stress coming because the market is still so small any wall- , not whalestreet whale could probably singlehandedly move the price overnight with the spare change they have in their pockets.
I think my logic's pretty sound, if anyone has contacts in the gov't or IRS, tell them that this is undeniable ... :D
And maybe one more thing, i think the dispersion is a bad thing overall. .. BTC, the "original" is capped at 21 million , as was the original intention of Saint Satoshi there, which in essene meant, if the last satoshi was worth between 2 and 4000 dollar it would surpass the value of all dollar in the world ... ofcourse you get entropy in systems (translated : keys get lost -> unrecoverable so it also stands to reason, speaking from a p.o.v. of theoretical mathematics and statistics that, given enough time, all BTC will dissappear :)
But they invented hardforks ... but its still number one , its attractive BECAUSE it's so expensive, more zeroes attracts big money like flies to a sshh turd, while steem here has the problem of being a hyper-inflated utility token with a market share WAY not big enough to hold out over a period of decades like that, unless they get solid and constant bottom input : the fed prints dollar as it sees fit, but the dollar is a trillions(-dollar) market and they ARE the power anyway heh.
More tokens = more value dispersed = less value for each individual, it will turn out like business always does, just like you get the "big five" in tek, you'll get a few who own about everything. If steemit doesn't grow sharp teeth and claws they won't be one of those, there's no compassion in the marketplace.
I don't know if they wanna, and i'm not the one to make it so, id be happy with steem between $5 and $10, happily bobbin on a proper sinoid :) ... but we seem to have drifted a ways from there (i doubt a hyperinflated token will ever reach BTC prices anyway, $5 to $10 seems like a realistic although difficult to achieve atm option)
gotta mind the RC, sorry ... i'm far from fat fish level ...@jdkennedy @crypto.piotr
so in short there : the more you spread your fiat pool the less each of your assets will be worth in the end, at the end of the day you still buy bread with dollar and euro, not steem ... all those new tokens ?
IF they have a use to it, i might believe in some ... if they don't it's just more dispersion and too many ICO's have made a hit & run to be trustworthy anymore. Steem seems to show dedication with a hard-core of serious followers , i dont like the tribalism. I feel the whole of planet Crypton needs to band together against the old financial world until the storm has passed and they're adopted, and "we" should take care of scambag ICO's ourselves since that is what makes the crowd call for blood and once the government gets involved ...
well then you know which way freedom goes, right ?
a good day to you, sir
Thank you for your comments! Reading my post again I realize that I should have referred to being taxed on the earnings of the investment, not the investment itself, as you pointed out. Of course, you can also lose money on an investment and that could be a tax deduction. Regardless, it really is a complex issue that cannot be easily summarized in a few sentences!
Like you, I am also a bit mystified by the number of tribes that don’t have a well defined focus that would distinguish them from what is already in place and successful. What is the point of that? Even then, do you really need a separate token to go along with a group identity? Filtering on well defined tags might be all you really need for focusing on your favorite group or topic.
Cheers!
really ? you can get tax deductions if you make a loss ?
the whole team-thing isn't really up my alley , and the tribal-ism is totally detrimental to the whole of planet Crypton (but its a mirror image of the A F K - world, right ...) I studied a bit of culture and stuff some years ago but i got my own view : subcultures are just like brands, they mainly sell fake id's so to speak to people who dont want to be the norm but in essence any sub-culture has the same behavioural patterns the norm does, it has dresscode, like wallstreet has dresscode (but you could in fact consider that a sub-culture too, although, since it's dominant it would be seen as 'the norm', while the norm is a lot closer to John Doe, daily labour, tv - couch and a beer or two in reality), it has its own speech, you can use this word , but not that one ... same here
if you use the words "blockchain", "crypto","disruptive" and "community" and maybe "organic" in one post enough times you get a good shot at applause lol, even if people have no clue what you're talking about, or even if a lot of talkes dont have a clue what a blockchain actually is ... it's just a ledger holding data that's incorruptible since
hmmm
well, each "block" of data can fit only exactly between two others, so if you have enough nodes it becomes incorruptible as you can't "re-stream" the whole dataset from scratch, so the blocks are linked in a singular way that can not be altered ... the original magic of satoshi and a few obscure cryptophiles and cypherpunks
but that's really all it is in essence lol - the disruption comes not from the fact that it's a glorified torrent, but from the fact that lots of people started THINKING because of it, and now you get families and businesses running on it, thriving on it, some making billions selling hot air (lets not say EOS or TRON or ETH or they might take it personal) or totally ruining themselves. You got original near to 0day cryptonnaires living in treehouses, eccentric people and a LOT who just use the magic words as a salespitch
steem is the first real innovation i consider an innovation since i got what BTC was actually and so far it still is, most co's drive on top of a main chain like eth but all they have is a derivative ( SMART ! another magic word) token which is like something absolutely silly if you think about it since it's a layer on top and it derives everything from its "parent" .. .but well
sales be sales
and tek be tek ... and me, i gotta mind my RC, lol ... i seem to be having a few less bad days omg, all the talk , i can barely follow myself, so
good thing you forgot to mention or maybe i wouldnt have replied hahah
Dear @jdkennedy
I just realized that I never thanked you for your valuable comment.
Exactly.
ps. I've noticed that you didn't post anything in a while. Hope you're not giving up on Steemit.
Cheers
Piotr
I’m still here, just a run of activity the has been consuming my available time. I like my posts to be more thoughtful than not, but that presumes you first have time for thought! :)