Richard Murphy says:
March 7 2021 at 9:00 am
Crypto currencies are not currenciesNor are they assets
They are environment abusing ponzi schemes
People are using them as currencies so they are currencies. They have value so they’re assets.
Richard Murphy says:
March 7 2021 at 9:00 am
Crypto currencies are not currenciesNor are they assets
They are environment abusing ponzi schemes
People are using them as currencies so they are currencies. They have value so they’re assets.
As ever, his argument can be boiled down to “People can only be allowed to have things I can tax”
Bitcoin transactions yesterday totalled about three billion USD. It has recently hit twelve billion. Some of that is for use as a currency. It’s hard to say how much but it’s probably no more that 0.001% and the remaining 99.999% of transactions are pure speculation, with a good mix of market manipulation and ponzi thrown in for good measure. It makes a poor “currency” thanks to a highly volatile exchange rate and transactions that could take hours to go through. Consequently it doesn’t tangibly get used as a currency. I would however agree it is an asset, albeit a highly volatile one.
– Bitcoin transactions yesterday totalled about three billion USD.
Perhaps we’ll know crypto has matured when people regularly talk about how much bitcoin so many dollars is worth. This requirement to convert it to dollars to spend (or just assess value) limits crypto as currency.
And can a Ponzi scheme ever become established enough to outgrow its dodgy roots?
“can a Ponzi scheme ever become established enough to outgrow its dodgy roots?”
An interesting question. It seems to occur the other way round, state pension schemes for example.
So if a rich person exchanges all his/her/xis wealth for some “cryptocurrency” and passes this, on his/her/xis deathbed to inheritors, then no inheritance tax is due because no asset of value has been exchanged, and the residual value of the estate is nil?
I thought this chappie was very much against tax avoidance schemes! Now he just created one!
I thought BitCoin looked frothy; but there’s rarely a better “buy” signal than Murph’s opposition.
TtC – obviously, this doesn’t happen in real life. What happens in Spud’s mind is obviously very, very different.
We’ll know when Bitcoin has become a currency, or is about to become one, it’ll be when the issuers of all the major fiat currencies ban it. They won’t like the constriction a non-inflating currency would bring to their money printing ways and will snuff any competitors out as soon as they become viable rivals.
Even at $3 billion, Bitcoin isn’t much of a currency – CHAPS cleared £360 billion a day in 2020.
Surprised there isn’t more comment on this – it’s the most idiotic post I have ever seen from him. Utterly deranged
Has anyone here actually used bitcoin to buy something, or know someone who has?
re: Bitcoin scalability problem
Visa does 1,700 transactions per second and can scale up to 24,000 transactions per second.
Bitcoin can only handle 7 transactions per second.
Bitcoin can easily be destroyed if governments stopped making it illegal to trade in the naughty stuff that you use Bitcoin for. Heck, there’s a Bank of England report on this, by some minor economists as always, but essentially the way to bring the black economy trade down is to decriminalise it.
This Bitcoin related Tweet amused me:
“ Elon Musk lost $27 billion in 5 days. Assuming he worked 60 hours, that’s -$450,000,000/hour. That’s not even close to a living “
Tim the Coder,
You could use BitCoin to avoid Inheritance Tax, but you’d pay Capital Gains Tax instead. Let’s say you have an investment account at CryptoTraders (Malta) Ltd or whatever: the taxman will see that you’ve made a massive gain. It’ll be a lower bill than Inheritance Tax though; and you’ll have the opportunity to spread it over time.
On the other hand, the taxman might find it suspicious that your aged relative liquidated his assets on his deathbed and immediately transferred the proceeds to BitFinance (Bermuda) Limited. So he’d have to start moving assets long before death; but if you’re going to do that, you might as well buy gold bars.
@AndrewM
Capital Gain?
Mr Potato Head tells us bitcoin has ‘no value’. So if I buy a lot of it, I am turning loads of cash (with a value) into loads of bitcoin (with ‘no value’).
So that’s a massive capital loss, to set against previous gains and hence regain prior capital gains tax paid, too!
Or of course, Mr Potato Head is sprouting nonsense. I know which way I’ll bet 🙂