IRS Now Has a Tool To Unmask Bitcoin Tax Evaders (thedailybeast.com) 210
SonicSpike shares a report from The Daily Beast: You can use bitcoin. But you can't hide from the taxman. At least, that's the hope of the Internal Revenue Service, which has purchased specialist software to track those using bitcoin, according to a contract obtained by The Daily Beast. The document highlights how law enforcement isn't only concerned with criminals accumulating bitcoin from selling drugs or hacking targets, but also those who use the currency to hide wealth or avoid paying taxes. The IRS has claimed that only 802 people declared bitcoin losses or profits in 2015; clearly fewer than the actual number of people trading the cryptocurrency -- especially as more investors dip into the world of cryptocurrencies, and the value of bitcoin punches past the $4,000 mark. Maybe lots of bitcoin traders didn't realize the government expects to collect tax on their digital earnings, or perhaps some thought they'd be able to get away with stockpiling bitcoin thanks to the perception that the cryptocurrency is largely anonymous.
"The purpose of this acquisition is to help us trace the movement of money through the bitcoin economy," a section of the contract reads. The Daily Beast obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act. The contractor in this case is Chainalysis, a startup offering its "Reactor" tool to visualize, track, and analyze bitcoin transactions. Chainalysis' users include law enforcement agencies, banks, and regulatory entities. The software can follow bitcoin as it moves from one wallet to another, and eventually to an exchange where the bitcoin user will likely cash out into dollars or another currency. This is the point law enforcement could issue a subpoena to the exchange and figure out who is really behind the bitcoin.
"The purpose of this acquisition is to help us trace the movement of money through the bitcoin economy," a section of the contract reads. The Daily Beast obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act. The contractor in this case is Chainalysis, a startup offering its "Reactor" tool to visualize, track, and analyze bitcoin transactions. Chainalysis' users include law enforcement agencies, banks, and regulatory entities. The software can follow bitcoin as it moves from one wallet to another, and eventually to an exchange where the bitcoin user will likely cash out into dollars or another currency. This is the point law enforcement could issue a subpoena to the exchange and figure out who is really behind the bitcoin.
Evading taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
How dare the little people!??? Only corporations who purchased the proper politician get to evade their personal responsibility.
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But evading taxes is "smart". Just ask the president.
Re: Evading taxes? (Score:2)
No. Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is legal and smart.
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How dare the little people!??? Only corporations who purchased the proper accountant can protect the interests of their shareholders and stakeholders.
FTFY.
Rules are the same for everybody. Don't like it? Feel free to pay the government more than you have to. There's even a line on the 1040 for it.
Re: Evading taxes? (Score:1)
I am a smug jackass who has to sign every post of mine despite being logged in where anyone can clearly see who made the post. My posts are mostly inane and deserve to be moderated to -1. I'm pretty much a useless poster on Slashdot.
-jcr
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So you pay to use my roads? You pay to be protected from me robbing your home while you're sleeping because, well, it may be illegal, but I doubt you'd expect a public court to work for you, at least without paying for it, right?
Re: Evading taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
You may be joking, but there's plenty of assholes who think that they don't owe jack shit... but then turn around and use public roads, public services and enjoy living in a free country the freedom of which is paid for by tax money.
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My car registration is my taxes paid for using public roads.
My taxes paid on my income pays for public services (and killing innocent women and children in foreign countries via drone strikes).
I enjoy living in a free country thanks to the actions of me and my military brothers that have fought in wars protecting this country.
The government should be allowed to shake me down because I made some risky, but good financial decisions. Keep in mind that I take all the risk.
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>>The government should be allowed to shake me down because I made some risky, but good financial decisions. Keep in mind that I take all the risk.
Make that, shouldn't be allowed to shake me down.
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and enjoy living in a free country the freedom of which is paid for by tax money.
The US is not a free country. It is just good at brainwashing its minions to think so. Pay your taxes and it enjoy it, slave-man. You are only free do what your government allows you to do and there is a lot it doesn't allow you to do, but it's ok because you are happy to be a slave as long as that is not what you think you are. And no it is not more free than other countries either. Go live in some of those other countries and you will see what I mean. BTW your taxes pay for a lot more than just basic gove
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Now I'm curious, care to define "free"?
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Not being coerced or told what to do by your government. Not being a slave. Being left alone unless you are actually harming other people. Obviously freedom doesn't mean freedom to murder people. It means freedom to be left alone to do what you want as long as you don't cause others harm. The US clearly does not qualify. At least not anymore. In the 18th century it did more or less qualify as free at least by my definition as long as you weren't an African slave.
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That also means that you will have a hard time defending against countries that don't see it this way. Because you will not have an army.
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Then it's great that you have a conservative government, that should take care of that pretty soon, right?
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Over here we call that social services, where you get money from the state if you're broke and can't support yourself. Dunno if that exists in the US.
Taxes != theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck you. Taxation is theft.
If you don't want to pay taxes go live in somewhere where you don't use any of the benefits of paying taxes. No rule of law, no police or other first responders, no roads, no military, no contract enforcement, no judicial system, limited health care, no public education, no science research, no parks, no vaccines, no space program, no internet, no food safety, no drug safety, etc. If you want to live in a civilized society shut up and pay your taxes and stop selfishly whining about it. You benefit from the results too. Taxes are only theft in the minds of stupid and selfish people.
Re:Taxes != theft (Score:5, Informative)
Somalia looks like his preferred place to live. No taxation there. Well, provided you can keep the bandits at bay.
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North Korea is a socialist paradise.
Two can play the game of strawman! WOOT
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There's no taxation in the USA either, provided you can keep the bandits at bay.
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True, but I'm too honest a guy to found a religion.
Re:Taxes != theft (Score:4, Insightful)
Venezuela is getting there pretty damn fast. And the shit-hole known as India*, where tax evasion was so bad that they had to change the currency. 60% of households are without a toilet, no proper sewer system, people shitting in the open on sidewalks, that's what tax avoidance gets you. It's now even grounds for divorce [washingtonpost.com] because an Indian court has finally ruled that making women hold it in until after sunset so they can take a dump outside (hopefully unseen) is cruelty.
They keep saying "taxation is theft," but ignore the fact that if you don't pay your fair share, you're stealing from everyone else who has to make up the difference. Not paying tax is theft.
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people shitting in the open on sidewalks,
Sounds like San Francisco!
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On the contrary, taxes are needed, but not sufficient, to pay for public infrastructure. There also has to be the political will to build it. If the money isn't there, or a tax revenue stream to float bonds or loans against, all the political will to build infrastructure won't make it happen.
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Re: Taxes != theft (Score:3)
There is lots of taxation in Somalia. You just don't recognize the governments that impose those taxes.
There's a whole lot if government in Somalia. You may know them by the name, 'warlords.'
Taxes == robbery (Score:1)
The US had all this aplenty before introducing Federal Income Tax. Today all of those things you list take but a small fraction of the federal budget [slashdot.org] combined — the rest is consumed by the pseudo-charities like Medicaid.
None of this require
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Close
Military. 28% of the budget
Paying back debt to social security 33% of the budget and rising
This is money the federal government borrowed in the 70'sand 80's from SS when SS had a surplus annually and is required to pay back. Ask the baby boomers what they spent this money on. They are responsible for spending it but are too stupid and selfish to pay it back.
Medicare 30%. Because everyone kept expanding services wile doing something stupid like prevent Medicare from negotiating rates to keep prices
Re: Taxes == robbery (Score:2)
The boomers really didn't get much power until later than those years you listed. Look at the age of politicians and then look at the birth years for the boomer generation.
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If you don't want to pay taxes go live in somewhere where you don't use any of the benefits of paying taxes.
Taxation BEYOND the value of the benefits paying taxes generates is theft.
Taxation to provide benefits that are Not common goods is also theft.
For example: If the government collects $100 from 1000 taxpayers, and then spends $100000 on a project or service that
only benefits 100 taxpayers, for example, maybe that tax money goes to a service that only helps parents with children,
and 900 taxpay
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If you don't want to pay taxes go live in somewhere where you don't use any of the benefits of paying taxes.
Taxation BEYOND the value of the benefits paying taxes generates is theft.
Taxation to provide benefits that are Not common goods is also theft.
For example: If the government collects $100 from 1000 taxpayers, and then spends $100000 on a project or service that
only benefits 100 taxpayers, for example, maybe that tax money goes to a service that only helps parents with children,
and 900 taxpayers don't have kids, then that is stealing $100 from 900 taxpayers.
No rule of law, no police or other first responders, no roads, no military, no contract enforcement, no judicial system, limited health care,
In the US a TINY fraction of taxes collected go towards paying for anything substantively related to those benefits --- that is called the ACCEPTABLE/Agreeable/Necessary taxation required by the social contract, and the proper required Tax to pay for those services when properly managed are not what people are complaining about when they say Taxation is theft - you can argue about the proper amount, but it's not magically an amount that explodes with the value of your income ---- Theft is loss of taxpayer money due to corruption, personal favoritism, cronyism, nepotism, or spending tax money in excessive amounts or on unnecessary jobs or services to extract personal benefits for the decisionmakers such as political favors, power, monetary contributions, helping a friend, etc. Also, those benefits you mention are ALL provided by local governments (Not the feds), which are typically funded by Real Property taxes And Sales Taxes; None of which are affected by a person's income or bitcoin holdings -- The federal government has very little role in upholding the rule of law, only the states and cities have a meaningful role in Public Education, the Police you need are locals, Roads are built by the states, The best parks are State and City parks, not until you talk about Space Programs and Military do you get to federal services --- the Feds spend practically nothing on Space, the Military is far in excess of what is needed, Food Safety and Drug Safety programs are probably moreso detrimental than beneficial on the whole; the Internet is built by private industry, so are Vaccines..
In fact, if your income is $20k a year or $50k a year, you still receive essentially identical benefits from all government services, so there's no reasonable basis your tax (Cost) for those services should be different --- It is simply JUST a racket, AND it is theft and enslavement.
If you don't want to pay taxes go live in somewhere where you don't use any of the benefits of paying taxes.
Taxation BEYOND the value of the benefits paying taxes generates is theft.
Taxation to provide benefits that are Not common goods is also theft.
For example: If the government collects $100 from 1000 taxpayers, and then spends $100000 on a project or service that
only benefits 100 taxpayers, for example, maybe that tax money goes to a service that only helps parents with children,
and 900 taxpayers don't have kids, then that is stealing $100 from 900 taxpayers.
No rule of law, no police or other first responders, no roads, no military, no contract enforcement, no judicial system, limited health care,
In the US a TINY fraction of taxes collected go towards paying for anything substantively related to those benefits --- that is called the ACCEPTABLE/Agreeable/Necessary taxation required by the social contract, and the proper required Tax to pay for those services when properly managed are not what people are complaining about when they say Taxation is theft - you can argue about the proper amount, but it's not magically an amount that explodes with the value of your income ---- Theft is loss of taxpayer money due to corruption, personal favoritism, cronyism, nepotism, or spending tax money in excessive amounts or on unnecessary jobs or services to extract personal benefits for the decisionmakers such as political favors, power, monetary contributions, helping a friend, etc. Also, those benefits you mention are ALL provided by local governments (Not the feds), which are typically funded by Real Property taxes And Sales Taxes; None of which are affected by a person's income or bitcoin holdings -- The federal government has very little role in upholding the rule of law, only the states and cities have a meaningful role in Public Education, the Police you need are locals, Roads are built by the states, The best parks are State and City parks, not until you talk about Space Programs and Military do you get to federal services --- the Feds spend practically nothing on Space, the Military is far in excess of what is needed, Food Safety and Drug Safety programs are probably moreso detrimental than beneficial on the whole; the Internet is built by private industry, so are Vaccines..
In fact, if your income is $20k a year or $50k a year, you still receive essentially identical benefits from all government services, so there's no reasonable basis your tax (Cost) for those services should be different --- It is simply JUST a racket, AND it is theft and enslavement.
Actually there is a good reason for why you should pay more for these services if you make more money. Quite simply you have more to loose. If the cops don't show up when you are robbed, you could loose more money. You therefore derive a greater benefit from these services. This is the problem of flat taxes. Everybody pays the same, but not everyone receives the same benefit. Fair share never meant to imply equal. Don't like it, vote with your feet and move. If you must have a flat tax, then everyo
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Quite simply you have more to loose.
Sounds like the same logic behind mafia-style protection rackets.
You therefore derive a greater benefit from these services.
NOPE. You get essentially the same level of benefit everyone else does.
Ultimately the police/firefighters do VERY LITTLE or Nothing to directly protect your individual property regardless of value.
Sometimes they will delay or not even respond to situations where only property is at risk.
Burglaries are a low priority compared to almost anything
Re:Taxes != theft (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxation to provide benefits that are Not common goods is also theft. For example: If the government collects $100 from 1000 taxpayers, and then spends $100000 on a project or service that only benefits 100 taxpayers, for example, maybe that tax money goes to a service that only helps parents with children, and 900 taxpayers don't have kids, then that is stealing $100 from 900 taxpayers.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. That's why we need to end public education. I don't receive ANY benefit whatsoever from public schools. It's not like those schools keep children busy and out of trouble. And I don't want educated employees for my company. I want poor, uneducated masses that I can exploit for as little as possible. It's not like they'll turn to crime out of boredom or sheer desperation or anything like that.
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I'm not sure where you live but it can't be in the US. I like the US, I don't want to move somewhere else. But let's not pretend there are no problems here.
Tell me all about the rule of law in places like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Yes we pay quite a bit for police. They use their funding largely for union protectionism. They're all about writing tickets in the name of safety, but if someone breaks into your house they'll show up 2 hours later to write the report. Live in a place without the c
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I see America kept the same attitude even after the massacre of Native Americans. Good job.
Do you honestly believe none of your ancestors killed others for land? It was pretty commonplace through human societal history. Doesn't make it right or wrong, but explain why you can single yourself out as one who has the right to pass judgment on others. For all I know some of your ancestors came over and helped, or supported it indirectly buy purchasing goods from the Americas.
Those who make statements like yours belie their own ignorance.
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Taxation is the price of having civilization.
Lets look at the US and the health care system. Right now, the US pays twice what any other country pays for its healthcare, with most of that going into private pockets. If we had a single payer system, we would be around Norway's level.
Keep thinking that you want no government... then sit and wonder why people, with nothing to lose, start burning things down, and why the place is a police state, because the government has to go to extremes to keep order... an
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Taxation is the price of having civilization.
False. Because if that were the case, then more taxes = more civilization, which it doesn't.
The alternative is, Taxation is a necessary evil, and as such should be reduced or eliminated wherever possible, and should be voluntary (optional) not compelled under threat of government guns.
And, while we're talking taxes, how much is enough?
As for Macro/micro economics, I've passed both, and have a degree in Finance. Libertarian principles are about liberty, and taxes are about enslavement. For the record, I am
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I have yet to see a libertarian who has passed a macroeconomics or microeconomics class.
Well let me be the first then. I had some fundamental disagreements with the macroeconomics professor though and due to those disagreements certainly did not get an A but I did pass the course. You are correct in thinking that most Libertarians are not Keynesians though and most macroeconomic courses are based on Keynesian ideas. So it is difficult if you think those ideas are just silly and stupid and certainly unproven. Microeconomics though is only slightly controversial for a Libertarian. I found there
Re:Evading taxes? (Score:4, Insightful)
You most certainly enjoy many benefits of taxation; you just don't want to pony up your contribution. Enjoying benefits without contribution is theft.
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On a completely unrelated note, of course, how do you jail corporations?
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This is a completely bogus and logically-flawed argument.
If the money is already confiscated from me against my will, I may as well partake of whatever they are spent on. This does not make my opposition to the confiscation in any way invalid or immoral.
But I do find it curious, how people openly arguing against the citizens' privacy can get as highly-moderated on Slashdot as the pro-taxers... FBI searchin
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Enjoying benefits without contribution is theft.
In which slashdot pivots to supporting perpetual copyright just to stick it to the anti-government right.
Re:Evading taxes? (Score:5, Insightful)
So no, it is not patriotic to avoid paying your taxes. It is laziness and against our very Constitution. Pay your debt to society or give up your citizenship and leave. Find yourself a nice 3rd world shithole Libertarian nation and live there. Freeloader.
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I don't get dick for the half of my paycheck that is stolen by government.
You want dick? Congratulations for coming out of the closet. But supplying dick is not part of the government's mandate. Obtaining it is left to your own initiative. You can start by posting a f*ck-ton of posts about why you love Apple, link to the Village People video in your sig, and take those assless leather cowboy chaps out of storage.
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Re: Evading taxes? (Score:2)
The majority of "poor" people do indeed commit the moral equivalent of theft. They all have enough income to drive around in an Escalade, smoke weed and cigarettes, buy plenty of junk food, cell phones even I can't afford, they all have $200/mo cable packages.
There are very few truly poor people in the US and those people (homeless, veterans with PTSD) hardly get any help from the government.
Re: Evading taxes? (Score:1)
I think that part of the problem with your reasoning is that, without violence, private property is poorly defined.
What stops someone to claim that you live in your property for example. Or that he owns the resources under your land (water, minerals, you name it).
The problem of ownership of a resource seems (to me) too difficult to solve without violence. There are way to many places when two (or more) groups of people think that they have the right to some land.
A central authority, that represent in some
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Ah, jcr, you crazy sonnovabitch. Let's calibrate that crazy-o-meter and see how you're doing.
Alright, so lay it on me. What's the alternative?
Describe your libertarian utopia. How do roads work? Defending against a bigger thug simply taking all our stuff? What do you do when the wheels fall off the new car you purchased and killed half your family?
So taxation is theft. Fine. Whatever floats your goat. So what do we do from there?
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Fuck you. Taxation is theft.
And if you didn't pay the taxes, anyone would be free to murder you and take your money without cause. Laws are just words with nothing to enforce them.
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And if you didn't pay the taxes, anyone would be free to murder you and take your money without cause. Laws are just words with nothing to enforce them.
Do you mean like the current situation with civil assets forfeiture and police getting away with murder?
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I hope you filled out the relevant form to engage in this kind of exchange of information with the IRS.
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The government just takes more and more of your money, but they don't go after the large corporations who have their money stashed away overseas. They just want more and more of your hard earned money. It's so Jewish.
You mis-spelled "It's so Trump/Republican."
and now the IRS scammers will ask for bitcoins (Score:2)
and now the IRS scammers will ask for bitcoins
fewer than the number of people... (Score:1)
Certainly not all people trading in bitcoin are based in the USA and owe taxes to the IRS!
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Certainly not all people trading in bitcoin are based in the USA and owe taxes to the IRS!
Well maybe the IRS will be nice and share their data with tax authorities from other countries. Everyone wins!
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Everyone on this planet owes the IRS taxes unless they can prove otherwise.
bitcoin carries a permanent log (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin has a permanent log of all transactions going back to the very beginning. The log never goes away.
As soon as a single trasnaction become tied to a real person then every transaction ever made by the person is exposed.
Bitcoin is not anonymous. Never was never will be. Using for that purpose = fool. There are other cryptocurrencies designed for anonymous, bu tthey are not as popular so also not as useful.
Re:bitcoin carries a permanent log (Score:4, Insightful)
^ This.
The distributed ledger is the opposite of anonymous- everyone has a full copy of all transactions. To use a bank analogy, you have a land of numbered Swiss bank accounts, and the transactions are published in a daily newspaper. Cracking who owns what is simply an exercise in meta data analysis.
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The distributed ledger is the opposite of anonymous- everyone has a full copy of all transactions.
No, the use of a single ledger (distributed or not), is orthogonal to anonymity. It is totally possible to design a single distributed ledger, blockchain-based cryptocurrency which has anonymity guarantees. Bitcoin is simply not such a design; anonymity wasn't a design goal.
What Bitcoin is, is a ledger full of pseudonymous transactions. Pseudonymity is not anonymity, though with sufficient care it is possible to ensure that a pseudonym is not tied to any real-world identity, achieving anonymity, but that'
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Bitcoin has a permanent log of all transactions going back to the very beginning. The log never goes away.
As soon as a single trasnaction become tied to a real person then every transaction ever made by the person is exposed.
Bitcoin is not anonymous. Never was never will be. Using for that purpose = fool. There are other cryptocurrencies designed for anonymous, bu tthey are not as popular so also not as useful.
Came here to say precisely this.
BC could be a possible hedge against runaway inflation among normal fiat currencies, but it was never intended nor designed for anonymity.
Strat
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A dirty little secret of forensic accounting is that i
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Numbers are full of coincidental patterns and people get confused about statistics. The probability of any given pattern being present is independent of any other patterns found not grouped. Just as each spin of a perfect roulette wheel has the same odds of landing on a given number, even if it just landed on the same n
It's anonymous until you get that transaction (Score:2)
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Bitcoin has a permanent log of all transactions going back to the very beginning. The log never goes away.
As soon as a single trasnaction become tied to a real person then every transaction ever made by the person is exposed.
Bitcoin is not anonymous.
That's a complete misunderstanding of how bitcoin works on so many levels it's hard to know where to start.
I'll start by assuming you didn't actually mean "ever(y) transaction ever made by the person", even though that's a direct quote. If I have two different bitcoin addresses. Attaching my name to address A tells you exactly nothing about address B, unless they are linked by some OTHER means.
Okay, so assuming what you meant was that attaching a name to a given address, A, then this ties every single trans
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What you CAN tell from putting a name to a single address is to go back and see where the bitcoins came from. But bitcoins are like water. You can follow the flow, but you cannot distinguish my cup from the other water it comes into contact with. Trying to follow MY cup of water as it mixes with others (e.g. taint analysis) isn't exactly trivial and will usually require more information that even the authorities don't have access to. And if I pour my cup of water into a known mixing lake, you might assume I control one or more of the "cups" of water taken out of the lake, but you have no idea which one(s).
Holy SHIT is that a good explanation for something I knew about but couldn't wrap my head around. I had the exact same sort of conception about the blockchain that the coward did and wondered just how it was ever used in criminal enterprise. I knew "they went into an anonymizer" but didn't understand how that lost track of who was who.
Still, there's list out there of everyone who has ever accepted stolen bitcoins. If I could go to the FBI or whatever cyberpolice and report that $2 mill of bitcoins were
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Not to mention that if you want to participate in a contraband market, you need to establish reputation; and if the contraband is anything other than information (like lists of stolen credit cards), you have to transfer physical goods too. This means once the authorities have unmasked one party in a web of transactions, they can start unraveling the thread.
While it would be foolish to rely on cryptocurrency as being anonymous, it's not necessarily foolish to try to exploit its pseudonymous nature, if you u
Good representation of bitcoin users (Score:1)
802 people reported Bitcoin profits and losses. That is probably a significant percentage of people that had enough usage of Bitcoin to even report. I know a lot of people use bitcoin, but I seriously doubt most people usage of Bitcoin warrant reporting on taxes.
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To be brutally honest, the types of transactions that most people make with Bitcoin (drug buys, money laundering, etc) aren't exactly the ones you want to report to the government. If they were dumb enough to report those to the IRS, they'll have problems worse than tax evasion to worry about.
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But it may be easier to prove they did not pay their taxes than to prove they sold drugs. IE, IRS: Where did that 500K in your bitcoin account come from? Drug seller: I don't know. IRS: You failed to declare that on your 1040, tax evasion, go directly to jail. Many criminals have been brought down by the IRS.
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/sarcasm... Of course and yes they do give lots of notice. But in many cases the justice system cannot prove the criminal activity, just the spoils. So what has convicted many very hard to convict criminals is taxes. My personal experience with the IRS has been quite good, even when I've made some rather stupid mistakes. But they were not intended mistakes, just typos. If anything I've had friends do things that should have gotten them into much more trouble than it did. I fondly remember one friend telling
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IRS: Where did that 500K in your bitcoin account come from?
Me: Selling WoW goods.
IRS: Do you have any records to back that up?
Me: Yes. But they are cloaked by an invisibility spell.
Taxes and crime (Score:3)
To be brutally honest, the types of transactions that most people make with Bitcoin (drug buys, money laundering, etc) aren't exactly the ones you want to report to the government. If they were dumb enough to report those to the IRS, they'll have problems worse than tax evasion to worry about.
I wouldn't bet on that. Tax evasion is how they put Al Capone in prison. If you look on line 21 of the standard 1040 form you will see it says "Other income. List type and amount". It may as well say "report earnings from illegal drugs and other crimes here". This is where they get drug dealers because ANY income has to be reported by law, whether or not it was legally obtained. So if you don't report the earnings from drug deals (or any other crime) they bust you for tax evasion even if you manage to
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BitCoin never was anonymous (Score:2)
It's been said before: BitCoin is not anonymous. That's not even part of the design: by definition, the blockchain makes all transactions fully traceable. The only anonymity is one of obscurity, and the IRS software does not address this: how do you map a BitCoin address to a particular person.
If you have that information, however, then BitCoin is fully open, and transactions are fully traceable. Even the "mixers" are just a stupid game that serve little purpose other that to impose a fee on people with gui
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I'm wondering how long it will take for governments to start trying to make anonymous currencies illegal.
Benjamin Franklins are next.
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Man, this was finally explained by a coward up there.
Bit coins flow like water, there's no serial number on individual coins. It's values in and out. They mix together. And there's an endless number of addresses, and those addresses aren't tied to real people (UNTIL THEY ARE).
So if you want to receive bitcoins anonymously, you make a new address, receive the bitcoins, put it into a mixer, and take it out with a different address.
Now the only entity that knows who you are is the mixer whom you paid as a ce
Balancing act (Score:2)
No one likes paying taxes, so any time the IRS figures out how to track income or close a loophole, there's bound to be lots of grumbling. The only tax that the IRS is pretty much guaranteed to get is the tax on W-2 income and investment capital gains due to automatic reporting. Everything else can be gamed. Large companies purchase tax loopholes by buying politicians and accounting services, and there's not much that can be done about that. Small companies are basically free to report what they want to rep
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The only tax that the IRS is pretty much guaranteed to get is the tax on W-2 income and investment capital gains
Yes... and the W-2 Reporting and forced witholding is Unfair enforcement, because it disproportionately hurts Employees, while giving corporations, individual contractors, and "Gig" / "Odd" employees who take cash for every job an unfair advantage.
So if you give up being an employee, and go out on the street and do odd jobs on the street, you can hit the taxpayers twice ---- first be
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Except that logged-in trolls are easy to spot, and down-modding them reduces the number of posts they can make to 2 per account per day - and if suddenly the same IP address is used to crap-flood, it's easy enough to ban.
Now if you REALLY want to clean up things, have validated accounts with a real identity behind them. Sure this won't stop crap (it doesn't on sites like facebook or twitter), but eventually the shit will hit the fan, because the Internet never forgets. Enough people lose job opportunities
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Yup, an abusive moderator has censored this post to -1 rather than addressing the points raised within it. This is further evidence as to why moderation should be removed from Slashdot.
Well, the post to which you refer was almost entirely opinion stated as fact, which is enough to earn a downmod. With regard to "moderators don't post in stories because it will undo the moderation", I have moderated and posted (as AC) in the same story many times, and I suspect many others have as well.
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There is no reason to allow someone to moderate in a discussion and then post anonymously. That's a bug - one that can be easily fixed. It's also dishonest. Then again, most logged-in users hide behind nyms anyway, so they're more like "semi-anonymous cowards."
Now back on topic. The bitcoin chain holds a record of every transaction. The IRS shouldn't have too hard a time now going back over years of transaction records. There's the flaw of bitcoin - if anonymity is broken, every transaction is on record, n
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There is no reason to allow someone to moderate in a discussion and then post anonymously. That's a bug - one that can be easily fixed.
Checking the "Post Anonymously" box is equivalent to logging out and then posting. This can also be achieved by loading the discussion in a private browser tab. So you have your reason : the workaround would be trivial.
Now back on topic. The bitcoin chain holds a record of every transaction. The IRS shouldn't have too hard a time now going back over years of transaction records. There's the flaw of bitcoin - if anonymity is broken, every transaction is on record, not just the most recent activity. And for bitcoin to work, every transaction needs to be recorded. And if history has taught us anything, it's that any encryption can be broken given enough resources and motivation. Just more proof that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, I guess.
Anonymity never was a design goal for Bitcoin. It is just that the system doesn't requires personal information to function. And the crypto behind Bitcoin is pretty solid, AFAIK it is even quantum computer proof. And should the current algorithms break, it would be possible to update the prot
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Comparing a thorough taxman to the nazis shows that you have no grasp of history.
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It scares you that officials seek to do their job effectively? What?
That's what tax officials do. They collect taxes that people owe. Some people, especially wealthier people and large corporations seek to use different mechanisms to avoid paying taxes that they legally owe. If tax officials allow this to happen, they're basically saying that tax evasion is fine at which point everyone with the money to hire a tax advisor/set up a shell company will stop paying taxes, and the entire tax burden will be left on those too poor to be able to use trickery to dodge taxes, which would be destructive to the entire society. There are those who argue this is in fact already at least partially the case seeing how little taxes many megacorporations pay to their respective countries, and seeing how abundant different sorts of tax-havens like Panama and the Caymans are.
Unless you yourself happen to be trying to use Bitcoin to dodge taxes, you should be in favor of this, because the more sucessfully people avoid taxes, the more the pool of tax paying citizens shrinks because tax-evasion, the more taxes you will pay.
No. Wanting to catch people who break laws does not make anyone a nazi. This is just as stupid as calling the police "the crime-Nazis" for wanting to apprehend criminals. Now you may disagree with certain laws and argue that said laws or said taxes should not be collected, but for that to happen you need to change the law, not point the finger the whoever is enforcing said law and break Godwin's law without clearly having even a modicum of understanding of what the word you're throwing as an insult means.
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Stop trolling you fool. When Silk Road was closed, it barely made a dent in the daily crypto-currencies transactions. This is a well-known fact. You're just bitter than you didn't buy hundreds of Bitcoins in 2009.
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When ransomware hits, it's also barely a blip on the total number and total amount of transactions. Dumbass.
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Hardly. By that logic everyone using cash are mostly engaged in criminal activity. Day-to-day people just aren't thinking about everything in terms of taxes. Ted buys Joe lunch, it never even crosses Joe's mind to log the lunch and the amount so he can pay taxes on it later.
This is akin to the IRS announcing they've bought software to perform forensic analysis of lunch purchases because less than 300 people reported income from lun
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"It's a strong indication that Bitcoin is mostly used for criminal activity."
Hardly. By that logic everyone using cash are mostly engaged in criminal activity.
Based on civil assets forfeiture, that is the logic being used by the government.
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Came to post something like this.
Anonymous currencies (which Bitcoin really isn't) and currencies not controlled by central banks (which Bitcoin is) are quite useful under authoritarian and/or despotic governments.
I expect Bitcion use to increase significantly in the USA over the next few years.
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Funny. A bunch of US dollars in one hand versus a bitcoin wallet address in the other - guess which one is earning me more right now? And no, financial instruments and investments are not USD.
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On this planet's side.
Wait, no, he's parking it in some tax haven.
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plain site or plain sight?
learn english!
He meant "plane site." He's investing in a web site devoted to powered flight. :-)