News IRS Now Seeks Identities of American Cryptocurrency Traders

[barryv88]

No persecution or prosecution there, just trying to get people to pay their capital gains taxe on fictitious currency.

Fictitious currency.... OMG.... Just stop. Please just stop. Cryptos don't just float around in thin air. It isn't conjured out of nothing. If you honestly understand the blockchain and many alt coins like Cardano that is built to take full advantage of the blockchain and smart contracts, you'll find that they actually SOLVE REAL WORLD ISSUES. Their Ethiopian contract will integrate with that country's educational system, solving many issues that teachers and students face.
Cryptos can be invested through staking on an exchange such as Binance. Hell you can even dump your cryptos into a pool serving as a liquidity provider securing you easy passive income.
Actually I'm just gonna stop right here. The longer you guys stay ignorant towards cryptos, the further you will get left behind. Do a little research for once and smell the coffee.

 

[askyron]

You realize that this is a federal case, not state, right? Capital gains are not limited to actual things, unless you think that selling a stock exchanges an actual part of the company.

 

[Dragonwatcher]

Hey don't give them any ideas. They might try to tax your carbon footprint from the CO2 you exhale.

 

[cryoburner]

The supply issue is due to the pandemic and everyone thinking that demand was going to be lower than expected...
...Miners had little to do with this.

Does anyone actually believe that? It's funny how availability of existing graphics cards was fine right up until cryptocurrency trading started taking off again, just as it did several years back, the last time the unstable crypto market temporarily surged. And while there might have been strong demand for Nvidia's 30-series cards at their announced MSRPs (which should have been blatently clear to anyone, especially Nvidia's marketing department), there's little demand for them at double those prices or more, aside from the mining market. And that goes even more so for cards that have been available for years.

Actually I'm just gonna stop right here. The longer you guys stay ignorant towards cryptos, the further you will get left behind. Do a little research for once and smell the coffee.

Research says cryptocurrencies are largely useless cash-grabs designed to make money for their creators and early adopters before the market eventually collapses, at which point anyone holding onto them will be left footing the bill. Their value is completely speculative in nature and unstable as a result, so they are not particularly useful for making actual, legitimate purchases. They are terribly inefficient, and anything they arguably do better than traditional currencies tends to be outweighed by the things they do worse.

 

[spongiemaster]

Does anyone actually believe that? It's funny how availability of existing graphics cards was fine right up until cryptocurrency trading started taking off again, just as it did several years back, the last time the unstable crypto market temporarily surged. And while there might have been strong demand for Nvidia's 30-series cards at their announced MSRPs (which should have been blatently clear to anyone, especially Nvidia's marketing department), there's little demand for them at double those prices or more, aside from the mining market. And that goes even more so for cards that have been available for years.

GPU shortages are because of mining. And soon hard drives as well. Everything else is not because of mining. PS5's are not impossible to get because of mining. The auto industry is not seeing chip shortages because of mining. Lowend laptops weren't nearly impossible to find for months because of mining. AMD 5000 CPU's aren't MIA because of mining and so on and so forth.

 

[Co BIY]

While banning crypto-mining may not be possible, it can certainly be made worthless: ff most major countries agree to ban crypto exchanges and the use of crypto for payments, people won't be able to cash out and crypto will collapse.

Can people "cash out" now ? Ponzi schemes run on the continuous growth dream, I don't think the skyrocketing "prices" reflect any normal flow out of crypto.

I prefer no government action so that Crypto fails of it's own intrinsic valuelessness rather than governments getting involved. Then it'll be slightly harder to start the next "sucker and his money" idea.

In fact the more I think about it the more I think about it any government enforcement action might end up with us bailing out a bunch of these fools or crooks.

 

[derekullo]

Our only solution is to hodl crypto until we are able to purchase the government.

Once we own the government we pass laws banning the taxing of crypto and items purchased with crypto.

As every single business flocks to the tax free haven of crypto a massive tax shortfall begins to grip each state.

6 months down the line as each state plunges further and further into financial ruin they look towards the government for assistance.

We stare at each other other in confusion wondering how our quest to make bitcoin nontaxable ended up so wrong.

 

[InvalidError]

Can people "cash out" now ? Ponzi schemes run on the continuous growth dream, I don't think the skyrocketing "prices" reflect any normal flow out of crypto.

The stock market short-trading and the banks' over-leveraged loans work the same way. There is no way the exchanges have enough money for everyone to cash out so if people are ever given a reason to cash out, values will collapse the same way banks collapse when they over-leverage loans or hedge funds collapse when they do bad trades on over-shorted stocks.

The current economy is a house of cards, just like crypto. Except crypto comes with no safety net whatsoever while banks usually have some minimum guarantees backed by the government or insurance.

 

[dorsai]

The current economy is a house of cards

You're 100% right on that...the current insanity called Modern Monetary Theory is de-valuing the US dollar so fast it's frightening. This utter non-sense that governments can simply keep printing more and more money while ignoring the golden rule that "the more there is of something the less it's worth" is simple lunacy. Nothing says other countries or even our own citizens have to accept the dollar at face value if we know the government can't actually back the currency. Some day, likely sooner rather than later, a country like China or Germany will simply refuse to buy any more dollars and the whole ponzie scheme of MMT will come crashing down as the US joins other failed states like Venezuela at the bottom of the economic ladder.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

You're 100% right on that...the current insanity called Modern Monetary Theory is de-valuing the US dollar so fast it's frightening. This utter non-sense that governments can simply keep printing more and more money while ignoring the golden rule that "the more there is of something the less it's worth" is simple lunacy. Nothing says other countries or even our own citizens have to accept the dollar at face value if we know the government can't actually back the currency. Some day, likely sooner rather than later, a country like China or Germany will simply refuse to buy any more dollars and the whole ponzie scheme of MMT will come crashing down as the US joins other failed states like Venezuela at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Don't make Paul Krugman mad. He loves MMT.

 

[hotaru.hino]

Does anyone actually believe that? It's funny how availability of existing graphics cards was fine right up until cryptocurrency trading started taking off again, just as it did several years back, the last time the unstable crypto market temporarily surged. And while there might have been strong demand for Nvidia's 30-series cards at their announced MSRPs (which should have been blatently clear to anyone, especially Nvidia's marketing department), there's little demand for them at double those prices or more, aside from the mining market. And that goes even more so for cards that have been available for years.

The comment was about the overall chip shortage, not about GPUs in particular.

However, the same thing still applies to GPUs. NVIDIA expected an uptick in demand, but they didn't anticipate a huge surge. Again, keep in mind that manufacturing orders have to be made well in advance of the product launch. They probably submitted their orders in 2019 which... surprise! There was a slump in cryptocurrency and NVIDIA got burned earlier that year over AIBs not being able to sell their RTX 20 stock. Since nobody has a crystal ball that actually works, the only thing NVIDIA had to go off of was sales history. Also Steam's hardware survey last I checked (today) shows that the number of users with a RTX 3080 outnumbers those who have a RTX 2080 Ti and the RTX 3070 is below the RTX 2060. Yes I know it's not the end-all-be-all, but this shows that plenty of RTX 30 cards are getting into the hands of gamers.

Here's another question to ask: why are PS5s and XBS S/Xes hard to find? Clearly it's the miners buying them all up. /s

EDIT: Also since people were pretty much told to stay at home during 2020, people took up new hobbies. Video gaming seemed to be a popular choice.

 

[husker]

In the U.S., the government doesn't have to know anything about cryptocurrencies, exchanges, or computery stuff at all. Tax evasion is all they have to prove. If you're spending more than your reported income and can't explain where the extra money came from, that's all they need. Just ask Al Capone.

 

[InvalidError]

EDIT: Also since people were pretty much told to stay at home during 2020, people took up new hobbies. Video gaming seemed to be a popular choice.

Working from home was probably a bigger factor than PC gaming though - tons of people who hadn't updated their home PC or laptop in years find out that their computer isn't adequate for their work-from home and need to either upgrade their machine of have the company provide one. Companies themselves also had to upgrade infrastructure to handle much higher than normal work-from-home connections. That's a huge demand spike across the industry from top-of-rack switches and routers to mobile devices and everything in-between.

 

[TJ Hooker]

You're 100% right on that...the current insanity called Modern Monetary Theory is de-valuing the US dollar so fast it's frightening. This utter non-sense that governments can simply keep printing more and more money while ignoring the golden rule that "the more there is of something the less it's worth" is simple lunacy. Nothing says other countries or even our own citizens have to accept the dollar at face value if we know the government can't actually back the currency. Some day, likely sooner rather than later, a country like China or Germany will simply refuse to buy any more dollars and the whole ponzie scheme of MMT will come crashing down as the US joins other failed states like Venezuela at the bottom of the economic ladder.

I mean, both China and Germany (along with pretty much every other country) also 'print money' via their central banks (the EU central bank in Germany's case). So I wouldn't worry about any massive devaluation of USD relative to other currencies.

Regarding inflation, the low interest rates and massive stimulus spending going on in the US and around the world certainly make significant inflation look inevitable. But keep in mind that everyone was saying the same thing after the 2008 financial crisis, but major inflation never really materialized outside of a few particular asset classes.

 

[dorsai]

I mean, both China and Germany (along with pretty much every other country) also 'print money' via their central banks (the EU central bank in Germany's case). So I wouldn't worry about any massive devaluation of USD relative to other currencies.

Regarding inflation, the low interest rates and massive stimulus spending going on in the US and around the world certainly make significant inflation look inevitable. But keep in mind that everyone was saying the same thing after the 2008 financial crisis, but major inflation never really materialized outside of a few particular asset classes.

There's no way to know how much debt China has since they don't release reliable figures. Germany on the other hand we know has 2.4 trillion in debt...less than 10% of the US total.

As far as everyone saying the same thing about a dollar crash and hyperinflation in 2008 we did not have 30 trillion in debt...we had one third of that.

At some point soon the US government will be unable to pay back any principle at all and will only be making payments to service the interest charges...at that point the US will be essential flat broke and the currency will be worthless.

https://www.pgpf.org/infographic/the-national-debt-is-now-more-than-28-trillion-what-does-that-mean

 

[TJ Hooker]

There's no way to know how much debt China has since they don't release reliable figures. Germany on the other hand we know has 2.4 trillion in debt...less than 10% of the US total.

As far as everyone saying the same thing about a dollar crash and hyperinflation in 2008 we did not have 30 trillion in debt...we had one third of that.

At some point soon the US government will be unable to pay back any principle at all and will only be making payments to service the interest charges...at that point the US will be essential flat broke and the currency will be worthless.

https://www.pgpf.org/infographic/the-national-debt-is-now-more-than-28-trillion-what-does-that-mean

At the risk of sounding pedantic, "printing money" typically refers to something different that national deficit and debt. Printing money is when the central bank (e.g. Federal Reserve) buys assets and thereby creates new money. National debt/deficit is created by the treasury selling debt (i.e. bonds). The two are definitely closely related though, especially since quantitative easing became popular, as the central bank ends up acting as a backstop for buying the debt the treasury is selling.

Talking about national debt, it's a bit odd to do so in absolute terms, rather than relative to GDP or population. As a percent of GDP the US is still much worse than Germany, but it's more like 2x, rather than 10x (US debt was ~130% of GDP as of 2017). But to put that in perspective, Japan's debt has been over 100% of GDP for decades, and has been over 200% for years.

Regarding your link, keep in mind the sole purpose of that foundation is concern over debt/spending, and they've been posting articles like that since its inception over a decade ago.

Don't get me wrong, the massive debt and spending of the US is definitely something that warrants concern and some serious thought. But I'm not convinced the US is uniquely bad in this regard, or that it's necessarily spelling imminent financial doom for the country.