I’m wondering what would happen if governments completely banned privacy coins. Then almost no business will accept privacy coins because they need to obey local law. Only fully digital and distributed businesses would be able to accept them, but I think there won’t be many of them, thus the adoption of Grin would be very small.
What do you think? The above doesn’t sound like a bright future for Grin and other privacy coins.
They do this because it complicates accounting and transactions are hard to prove. By the same token, if I sell guitars I make for fun, and I want to give it to you for cash, Grin, or whatever - that’s my right. Being digital cash, The business/store model is not in Grin’s future, just like cash.
This would have no real effect on the market for Grin, which is private transactions with no need for proof or reversibility of transactions. Accepting cash, grin or the like is already a huge red flag for businesses to the IRS: https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-do-i-report-large-cash-transactions-to-the-irs-398631 If anything, this bill just states that Grin is going to be perceived much like cash, which is what it was supposed to be. A scary bill would have been one stating the Grin is equivalent to money laundering, saying it’s equivalent to cash is actually a form of promising acceptance.
People seem to be confused about crypto – it is unlikely to replace debit cards, paypal etc. These work fine in the US. Crypto is basically for private transaction in the developed West, and impromptu banking in the third world. It will never be otherwise. This is why I think Grin is the most promising. Bitcoin doesn’t scale and can’t compete in ease of use or business flow with debit cards or payment systems. Bitcoin and all it’s copy cats will die a painful death. Grin actually has a real market. In Africa the ability to pass a transaction on a usb stick or even writing out the transaction file by hand is terribly useful when you have no electicity and can only get to a computer in a cafe once a month or so…
You have to use complicated software (I use cryptotrader.tax), prepare cvs files of 10 or more exchanges of all transactions, compute your cost basis (which never represents your losses, but somehow always shows a profit the way the government defined crypto), etc etc. I do this because I believe in what crypto represents politically and philosophically. I can’t imagine anyway doing this without such motivation. It’s much easier to use debit cards and Quicken so all your accounting and taxes are done automatically.
The transaction needs to be broadcasted to the network in order to get confirmed. 0-confirmation transactions are not secure. Lack of internet is a problem even with Grin transactions.
Sorry was editing while you responded. Eventually you have to get to computer to finalize the transaction, but with all other coins you must be at a working computer with internet right then. A merchant in Africa can take all his transactions for the week to an internet cafe much the same as a US business might make a weekly bank deposit. In fact, I have a friend in Nigeria who does exactly this. Not possible with bitcoin, ethereum or anything else…
No. That is not possible. A transaction that has not been broadcasted has not happened. The same coins could be sent to someone else before the merchant broadcasts the transaction at the end of the week, at which point the transaction would be rejected by the network.
If government says you can’t accept privacy crypto for anything and and you give your guitars for Grin, you will be risking being sentenced very easily.
How america responds to cypto is rather up in the air, but it will be restrained by common law traditions which declares currency to be a special asset with a whole host of legelese that they would need to walk around, if coins are “not money” tm the the basis for violating the first amendment is super weak and they would have to deal with weakening that.
Either counties have strong cultural artifacts that tie the states hands behind its back or their laws aren’t respected as they were probably totalitarian in a mere lifetime ago.
You do have a right to sell them but there are also tax implications since goods have been exchanged for some value. In the US (and I believe in most western economies) you are obligated to report your capital gains on items you sell and to pay local taxes on items you purchase. It is mostly ignored by tax authorities on small, private transactions, such as selling your junk at a car boot sale but if the volume of this ever got too big, the tax authorities are not going to turn a blind eye to it. That is certainly one hurdle for crypto and privacy coins in particular. One possible scenario to make this go away is to only operate in a parallel currency environment where everything is transacted in Grin so that there is never a need to go to fiat. But putting oneself outside of the system to that extent raises a lot of other questions about the nature of democracy as we know it. Either way, generally, western governments don’t like cash for the loss of tax income and cash is being slowly phased out in several countries for this very reason. So likening Grin to cash is not necessarily a positive in every respect. Possibly.
Grin is worldwide, governments are regional. If Grin technology is useful, and as long as it is anonymous, there is no chance it can die because there will always be some parts of the world where people will find Grin more valuable than their official fiat Currency…
I agree with your sentiments and I don’t say that Grin will die at all; I believe it can have a long and healthy life. But there are obstacles to be overcome. To not give them due consideration and be prepared for them ahead of time would be negligent of folks that want to see the project/concept succeed.