The value of any currency is supported by the size of the market for that currency. If shops accept a currency, then the desire to use that currency to purchase goods creates the value for that currency.

The principle characteristic of a Ponzi scheme is that the value of whatever is being sold is hidden. For a publicly traded stock, bond, commodity, whatever, the price goes down when people sell it and goes up when people buy it. Everyone can watch that happen, and they know what their share of the pie is worth. This is why security exchanges exist, to track and publish those values.

With Ponzi schemes, early withdrawals are hidden, and the value of the security is artificially inflated. By the time a Ponzi scheme matures, the value of the security is far below the advertised value, and may even be negative.

With cryptocurrency, the value of what you have is publicly listed. There's no opportunity for that kind of fraud. Cryptocurrency CANNOT be a Ponzi scheme.

This isn't to say that you can't run a Ponzi scheme around cryptocurrency. If you invest in a fund that is supposed to be earning money through cryptocurrency arbitrage, you are probably caught in a Ponzi scheme. There is nothing about cryptocurrency that makes it immune to the fraud that people perform with any other form of currency. It just isn't as susceptible to arguments over ownership.

Gotta catch 'em all!

Well, maybe not all, every trainer knows you can't catch humans. Why bother trying?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and assert that actual expats know more about the process than the average US-only citizen.

But if you'd prefer, here's WaPo saying the same damned thing. Happy?

Yep, we 100% agree that's how to report realized gains or losses. Now name another capital asset (HUD forms and excise tax notwithstanding, obviously) that you're taxed on receipt rather than just on disposition.

I have no idea how that's even supposed to work, and I'm seriously trying to stay legal (a few grand a year isn't worth prison time). Neither Schedule D nor 8949 make a lick of sense unless you have a value for the "Proceeds" column - Which you don't have unless you've sold something. And sure, go ahead and put a huge unsubstantiated number on your schedule 1 line 8 and see how well that goes for you.

Pretty much the only way I've figured out to comply with that ridiculous requirement is to make a semi-fake wash "sale" of each new year's new mining payouts every December 31st - Which itself is a grey area but since it would always be a gain, never a loss, it's technically kosher; so at least if I get a CP2501 or similar I'll have paid "enough" taxes already and any penalties would be $0.

The IRS is, bluntly, trying to play both sides of the fence on this one. They're treating crypto as money on receipt, and as property on disposition. And have given us no reasonable way to reconcile that discrepancy.

That's not possible to do at the moment.

And it was fairly difficult even before the pandemic. It's like getting divorced from the judge overseeing the divorce itself, and goes down pretty much exactly the way you'd expect.

Taxes on what, exactly?

As the haters are so quick to point out, crypto isn't money. Until an exchange occurs between crypto and fiat (or something meaningfully measurable in fiat), Uncle Sam has absolutely no say in the matter.

Or to put that another way, taxing bitcoin is the single most legitimizing action the government could take as regards crypto. And if crypto is legit, fiat... Isn't.

And yes, for the record I fully realize we technically owe taxes even on bartered goods and services. Unless you're eBay, though, the way the IRS measures that simply doesn't work. If I buy a car with bitcoin, sure, FMV is easy. If I exchange two thinly-traded altcoins... It's a complete farce to say that either side should pay taxes, and even the IRS can't tell you how to measure the FMV of that transaction (go ahead, call their help line - I did in 2019, and the response was crickets).

You're missing the point, but so is the SEC.

My company recently switched from using totally unlogged Skype to fully logged Teams. Take a wild guess what percent of casual conversations between coworkers now occur via secure 3rd party channels that HR (or PHBs) can't intimidate IT into turning over. I'll give you a hint - I don't even know if my Teams client is still working since we got 21H2.

The problem here isn't a technical or legal problem, it's a human one. Until someone can guarantee me that my chat transcripts can't be touched without my knowledge and a court order... Sorry, but the likelihood of getting caught using my own personal phone to chat with coworkers doing the same is simply much, much lower than the likelihood of having HR use those exact transcripts to go fishing during the next "right-sizing".

I think you missed the meaning of the GP.

You can turn them off. Completely. It's really that simple.

There are exactly zero websites I want to be able to "push" content to me. I thought we had gotten over that entire model when broadcast TV died? Why are we now revisiting a battle we won, in a medium that's essentially "pull" from the ground up?

A few people have answered this from the employees' perspective, but there's a much more obvious answer...

My projects at work are almost always multi-week, sometimes even taking the better part of a year. Just getting familiar with the systems my employer uses took me over a year, and that's already having been completely competent in the base platform and proficient at the tools and languages involved in doing the actual work.

The "gig" economy is great for situations where "probably" is good enough and the work is low-to-no-skill. If one Uber driver doesn't show up, it just means you wait two extra minutes for the next one. If one day-laborer is sick today, there's 20 others to pick from in the Home Depot parking lot. And even then, that doesn't always work - If the ship or railcar doesn't get unloaded, you're paying demurrage. If the checkout lines aren't adequately staffed, people start abandoning full carts and walking out.

Not everything can be a "gig". If an employer needs either highly skilled labor, or a guaranteed minimum number of bodies present - Not a gig.

I've had no problem spending BTC. Just buy from abroad and have it imported (and as long as they call it a "promotional" item - They all do - it doesn't even cost you any more anyway).

All the responses to you so far have bragged about Androids... And make no mistake, I use both Android and iOS and am by *no* stretch of the imagination an Apple fanboy...

But...

I have owned my current iPhone for roughly 3 years. And in that time, I have rebooted it exactly once, for an OS upgrade. I force-shut it down one other time only because I was in the middle of nowhere, basically lost, and wanted to save the last 5% of battery for a 911 call if it became necessary.

Put bluntly, it has never crashed. Ever. Period.

Engineering (used to be) a profession. MBAs destroyed it. Programming has no control over entry, standards, or base education requirements. It is not a profession.

Again with these imaginary definitions! You need a dictionary, friend.

A "profession" is however I make my living. Prostitution (whether it be to a pimp or an MBA) is still a profession, even if you like to pretend that the fact you grovelled to Uncle Sam for permission to work somehow makes you better than the plebes.

I see you think highly of MBAs, though - So we at least agree on one point. ;)

You're splitting imaginary hairs here. A "consultancy" is just a company that provides consultants.

And I never said anything about "easy". I said that experience matters. If it were easy, we wouldn't have a shortage of competent programmers, since it pays well and everyone and their brother that "knows computers" tries their hand at coding - And then they quickly learn they hate hate hate everything about it.

So you are good with riding the subway surrounded by people who are coughing because they could not get treated for their tuberculosis?

Here, let me offer you a hand getting off of that slippery slope....