Hacker News Reader

> Why oh why can't journalists just respect his wishes!

Because it's their job not to. Lots of people don't want to be found but it's in the public interest to find them.

I'd argue the same goes for the creator of Bitcoin. It's in the public interest to find this person and see what they stand to gain from Bitcoin's continued use and value, and what they are likely to do with the money. You will respond that it doesn't matter, but it does.

What if Bitcoin came from Iran's secret service and it will be used to fund an enrichment facility?

What if it came from a drug lord?

What if it came from Michael Bay and he's going to make yet another Transformers movie with it?

All of these are in the public interest to find out and make people reconsider their adoption of it.

A decision void of context is necessarily an ignorant decision.

What if knives had been invented by a drug lord?

Who cares? What's important is whether knives are useful to us or not. If the inventor is a drug lord, then the problem is that he is a drug lord, not that he invented knives.

If someone invents something useful, then he should be rewarded, independently of whether he then uses the resulting money to save starving children or to buy Doritos all to himself.

If he does something illegal with that money, then we should come after him because he did something illegal, not because he was able to do something illegal (because he had earned a lot of money).

You missed my point entirely.

The point is if we know he's a bad person, we can choose not to use Bitcoin as is, and instead use a fork of it where he doesn't profit from it.

Also stop with the myth that Bitcoin was completely invented by one guy. It was based upon ideas from a lot of people prior to Satoshi. If there's a moral obligation to reward him (there is not) then there's a moral obligation to reward all of them as well (there still isn't.)

And you've missed the point where lives have been ruined and people could potentially be killed as a result of this nonsense.

Lives have not been ruined. In my opinion Newsweek owes Dorian Nakamoto some damages, but that will be decided in the courts. His life is not ruined, though, and nobody else's has been. That's way over-dramatic.

I was not talking about Dorian.

> it's in the public interest to find them.

Why? To bring their stash of bitcoins public via rubber hose cryptography?

> Iran... Michael Bay... drug lord...

None of these are very likely. It's much more likely that it is some reclusive technical genius who realizes that the release of their identity can have nothing but a negative impact on their lives. The chances are remarkably good that they would end up getting killed (or thrown in some state actor's prison) for their coins once their identity is revealed.

This kind of outcome isn't in anyone's interest.

> it's in the public interest to find them.

Care to expand on that? Where is the limit on Outing someone, when does it become doxing?

> Another hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined thAnother hypothetical thought: when the original bitcoin creator mined the first bitcoins, they were worthless. They only gain value if someone else projects value onto them. They're not being used. Imagine they're a form of trading derivative (e.g. stock options): the right to trade in future. Are those taxed?

Generally yes, although I don't know about Australia. In the UK it's called capital gains tax.

AFAIK, the tax is only applied when the value is realised (i.e. sold/liquidated).

I wouldn't have thought just holding bitcoins would be grounds for taxation.

Capital gains taxes are way more complicated than this and they aren't only calculated when the asset is disposed off. Capital gains also are not calculated for individual assets but globally which also means you get tax relief for capital loss if any had occurred.

If you have any capital assets each year their value will be recalculated and compared to last's year calculations (some assets maybe calculated on a quarterly basis) the taxable value is then adjusted for any capital gains or loss that was carried from previous years and the final amount is calculated so you get a tax invoice "your GC tax for year 2015-2016 is X).

You can pay that tax immediately or you can choose to carry it on depending on the tax law and assets you might have to pay a certain amount immediately you might also be allowed to carry the tax to the next year which also might incur a certain payment/tax on it's own.

If the tax law allows you to carry on loss or gains to following years there's usually a limit to this (e.g. you have to pay the tax every 5 or 7 years to be able to do that) different types of assets will also have different regulation regarding deferring tax payments e.g. directly tradable/liquid assets like bonds might now grant you deferral on yearly GC tax while non-liquid assets like property which requires registration and tax duty to transfer will.

Considering that Australia most likely has laws which will be quite similar to those of the UK (As it only achieved final independence in 1942 or well technically 1986 ;)) there is a good chance that the capital gains tax on BC should've been paid every year, and even if it wasn't and you could deffer payments you had to declare it and submit it for valuation each year for tax purposes because otherwise GC tax cannot be calculated. So no matter what was the value of BC when he made it if he didn't declare it properly especially after it was defined as taxable assets in Australia he violated the law, given his at least presumed intelligence (regardless if he's Satoshi or not) and the actions he so far has taken this was done quite knowingly and intentionally.

If Satoshi really wanted to realise the value from his bitcoin holdings without being subject to a huge amount of tax he/she/they would ideally relocate to Germany where the tax office has said that if you hold them for over 1 year there is no capital gains tax (or equivalent) to pay.

That this guy was looking to move to the UK, where banks have been quite wary of bitcoin, (although the bank of england has not) is another strike against him being Satoshi. I would assume that anyone who was holding as much btc as we think satoshi has, and with this individual in particular in some sort of tax related issues, he would have been aware of german tax law and would seek to relocate there. Perhaps he was thinking of going from UK to Germany in time for 2020 when the Tulip fund would have been accessible.

Yes, but under Australian capital gains tax law, moving the coins overseas is a "taxable event", and he'd have to pay the capital gains tax on the capital gain based on the value at the time he moved them.

Then don't move them. They can be moved physically without actually moving the coins or they could be moved without physically leaving the country. He could have moved to Germany before letting anyone know of their existence. If he was smart he would have admitted to owning some Bitcoin as a way of engaging with the ATO to discuss how they would generate a tax liability. If any tax liability was too honerous be could have kept some hidden until he was in a jurisdiction where the tax laws were more in line with what he had in mind.

I guess the point being given that be is not satoshi nakamoto because if he was he would have been a lot more organised than it seems he has been.