I think mining is not a low-hanging fruit anymore, the return on investment dropping as some people made some really big rigs? Not sure, just rumours.
My general opinion is that taxation, the mandatory accounting for taxation, and business regulations are really a problem for small scale-transactions with real money, compare how easy it is to invite non-paying guests over for a dinner in your a garden vs. every day with actually paying guests i.e. opening basically a tavern that has one meal and two drinks, suddenly you would have to comply to many regulations and taxes.
The common solution for that is barter, perhaps barter is theoretically taxable too but in practice the pausible deniability is very high, you can claim you just helped John paint his apartment because you are friends and he is just teaching you guitar because you are friends.
BitCoin can theoretically make this barter easier, in theory, very literally speaking it is tax cheating, but I prefer to call it easier barter or favor exchange.
However I am not 100% sure it is so in practice. Take the idea of giving guitar lessons. You don’t want to register a business, you don’t want to keep accounts, and don’t want to pay taxes, maybe an income tax yes but generally not want to do all the stuff a one person business would have to do, write invoices with VAT and all that (I am thinking in an Euro framework). Is advertising guitar lessons for cash under the table is so much more dangerous than advertising it for BitCoins? Does this even make sense?
I think mining is not a low-hanging fruit anymore, the return on investment dropping as some people made some really big rigs? Not sure, just rumours.
My general opinion is that taxation, the mandatory accounting for taxation, and business regulations are really a problem for small scale-transactions with real money, compare how easy it is to invite non-paying guests over for a dinner in your a garden vs. every day with actually paying guests i.e. opening basically a tavern that has one meal and two drinks, suddenly you would have to comply to many regulations and taxes.
The common solution for that is barter, perhaps barter is theoretically taxable too but in practice the pausible deniability is very high, you can claim you just helped John paint his apartment because you are friends and he is just teaching you guitar because you are friends.
BitCoin can theoretically make this barter easier, in theory, very literally speaking it is tax cheating, but I prefer to call it easier barter or favor exchange.
However I am not 100% sure it is so in practice. Take the idea of giving guitar lessons. You don’t want to register a business, you don’t want to keep accounts, and don’t want to pay taxes, maybe an income tax yes but generally not want to do all the stuff a one person business would have to do, write invoices with VAT and all that (I am thinking in an Euro framework). Is advertising guitar lessons for cash under the table is so much more dangerous than advertising it for BitCoins? Does this even make sense?