Swiss City of Zug Will Accept Bitcoin For Public Service Payments (techweekeurope.co.uk) 39
Slashdot reader Mickeycaskill writes: The Swiss city of Zug, famed for its financial sector and low tax rates, will accept Bitcoin as payment for public services up the value of 200 Swiss Francs.The city council hopes the use of digital currencies will help stimulate the local fintech sector and promote the region as a financial hub. If the trial is successful, the value of transactions could be increased and other towns in the canton will join in.
"We want to express our openness to new technologies," said Mayor Dolfi Muller. "We will invite FinTech companies in Zug to meet with the City Council to exchange ideas. Our goal is to provide the best environment for their development."
"We want to express our openness to new technologies," said Mayor Dolfi Muller. "We will invite FinTech companies in Zug to meet with the City Council to exchange ideas. Our goal is to provide the best environment for their development."
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WTF is Amurika? I thought it was Amedica! [youtu.be]
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85/83 = 1.02409638554217
Electricity bills (Score:5, Insightful)
One should be able to pay electricity bills with Bitcoins.
That would give an important perspective.
Re:Electricity bills (Score:4, Interesting)
You probably need to plug some numbers into some of the mining calculators at some point.
Bitcoin electricity costs aren't that high (max 50% of your mining cost), and taken account of in the price of Bitcoin.
http://www.coinwarz.com/calcul... [coinwarz.com]
Plus as people move to the only viable mining hardware nowadays (ASIC's, etc.), the electricity cost is pretty stable and you can still make profit.
But people's blinkered opinions on a tech based on rumour and falsehood, especially when they don't understand economics and that it doesn't NEED to be cheap to make in order to sell, will continue to blight something that's actually a technical marvel if nothing else.
Use it or don't. I stuck GBP20 on it years back and bought something like 50 games with the proceeds over the following years. I have a handful of BitCoin in it now and it's actually given me more back than my online saving accounts over the same period. I don't really care how much electricity it took to make, the market determines the price and you can profit without knowing what the product is at all (welcome to "commodities trading").
And if electricity is "free" to certain people (solar, etc.) then BitCoin could actually turn out to be a more efficient way of monetising it than converting it to some voltage with losses, pushing it down a cable of several hundred kilometres to the grid, and then being paid a pittance of a taxpayer subsidy for the effort of doing so. In fact, even if it's "not free", if the electricity comes from the right sources, you might even find that its more profitable to convert it to Bitcoin + heat than it would be to sell it on or even use it for other purposes.
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Score: +1, Recursive Funny.
Money laundering for utilities isn't likely... (Score:1)
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin. Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
Blockchain (Score:5, Interesting)
Money laundering for utilities isn't likely...
Money laundering with bitcoins in general is a bad idea.
Once again, just to remind you that the whole central modus operandi is the exact opposite of anonymity :
The whole purpose for which bitcoin was created was to eschew the need of a central authority (As opposed to credit cards - on which MasterCard and Visa have a near-monopoly - online payment processor like PayPal which are more or less the defacto standard), to avoid situations such as MasterCard and Visa deciding to freeze WikiLeaks' donations or the various snafus of PayPal. They wanted something more like cash (which can freely change hands without problems) or somehting remind a little bit the SEPA system used by european banks (you can easily and (relatively) quickly exchange money between any random accounts, as long as both banks are member of this system).
This works by instead spreading the official ledger book (aka the blockchain) accross all peers of the network. There is no such things as anonymity in the bitcoin network, everyone can check all the transations ever. On purpose. So anyone can check that all transactions seem legit and the whole network can agree on it, without the need of a central authority.
At best you have some pseudonymity: The transaction aren't expressed using real citizen identities, but using cryptographic keys (So on a quick glance, you'll transaction validated by "key 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61", not by "real identity John Doe, address: ...").
On a quick glance the real-life identity behind each cryptographic transaction isn't revealed, but isn't beyond the Big-data analysis and computing power of a well motivated State. (by following all the various "money threads" formed by all the numerous cryptographic transaction, it's possible to cluster them, and boil down to a list of potential suspects).
So money laundering using bitcoins isn't a very intelligent decision. If a state-level agency (or any other entity with access to similar level resources) decide to go after your ass, they'll find you.
Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
Yup, indeed.
Whether in fact bitcoin managed to actually achieve independence from central authority is open to debate:
Everyone *can* indeed check the blockchain.
But currently, most of the "mining" computing power is at the hand of a few chinese guys.
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin.
And actually somewhat useful:
a bill paid by bitcoin is stored forever in the blockchain. It can be checked by anyone.
No risk of losing the proof of payment and getting into administrative troubles.
Re:Blockchain (Score:4, Insightful)
What power to bitcoin folks? Only a transaction... (Score:2)
This is probably safer than a lot of other uses of bitcoin. Not sure it's smart to give more power to the bitcoin folk though.
What power to bitcoin (BTC) folks? Billing is still calculated in Swiss Francs (SF), a real-time exchange rate of SF to BTC is determined at the time of payment, the current BTC required for payment specified, payment made, BTC converted to SF (or Euro if that is more convenient).
In other words bitcoin is used only as a transaction method. Its not used as a currency, prices/rates are not denominated in it, the power company is not holding bitcoin, etc. Bitcoin holds no "power" over the power company.
Primary source [DE-CH] (Score:4, Interesting)
Primary source [stadtzug.ch]
Sorry, everything in German. /.er fluent in Goethe's mother tongue (Official media is written in Schriftdütsch, not in dialect).
The English version of the City Website only contain tourist-oriented information. These news aren't translated.
But might be useful to other
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Primary source [stadtzug.ch]
Sorry, everything in German. The English version of the City Website only contain tourist-oriented information. These news aren't translated. But might be useful to other /.er fluent in Goethe's mother tongue (Official media is written in Schriftdütsch, not in dialect).
One thing the article left out is how Zug will convert BC to SF. I would guess they want to do that immediately since they would not want to expose themselves to BC's volatility but rather ensure the expected revenues are matched by actual ones. Since it is a small trial the volatility wouldn't be enough to make much of a difference but large scale adoption of BC for payments would require them to address the volatility and conversion to SF issues. It will be interesting to see if other cantons / cities get
Payment processors, maybe? (Score:2)
One thing the article left out is how Zug will convert BC to SF. I would guess they want to do that immediately since they would not want to expose themselves to BC's volatility but rather ensure the expected revenues are matched by actual ones. Since it is a small trial the volatility wouldn't be enough to make much of a difference but large scale adoption of BC for payments would require them to address the volatility and conversion to SF issues.
Good question.
I would imagine they'll simply resort to a payment processor? And thus defer to them the gory details of handling the BTC-CHF conversion ?
- They use payment processors for handling credit cards anyway (Six Payment [six-payment-services.com] is wide speard in most physical shops in Switzerland, Datatrans [datatrans.ch] is popular for on-line payments)
- There are a few payment processor that both can handle CHF *and* BTC (Random example among the bitcoin-oriented payment processors, Coinbase [coinbase.com] is available in Switzerland) (Another more c
Yeah, right (Score:2)
Swiss City of Zug
Clearly not a real place. Nice try, Craig!
Re:Yeah, right (Score:4, Interesting)
Zug is a small canton noted for its techie-libertarian politics, low taxes (almost all taxation in Switzerland is at the local level) and willingness to try innovative economic ideas. Companies like to register there. BItcoin would fit right in to this political environment, presuming that agencies accepting it can deal with the volatility of BTC.
If the country changes its course from being a financial haven to being a data haven, Zug is where the movement will start.
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So, you're saying that Zug deserves our praise? That we should kneel before Zug?
200 Swiss Francs? (Score:2)
200 Swiss Francs? That should be enough for a sandwich and coke, there.
Re: 200 Swiss Francs? (Score:1)
Yeah. I live in Zug, and while this may seem like a lot of money to some people, it's a meal for four (or two if you're drinking wine). The purpose was explicitly to limit it to low value transactions.
Question about Bitcoin (Score:1)
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> why couldn't Argentina pay their bondholders in Bitcoin,
Bitcoin's total money supply (number of coins in existence x market price per coin) is $7.1 billion as of today. Not all of the money supply is available for circulation. Some of it is lost forever because the owners lost the private key that controls it. Some is being held as long term savings, Argentina's national debt was $330 billion as of last year. Any attempt to buy enough bitcoins to make a debt payment on a national scale would dri