Perhaps you should re-read my posts. Bitcoin is, in fact, a barter system. Look at all of the barter systems started over the last hundred years; they issue “chits” or record your contribution of goods or services on their “books of accounts”. This is what makes barter systems so dangerous...you are relying on a “private sector” group to not issue counterfeits or hack others’ accounts. The bitcoin “system” is no different.
And, it is the demand which controls the “value” of this chit and it is interesting that all of you refer to its value in “dollars”. Hmmm. Why is this necessary (look at the bitcoin site, it gives current value in US$). And it is Federal law for all transactions affecting “values received for values given” to be reported on your Federal tax return in US$. Sooner or later it is tied right back to the system you guys hate. Hmmm. Go and play with your bitcoins, but you are barking at the moon, my FRiend.
It's not rocket science. If I grow pigs, when I sell one, I pay taxes on the income less expenses for raising the pig. Likewise, if someone mines bitcoin, when they sell it or buy something with it, they pay taxes on the income less expenses to mine it.
If I invest in pork belly futures and later sell them at a profit, I pay taxes on the capital gain. Likewise, if I buy bitcoins and later sell them at a profit, I pay capital gains on the profit.
Any CPA worth her salt should be able to calculate what you owe in taxes as long as you keep good records, as the law requires - no?
Your previous posts were not very helpful wrt Bitcoin as a barter system, as they simply asserted this as fact along with your concerns about barter systems. This last post was more helpful.
Notwithstanding 100 years of “barter systems” history, I would describe these systems as private markets with a private unit of account/exchange (eg private money). One would certainly be concerned with the honesty of the private group running such a system as they have complete control over the private money. Perhaps your insistence that Bitcoin is a barter system is that the IRS will want Bitcoin users to account for their activity as such. Fair enough, but IMHO calling these systems barter is misleading.
You say that Bitcoin is the same as these private markets. But Bitcoin is not controlled by some small private group. It is controlled, if you can call it that, by thousands of independent nodes, each enforcing the rules of the system on a publicly available ledger. One of these nodes, or even a large group of nodes cannot simply create and fill accounts to their benefit. This is substantially different than these private markets.