[H-GEN] Legal status of bitcoins in Australia

[Christian Bullow]

This is a hot topic in the agencies you mentioned. Publicly its 'no comment' or 'we havent formed a view yet' or 'it is/is not treated this way currently'. Currently being operative ... Speaking from a simple servant of the government point of view, from what rumours I'm seeing in house, this is pretty big ticket internally and I'm sure particular treatments such as the US treatment, i.e. capital asset, will carry much weight with the current political powers and their senior servants. If it can't work within the law, I'm sure the law will change. The US is quietky terrified of the silk roads they don't kniw about yet, however are sure exist.

However with the mining of bitcoins becoming a commercial enterprise with super computers and distributed clusters, I'm unsure how that may affect the value going forward.

Rusty may have jumped the gun on the advice, as it may be a different legal system come 6 months from now.

( personal opinion only, does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the current or future governments or their agencies .. I'd like to keep my job please)

On 24 Mar 2014 16:42, Russell Stuart <russell-humbug at stuart.id.au> wrote:
>
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ] 
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ] 
>
> Rusty Russell has a recent blog post about the legal standing of 
> bitcoins in Australia [0].  It appears he _paid_ thousands of dollars 
> for a legal opinion [1], and then made it available for free. 
>
> The TL;DR version it is consists of opinions on how various regulatory 
> agencies view bitcoin: 
>
> ATO:  We don't care what you trade, we don't care if it is legal or not, 
>       we just want our cut. 
>
> Collateral: 
>       The Personal Properties Securities Act 2009 (Cth) says bitcoin can 
>       be used as collateral(!)  Well maybe not that surprising.  If 
>       "good will" can be treated as property, there is no reason 
>       Bitcoins shouldn't be.  So you will go to jail for stealing it. 
>
> And the rest: 
>       The answers from the rest of the agencies could be summed up as 
>       "do I regulate a bit what?" Eg, from the opinion: "The Anti-Money 
>       Laundering and counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth) (AML/CTF 
>       Act), ... specifically contemplates e-currencies, but these are 
>       defined to only come within the scope of the Act where backed 
>       directly or indirectly by precious metal or bullion, which is not 
>       the case for Bitcoin. Accordingly, a large number of the 
>       obligations under the AML/CTF Act will not apply to Bitcoin." 
>
>
>
> [0] http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=384 
>
> [1] http://www.kellyco.com.au/library/Alert-BitcoinBafflesRegulators-March2014.pdf 
>
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