Transcript

Regolamentare Bitcoin? | Paolo Burlone | TEDxBariSalon

[Music] so I can't hide it, he presented himself as such, so you know I'm an accountant, an accountant, and with a bad subject, from whom you go when you have to do what to do that thing, certain, certain as death, exactly, paying taxes, and in that moment of wind, just even worse and more evil than at any other time of the year, like in the summer when I'm locked there in my study behind the desk, sweating because the air conditioning didn't allow me, because I also have to suffer while I'm there calculating the taxes, because I do something so terrible and they inflict a punishment on me because if it were up to me, he would n't pay the taxes, it's precisely in that period, way back in 2013, a client friend shows up and tells me, do you remember that a few years ago I was in London because my father sent me there, you know, classic, dad, son, with the curtain that works well, rightly, the wise father says, listen, after 500 euros, take a ticket to London and manage on your own, after a month he wants to go back home and father says, I don't mind, dad, my bed, you stay there Because he has to learn the language, learn to live, learn to be in the world, and learn to be in the world. For him, it also meant taking on a new challenge, that is, relaunching himself with some odd jobs, jobs ranging from small-scale coastal shipping to becoming a bartender. He starts earning a little extra money, being able to pay the rent in a shared apartment, where, however, he spent all his free time because he didn't have the money to go out and spend money. What did he do with his nice laptop? He discovered blow, you can buy bitcoin for me, and he started mining. What is mining? Mining is nothing other than the result of the activity of the subjects who participate in the bitcoin network, such as nodes that take the trouble to verify all the transactions that are proposed to the protocol, and together with this, they solve a problem that is at the basis of each block in order to validate all the transactions that must be entered. Therefore, they verify them, they solve the problem, and whoever solves the problem first earns the right to write a new page and block. For doing this, you get a remuneration in the form of the same bitcoins that are the object of the transactions registered in that block. Well, he comes from Doctors, look, while I urinate, I knew what else to do. My computer was stolen, luckily, from a connection to a guy who's a little richer than my roommates, and through my internet connection, I started mining now. A tough guy, look, they're worth a lot of money. I'd like to sell them first of all, the helmet from the office. I say, sorry, I expect you to storm bitcoins, why should I pay you for them? Is there anyone who pays you back for these damned bitcoins? No, they're coins, and so, wait. Listen, I'll take my five years of university, I'll throw away macroeconomics and political economy. They explained to us that you don't create money, your private money, money is created by the state, so don't fool me. What do you want to sell? Because depending on the item you're going to sell, I 'll be able to tell you if or what type of taxation is incorrect, or even that what you 're doing is effectively a business activity, a channel activity, that is, identifying the item, but he doesn't look at it. It's a currency, an electronic currency. Calm down, and I had to start a new conceptual challenge. This friend of mine, apart from this little information, has another name. I mean, I was amused. He tried to explain to me the whole process of creating and validating the blocks. But then it was absolutely Arabic. Today, it's not that much better. Anyway, I'm still an accountant. I'm still that bad guy who's good at filing F24s and saying, "I pay these are the taxes the state owes." I understood a little more, but the conceptual challenge I was faced with at that moment was to understand what, perhaps, the nature of that type of operation he had performed was that thing I had obtained, which he called electronic money that someone was willing to pay him, therefore to remunerate them. Now, if you get a remuneration in exchange for work, it generally means that a form of income has been created. In Italy, income categories are applied based on two fundamental subjective characteristics, namely the type of person who carries out the activity: a natural person or a legal person, a subject in business activity, or a person who carries out an employed or similar job. And from an objective point of view, we're talking about goods, we're talking about services, we're talking about money, money, no. I wavered a little about money because he said, "If I go and get myself, I'll study." It's a study, it doesn't seem like it, but every now and then I study. If I go and get my consolidated tax law and the consolidated VAT law and look under the heading "income from minting coins," Madam, I can't find a form of taxation because there isn't a form of taxation. Usually, whoever issues the coins, the central bank, mints money, and the central bank does it not as a source of income, but to regulate the monetary policy of an entire state, of a group of states. Because today we don't know that we are a European Union, the central bank and the ECB, so for a moment, this thing can't be money. So the first conceptual challenge I thought I was going to face is what the hell are we talking about? Money, foreign currency, loans, title, right to barter, means of payment. You can imagine everything. I even got to the point of reasoning, saying, well, it's true that it's used as money because someone is willing to accept it in payment, as opposed to a credit that boasts a credit that then tries to become, for having performed a service, a creed that can boast for having sold a good for any reason. For someone willing to accept it, what are the historical examples of alternative payment methods other than money, and we have so many of them? It's bad to think about it, but in the Concentration camps were current currency there was money that was normally used what about cigarettes those have taken on a different function than what was their main purpose well so bitcoin could be a good exactly as much as cigarettes but there is a small conceptual problem the cigarette if I don't sell it I want to smoke one by opening the cell I smoke it bitcoin if I don't spend it breast use it as payment what can I do this reasoning that I made in my little rooms in my office as a bad accountant the heat while I sweated to understand what this poor wretch had to do with the income he hoped to generate with bitcoins then at that moment in how he talked about it it was the case of the first big one for a big failure of an exchange he had all those bitcoins on those exchanges those exchanges went bankrupt so one realized no income I studied a lot for nothing but this happens to me often so in that case that is of the positive note in favor of my friend who didn't give him taxes to pay so every now and then we also manage to be not I would say good but at least sterile unproductive of negative effects anyway the fact is that I didn't ask myself this type of question because The world is huge and above all a world like this is liquid, that is, the evolution of bitcoin has connected and peer to peer has connected any user with any other user around the world, so the same question he asked me was being asked by many other people to many other accountants around the world until Mr. At Least goes to his financial administration and says, "I want to create an exchange," that is, I want to create a site where people come to Mida, the legal tender currency, therefore the fiat currency, and in exchange I give the bitcoin, or vice versa, to Ebi Coin Belli, who wants to resell them, I give them back the legal tender currency. This operation is nothing more than an intermediation operation, the intermediation, obviously, you know, when you go to buy money of another currency, you pay a little more for it, when you sell it, they pay a little less for this, because the margin of this type of activity is based on what he said, the intermediation margin of the currency. Well, this gentleman goes to his financial administration and says, first of all, I want to do this operation, but let's solve the first Libyan problem and They are subject to VAT and then the second problem, the image I get in this way, is it a provision of services or a provision of services that can be considered inherent to or similar to a currency exchange service at 20 legal tender because that type of service is not a random request, it already discounted the exemption from VAT payment. The fact is that the financial administration at the first level, ours, is equivalent to a sort of preventive tax commission because in developed countries you can ask for preventive judgments. Here in Italy it is difficult to implement an instrument and they are already through the mechanism of requests for information but which we will see later are not very effective. However, you find an absolutely positive answer, go and do it calmly and yet your business and bitcoin in our opinion are a payment instrument just like currency, for which like currency there is no application of VAT, discounts, exemptions must be so present that this fact of the pendency of the question of whether or not to pay VAT on bitcoins would have meant that if there had been a ruling of yes, VAT to be paid on bitcoins, the entire European system, the entire VAT system because VAT is A tax that applies harmonized throughout the European Community would have meant that half the blogging activity in Europe would not have developed. There is bitcoin, written currencies. So what I'm telling you seems to me to be something that is too technical outside of the world, but it is not technical because the fallout is immediate. The fallout is losing those opportunities that we were told will project us into the future. Here in Italy we have some of the best minds among the best developers in the world of blow chains and cryptocurrencies. If our legislator does not understand this type of passage and does not create, I do not say a terrain that must facilitate this type of activity compared to others, but must not hinder them. And above all, in such a liquid world, like a case I just told you about, that is, on the other side of Europe, a person found himself asking the same question to his own tax agency. He can find a positive answer. In Italy, we will do nothing, and our subject in such a liquid world does not have to move his computer and his mind because the one with which he produces a computer protocol in another country where this is possible. However, our social network feels like it's the first time. The second time is the Revenue Agency that appeals the same agency and enters 13 Swedish always said it is not possible in our opinion no it must pay on it because because the state is always hungry and VAT and keep in mind that VAT is one of the most subtle taxes there is because where does VAT affect it affects consumption you to consume what do you use the euros you have in your pocket the euros you have in your pocket are the euros you have earned on which you have already paid taxes so it is the most subtle form of double taxation that exists anyway our subject finds himself in this situation so much so that this case reaches the European Court of Justice because the European Court of Justice is important because the European Court of Justice going to rule on a matter like VAT the ruling that produces therefore the judgment it expresses is binding for all the countries of the European Community and there at that moment there was a stalemate because they of the Court of Justice says yes VAT applies this world is over and we were talking about 2014 then the sentence published in 2015 if he had said no it is not subject to VAT, therefore we foresee the same exemption for foreign currencies. We can think that we have brought about a harmonious development. Well, this ruling does much more because it investigates in a very precise manner and above all, if I invite you to read the accompanying report of the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice in case C 264 of 2014, interested in the issue, because in that same case those mental melodic passages are made that I told you before about cigarettes and gold used as a means of payment, that is, about these which, however, are goods that exhaust their capacity also in other functions. What is the singularity of bitcoin that can only be used exclusively as a means of payment? Therefore, a long analysis is carried out in which the definitive conclusion is that it can be: it is not a currency; it is not a true legal tender currency because no one has any central authority that guarantees it. It is not comparable to checks or other bills of exchange or other bearer instruments because those express a face value of things of a valley; currencies having legal tender while the unit of account is the bitcoin itself, therefore it does not have the characteristics to be the current currency, but a characteristic. Funda fundamental of the first function of money, that is, to be a means of payment, and therefore bitcoin is a category of means of payment in itself. I tell you that the definition is important because the legal category in which we identify it, in which the Court of Justice has been very precise and punctual, obviously in this dynamic world, it also presents itself as a case on which our Revenue Agency must rule in 2016 and without revenue it finds itself having to rule on what Bikaner is. It takes up the ruling of the Court of Justice and for us operators and for us legal scholars, we say it is enlightening because it seems to have understood it and then, as if two lines before, it had said we understood that Court of Justice ruling that tells us that they were not intended to be. Three lines later, it tells us to apply all the regulations on direct and indirect taxes and those relating to foreign currencies. This does not seem to have any particular repercussions, but even a ruling of this type. I am only talking to you about a company that wants to develop a business in which it also accepts bitcoin or a miner who wants to produce bitcoin, even better if I miner produce bitcoin, I produce goods as if I were producing these canvases. I command once that I produce sky the warehouse when I sell them I made a profit if I instead go to say that what I produce is valued at the very moment in which this magically appears in my availability in my hands therefore the production has been done that for me is immediately a profit to do it on an asset that is subject to a secondary market valuation and valuation that today is extremely variable what does it mean to me that in 2017 if he had valued my production of ten coins I would have said to tax 165 thousand euros of revenues pay the taxes in June 2018 in that case of those with which I still had in hand I had not sold them he wanted to calculate a taxation that in our country is approximately 50 60 percent of the turnover of the profit actually produced equals translated into euros the 165 thousand euros so 50 percent on the 80 and more thousand euros using those ten peak also they still sold it but the state does not accept the 5 b with that is 50 percent to pay the taxes he would have asked for the euro well from 31 12 2000 and 17 June 2018 b in addition to halving its value so if I consider that currency as legal tender it means that on 31 December it makes me identify the 360 ​​ and more thousand euros on 30 June you ask me for the 50 percent taxation but I still have 10 bitcoins I say okay I will go and liquidate 5 b with and will pay in 7 no because that value fluctuates because that is the subject of a continuous evaluation of the market and by selling them I would not even have obtained the monetary quantity of euros to go and pay off the tax debt for which a ruling of that type has major consequences, major consequences such as that any subject who should be entrepreneur obviously will not look at this country as favorable to the introduction of this type of technology unfortunately they also follow the same line in the interval number 956 bara 39 of 2018 of the work of Lombardy i.e. Lombardy regional directorate here vivacity another ruling of the Court of Cassation United Sections, which is fundamental because that ruling tells us that since these two rulings by the Revenue Agency, although they decided to publish them to guide the market and taxpayers, that ruling tells us that those two pieces of paper are waste paper and have no legal value, and this is the only good fortune that has brought us this far to be able to support businesses and individuals who want to engage in this type of activity. Obviously, as I said before, we move forward, and moving forward in this type of world means that every six months the Bitcoin blow chain has seen the birth of many sister companies with enormously different application possibilities and many related businesses, so much so that the intervention of the legislator has had to focus on other aspects as well, not only those of taxation. Another fundamental aspect that our legislator had to analyze is that relating to anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing legislation, that is, anti-but in land rings, this is a fundamental objective of the legislator, namely, to monitor financial flows and ensure that such flows do not foment illicit markets or even finance terrorism or even constitute a reason for money laundering. What is the new paradigm that Bitcoin introduces? We know that with cash, transactions are totally unknown. If there is a transaction between two parties, such as those in the audience, and no one sees them exchanging cash, we cannot know who they are and cannot know how much money has been exchanged in the financial system. Instead, the bank known to us is basically a banking system. The transaction is known and the parties who carry out this transaction are known. They are known to be the ones we consider as the trustee of this type of data and information. It is the banking institution of each party involved in the transaction. Furthermore, the authorities can also access it, and unfortunately, many parties can also access it, who may even have malicious intent, to exploit that type of information against you. What is the real revolution of bitcoin? The revolution of bitcoin is that the transaction is written on a block that can still be checked. A public transaction, a public transaction where the users are, in quotation marks, unknown because my public address, which I send money to him, and his public address, which receives it, will always be visible on the bank and will always be known to anyone. However, as public addresses, to associate those public addresses to me or him, the only thing we can do is go and find out what the private key is he can move that public address so with this to tell you with a good forensic activity if I in one way or another manage to connect a public address to a subject and I make all the transactions starting from my computer a good forensic investigator who puts a book attached to his computer to connect my IP address to that public address and in a fairly short time I will be connected to that public address so even when they tell you that the currency used to finance terrorism to carry out illegal acts do not believe it because they are brainwashing you the articles from 90 to 94 to 2000 that talked about the internet were the place that is used to carry out criminal activities Satanists the kingdom of Satanist pedophiles on the internet where drugs are sold and weapons can be bought these were the headlines that were in the media in those years today the internet is part of all our lives but I was about to tell you from when we go to sleep when we wake up with from heaven we go to sleep it is not like that because now we also have our homes that through devices that buy for A few euros are always connected, they are always connected to the Internet, it is now part of our daily life. This will also happen with fast or bitcoin, don't worry, it will happen. The only thing we can do is make a mistake in accepting this type of innovation and find a legislator who doesn't understand it and doesn't understand the stage like what is happening in Italy and that they want to equalize it with foreign currencies and this is the worst thing there is because the fifth directive, the European one, in the definition of what virtual currencies are, clearly tells us that they do not possess the legal status of desired currency. In the Italian implementation proposal, our internal legislator, to implement a directive from which, given that it is part of the European Community, it has signed the treaties for which those directives, we should take them exactly as what was the English translation of the parent legislation, so we shouldn't change almost a comma. The proposal for introduction into the internal legislation, i.e. the Italian one, deletes that phrase not possessing the legal status of desired currency because because he, those in the office next door are those of the Revenue Agency of the Bank of Italy, net but up to The other day I said that foreign currency can only make such a fool of ourselves, but this foolishness would mean that this type of legislation, the anti-money laundering legislation which is the Italian anti-money laundering legislation, that is, the one for which the bank for the last 45 years has made me sign such a mountain of papers, every time you go to the notary they ask you for the money to carry out that type of transaction, where does that legislation come from, which is extremely pervasive in your relations with which you do not have to fill out with dates at the baker's, you pay it, you do not have to fill it out when you go to any other person to buy a set of tires for the car, you do not have to do that well, know that according to that line drawn there above, if your tire dealer decides whether to accept bitcoin, you should fill out the entire legislation that you complete for the bank if your baker agrees to see if he buys that stuff, in your opinion, can this type of technology spread where a legislator forces a baker to do the anti-money laundering years but excuse the ml therefore the anti-money laundering filing to the baker for all his customers who want to pay him with bitcoin, the technology of something like this spreads of a place like that, no, so what we have to do is spread this type of awareness, I say, and they are not evil, they have never harmed anyone, and we have to understand a fundamental thing that I wrote to you above: it is not possible to stem the water with bare hands, just as it is possible to stop the evolution of technology through legislation and the law, in this case, follows technology because technology is constantly evolving. What must the law consciously do? The only thing it can do is set some limits. Here there is legality if you go beyond this limit, if beyond legality, because if I reasoned in this positive way, it would mean that if a hammer is used to commit a murder, I am behind all the hammers, if an unused peak is used to buy drugs, I cannot ban all bitcoins, so because I mean, today we have experienced this moment of deepening some of this new paradigm of this new IT revolution, this is the only way to try to create a culture of spreading knowledge, because the day the legislator comes to impose that the baker does the filing of our money laundering, if you want to accept bitcoins, you don't want them. we will say no dear legislator, we cannot go on like this [Applause] [Music]