I have a funny feeling that this might create more tax obligations than it aims to avoid. Aren’t airdrops taxable as ordinary income in some jurisdictions?
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Would be good if possible I agree. At the moment mobile are excluded from farming at least until some date after launch and since they are the biggest segment, it is a problem. Even if they are not excluded and can farm, we are still Ignoring how people will spend their SN token on a new hard drive, for example. Where will the ramps to the fiat economy come from?
As mentioned elsewhere on the thread Omni protocol has steadily been delisted from exchanges now that Tether no longer needs it. Maid is the last project standing on it.
After launch, then what? If still no way for mobile to farm and no fiat on/off ramps due to FATF “no privacy coins” rule, so chances of mainstream CEXs listing are slim. That means no way for farmers to buy new hard drives with their tokens. Best case we get to list SN token on some really far out there CEX that does not mind flaunting FATF rules. Cross chain DEXs will not likely work with SN it has no chain.
The ERC20 proposal would serve as the indirect on and off ramp back to the fiat economic system, shielding SN from FATF and exchange rules at least until it gets big enough to bully FATF into submission if that is even possible, or decentralise around it into the fiat system despite the rules. We could also leverage a similar coin like Binance BSC etc there are a few to choose from I don’t care about how exactly - I just care that the problem is recognised for what it is and some workable solutions at least proposed and debated. I’d love to hear some other ways to bridge the gap. So far we have philanthropy or employ the masses as the best suggestion.
Also all this suggests ERC20 or similar will have use far after SN launch so people can use their debit card and mobile wallet to buy Maid-erc20, and preferably the most decentralised swap contract to exchange them to SN Tokens and back again. I am hoping the bearer certificuits can help greatly with this exact thing. Point is maybe Wrapped the company and bank behind it will be way to conservative and block us from changing Maid ERC20 to SN Tokens (via bearer certs) in the future.
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Is it possible to make an agreement with Binance. Maybe they can carry out an omni / BNC swap on Binace Smart chain for a fee that also includes listing fees for Binace?
That ship has probably sailed due to them getting rid of omni soon.
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This does not mean that they can not complete a swap from Omni Maid to Maid on BSC for a fee. Our am I missing something?
Something like Changelly would seem like a good option though, no? Because:
- Simple UI requiring no exchange/trading experience
- Widely accessible
- Reasonably long standing/reliable business (as far as I can tell)
- Already supports MAID
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Agreed. They set up a totally separate page specifically for the swap. It is not even accessible to regular users visiting the site unless they use the exact URL.
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yes, it seems that they have already experience with it
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I’m the last person who wants something bad for David. We live in a brutal world.
A world in which princes kill journalists and cut them into pieces.
In a world where governments persecute their own people for daring to tell their fellow citizens that the government is following them without permission.
All this is terrible and will not disappear soon.
Knowing what is possible gives you the opportunity to prepare.
Even in the most ideal case, in which some governments do not go against us, crazy people remain. And there are crazy people who go and cut off heads because, someone said, Muhammad’s cartoons are allowed by law.
I’m trying to say that pointing out what’s wrong is not the same as wanting it …
Privacy. Security. Freedom
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This swap proposal suggests that David plus a few other community leaders could be ideal candidates to make an expression of confidence in a completely separate secure decentralised as possible process, and the team of people/entities behind it, not even needing to be in the same jurisdiction or related to MaidSafe in any official capacity (Proposal makes this pretty clear IMO). If making expressions of confidence is what you meant when you said “take this risk personally” then the UK must really be in a deep dark place where free expression has gone to the chopping block and is a liability. What happens when other teams start popping up after launch introducing new features on top of SN, will that mean David or any on the official Maidsafe team can’t make any positive comment at all about them for fear of “taking their project risk personally”? I could point to hundreds of comments of both support and criticism by Vitalik about projects and people built on top of Ethereum, and he donates to a bunch of them to encourage progress. Why would MaidSafe/SN be so different?
Perhaps your comments are referring to something completely separate and I am misinterpreting… I hope so because the alternative sounds frankly kafkaesque.
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From what I understand what ever happens maidsafe will honor and convert maidsafecoin(omni) to safe network tokens, if there is a swap it needs to be reversible or maidsafe will need to trust the swap and also convert the new tokens(erc20) to safe network tokens btw I dont think CEX´s will do a reversible swap.
There are many reasons today to be careful here. Times have moved on regulation has moved on Tax authorities are very serious. It’s no longer safe publicly state as a named person you are giving coins to X as that is now taxable. In the UK now that is 100% certain.
To be clear it’s not about not doing something, it’s all about doing something legally and what’s legal today is not the same as 2014/5/6 at all.
I feel there are 2 camps to satisfy
- Those that wish to KYC etc. and we can get insurance and regulated bodies to help with that.
- Those that wish anonymity
That probably means 2 solutions. The latter is dangerous if a named body / person takes responsibility and something goes wrong. Then some previously anonymous folk are the ones who will shout “Ok class action suit”.
i.e. doing this is a task that requires care and 2 way trust, but the trust is hard when one side is named and known and the other anonymous. For that reason a tough gig. For type 2, also we will unlikely find a named party wishing to insure or be responsible for loss, therefore there will be a significant risk.
Where the team are right now in frantic testnet iterations that task is back burner, but I am loving the fact the community are not only speaking, but also doing something about it. There may be ways to do 2 with multisig that mitigates a lot of risk, but honestly I cannot think too deeply right now.
What I do know though it we will need strong legal and accounting support and advice here and while some folk here will have opinions we will need certified opinions to execute this.
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I notice David you did not actually address my assertion that your free to comment and give confidence levels in anything, group, project, or anyone you like on any topic you like and no authority, tax or otherwise, can call you out on it. Unless your defaming someone your well within your rights to do that and that brings no personal liability to you. That you do not have anything you actually feel like doing that for is another discussion entirely.
All those problems such as organising KYC, Tax and legal obligations just go away when there is true decentralisation. Do the bitcoin or Ethereum, cross chain DEXs, core protocol devs of all stripes have to worry about tax consequences of their creations whether they live in the UK, Switzerland or anywhere else? No of course not. Core developers just code away happily not having to care about any of that. Many core devs are collected under the same roof and company just like at MaidSafe. When the system is decentralised those problems are pushed out to the edges and are no longer a burden weighing down on a central organiser, because there is none. We all have Maid and can send it to wherever we like whenever we like and the consequence for the action are ours only. MaidSafe can’t stop it, MaidSafe can’t be responsible for it. There is just one piece missing…
All these fears being expressed over the years about possible grave tax consequences and things have to move slow to plan for possible legal consequences year after year after year are directly related to the level of decentralisation. MaidSafe is painted into a corner with Omni because the Omni tech appears to force the transition through a centralised bottleneck that bears down the weight of hostile agencies on Maidsafe. So MaidSafe is forced to retreat and walking back on deep core principles… the transition will now be non anonymous/KYC’d for example, will that be the last retreat if things carry on like this, who knows.
If the community can solve the problem by decentralising the transition, all that crap your trying to deal with for so many years literally just goes away. The problem is MaidSafe is owning the transition, when we all should be working out how to truly decentralise it. Proposals here are aimed at trying to do exactly that and they may be sub-optimal and possibly misguided, but there has been no real debate about solving the underlying problem or even recognition of what the core problem is. We are still tied up in petty short sighted infighting like “this is to just to pump the price of Maid”, and “CEX vs DEX duh”.
The core problem is not Tax agencies, KYC and UK laws on MaidSafe, the core problem is how to decentralise the transition to the new decentralised SN, and most importantly for its future survival give it a lifeline bridge so anyone, anywhere, anytime can move value into and out in a decentralised way that does not implicate MaidSafe in anything even remotely legal and tax like… because it is truly decentralised. If we can all together find a way to do that and get a two way transition bridge to the real economy in the process absolutely everyone will be much better off for it.
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Your really don’t get it. David can’t answer those points for the reasons he stated.
We keep hearing how this or that is not a problem for David, or MaidSafe from people who will not be taking the risk they want David and MaidSafe to take.
There’s really no issue blah blah.
Saying it doesn’t make it true.
Like David, I’m glad people are exploring the issues and trying to find solutions, but it is this “don’t worry it will be fine, nothing bad will happen” flim flam that undermines the process for me. This is serious stuff. People can lose everything if this goes wrong yet concerns are dismissed with blarney.
I can’t trust a word from people who engage in this kind of steamrollering, and I know that could be unfair, but to me it indicates lack of integrity or the ability to understand what they ask of others for their own benefit.
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It is not clear but if your referring to me, and even if your not I would direct you to read my post directly above. The solution as has been demonstrated to work at large scale is for the community to attempt to decentralise the transition. Then there is no need to ask anything over and above from David or Maidsafe like the community is expecting from them now. They would be just another participant in a decentralised transition and the legal weight of it will not rest solely on their shoulders. Then each can come to their own conclusions and take responsibility for themselves for the transition. Is it even possible? That would be a good positive topic to brainstorm. Better than infighting for sure.
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This is just not true, I am sorry, but there are limits. Yes mostly I can speak of most things and do, but in financial matters it’s not true. I cannot promote the selling of shares in a linked private company. I see Elon Musk and others getting into bother for talking share prices in connected companies and so on. There are limits and while I can speak of unrelated projects and finances I do have to be careful when it relates to a company I am a Director of and the subject involves potential financial risk for stakeholders.
It’s not shackles or some black magic, but there are serious issues for many folk at stake here and we/I need to be both well informed and careful to ensure we look after all stakeholders. That does mean taking advice, looking for professional opinions, getting opinions from regulators and more. It’s a serious business and not an area to wander blindly into. I cannot defend our position with authorities based on a forum members opinion, no offence and I am not side stepping here, quite the opposite. I am stating we will do what we can with as much knowledge and professional opinion we can. Anything less then I would expect stakeholders to be rightly up in arms. So again, this is not me saying do nothing it is me saying what we do will be at least legal. That means at least UK legal, but likely also may require different handling for folk dependent on jurisdiction, we just don’t know yet, but we will.
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The above is an example of what I’m referring to, along with earlier flim flam from different people dismissing concerns.
I’m not engaging in infighting, I’ve raised concerns and here I’m explaining why I have a hard time reading posts from people that repeatedly ignore the points myself and others make.
You seem unable to listen and understand other points of view, even if you are capable of coming up with useful ideas. We had an earlier discussion that fitted that description.
I’m tired of this.
Sure I agree with that and even drew that very distinction on the proposal thread. That is not the kind of comments other project leaders like Vitalik make about the range of projects built on top of the stacks they are core developers for. Core devs make comments in their personal opinion like: “The work this team does looks promising”, “this team know what they are doing and are good people”, “that looks like a terrible solution”… and it helps disseminate unofficial liability free signals to the wider decentralised community and helps focus attention on common goals as the core devs see it. Everyone is free to ignore them as happens a lot too.
I was not and never was suggesting comments like “Buy Maid moonboys!” I am surprised that was your take-away.
That this signalling mechanism is unavailable to you [Edit: or the MaidSafe team] is unfortunate and raises so many questions for after SN launch. For another thread, perhaps.
Sure no problem non taken thanks for the reply and your patience, we are all on the same side here. Not everyone sees that poking at the holes no matter how sacredly held close (especially those) helps build a stronger base.
I take the rest of your comment about gravity of legal obligations to stakeholders to suggest that any attempt to fully decentralise the Maid->SN Token transition method is not desirable and not something to be aimed for? When I say that what I really I mean: If the community (that includes MaidSafe core devs) came up with a way to fully decentralise the transition process and it was voted for in a definitive way (say for example on-chain in a manner along the outlines @mav suggested above), would MaidSafe still block the process for example if a legally connected minority objected? I am reading it as MaidSafe has the legal obligation to remain central to the transition and is obliged to do KYC. No decentralisation proposal has a chance to derail that obligation. Is my take-away correct?
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That is a very wrong take!
decentralised, block?
I outlined 2 options, you have chosen only 1 and have misunderstood it and applied it to a different argument here. We have no such legal obligation and decentralised removes the need to even consider that a thing.
It feels a wee bit like the gap is so wide and this is a great example of how even a simple statement can be misunderstood. Imagine that level of misunderstanding with millions at risk?
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I understand both krnelson’s push for a swift transition to an erc20 token, as well as your preocupation to go along with this without any legal consultation.
Maybe getting into contact with Changelly as Savage proposed will help you to get into contact with the right persons, so you can make the right legal decision.
I just want to say that with a potential delisting from Bittrex on the horizon and so-so results with P2PB2B till now, I do believe it is important that Maidsafe acts as quick as possible.
That is all I want to add to it.
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