The Legality of Crypto-Currency Holdings

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris. Its Article 17 proclaims:

• (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others;
• (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Crypto-currencies are, in their nature, properties, personal use assets. Transactions with DASH, Bitcoin (BTC) or any other crypto-currency is akin to any barter arrangement.

As such, crypto-currencies also have similar tax treatment. (see The Australian Taxation Office statement or the IRS’ Virtual Currency Guidance stating the “virtual currency is treated as property for U.S. Federal Tax Purposes.”

In Germany, Bitcoin is “private money” which can be used in “multilateral clearing circles.”

The acceptance and legality of Bitcoin is subjective worldwide, with the pendulum swinging to the greatest extremes, with some countries moving toward an outright ban in use (e.g. Russia) while others (e.g. U.K.) are shifting toward progressive policy-making to try and adapt.

Consulting legislation and tax rules and regulations in your respective countries is important.

Nevertheless, our right to mine the crypto-currency, to own and/or to exchange it for other assets, including for fiat money issued by governmental or quasi-governmental central banks, is an undeniable human right.

We also have a right:

• “to be left alone” in our (legal, legitimate, non-harmful to others) lives and activities, as U.S. Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States (1928). Brandeis defined the “right to be left alone” as “the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men.”

“Philosophers and ethicists have described privacy as an indispensable characteristic of personal freedom. Privacy is associated with autonomy, dignity, spirituality, trust, and liberty. References to the value of private life may be found in the Bible, the history of Periclean Athens, as well as the history and culture of many people around the world,” writes Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The UDHR, agrees with both Rotenberg and Justice Brandais in its Article 12, stipulating: “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”

In his pivotal work, titled Framework for Securities Regulation of Crypto-currencies, Peter Van Valkenburg wrote:

“Bitcoin and follow-on crypto-currencies [like DASH; our remark] are open source innovations. There is no gatekeeper determining who may and who may not build these networks, and modifying them or building them from scratch requires nothing more than an Internet-connected machine. This permission-less ecosystem for invention is one of the reasons we should celebrate and support the technology: it helps to break down many of the structural barriers that divide us, whether as producers and consumers, banked and unbanked, or rich and poor.”

He then continues:

“At root, units of a cryptocurrency are scarce items that can be exchanged and may have value despite the fact that they have no institutional issuer or legally-promised redemption.

Read the rest at: http://dashpaymagazine.com/index.php/2016/05/28/legality-crypto-currency-holdings/