Using bitcoins in Venezuela isn't illegal.

Depends on the situation, if the company is u profitable and near bankcrupty I think not many want to be the replacement ceo...

It is quite low effort, and probably quite a good value.

Would you be willing to expand on why you think it's probably quite a good value?

Not GP, but if you are a person/business that has a lot of BTC, it's not hard to see the value here. When Dish Network added BTC payment as an option, it was really nice for me.

For someone who doesn't do the bitcoins, it was probably just clutter on the website. It's all perspective.

Exactly what is Bitcoin accomplishing in this scenario? Ohio won't actually accept them; rather, it contracts with a third party that immediately exchanges them for USD, which is what Ohio actually accepts. Ohio maintains no BTC inventory nor any exposure to Bitcoin. Not only that, but this apparently binds taxpayers to Bitpay's exchange rate.

What is this doing that you couldn't accomplish by simply selling BTC and remitting in cash?

Reducing friction when interacting with government. The alternative of using a credit card carries stiff fees (~2%) [1].

[1] https://www.irs.gov/payments/pay-taxes-by-credit-or-debit-ca...

I doubt after you pay the transaction fee, and bitpay takes it's cut you'll be paying less than 2%.

This program charges at least 1% fees. The FAQ is fairly nebulous on the max fee.

Seems like there are easier ways to get payment processing fees lowered for Ohio than exposing tax payers to currency markets.

That sounds suspiciously like the owner of the conversion service knew somebody within Ohio government's IT management, for values of "knew" ranging from "friends" to "bribed".

PR

You do realize that within a margin of about 0.1%, 100% of Ohio taxpayers don't do the bitcoins?

Value of tax liabilities and distribution of the debtors current holdings (BTC vs $) is a better metric to evaluate acceptable payment forms. Ohio state income tax rate is ~ 0.5% - 5%. Lots of 'businesses' don't owe anything. Accepting BTC may increase the likelihood of {high $ debtors who hold primarily BTC } actually voluntarily submitting payments. These 'businesses' would otherwise will be difficult and expensive try and to collect from.

LOL, numerous listed stocks are way more illiquid than bitcoin.

You have missed nothing. It is just another traditional business implemented "on blockchain", and as usual the blockchain here doesn't add value.

It actually does add value in this case. It makes it impossible for governments to shut the market down because it's decentralized (Unlike Intrade which was shut down). Also, anyone in the world can participate, even people with no access the financial system or a government ID.

Actually from what I can tell, it is a more liquid model.

In Augur you buy shares of an outcome, and the value of those shares can change day to day, and you can sell at any time. Whereas with a bookie, you bet on the outcome with fixed odds. Bookie lines may shift, but your bet will be locked in and unable to appreciate in value.

I'm not sure why bookies haven't implemented this share model, maybe its needlessly complicated.

Bookies have implemented this. Betting exchanges have existed for over a decade now, you can lay off your bets to lock in a profit if the odds have moved. Even 'traditional' bookies offer various forms of cashing out a bet.

Could you name some of these exchanges? One problem is that they may not service certain jurisdictions as well.

Betfair is the biggest one.

You are misinformed, at least in this case.

More likely couldn't get a job he liked.

So, do you mean that the less wealthy people don't go for rent-seeking etc?

That's just bollocks. The system rewards innovation, not just that consistently and probably not that much. And people in all income classes behave the same way.

I said no such thing.

No one has designed the system.

Token is like a bearer share which can be transfered digitally from person to person. Bearer shares are not that common nowadays but I understand that in the past they were quite popular.

I assume that bearer shares fell out of favor for a number of the same reasons as bearer bonds. On the one hand, the average person doesn't really want to hold a lot of money in paper assets that they're responsible for the physical security of. On the other hand, governments don't like untraceable paper assets that can be used to transfer a lot of value because of money laundering etc.

They were popular, and it’s not that they are not that common nowadays...they are now illegal in all US states (and I believe every country too).

Hmm, I used uber in japan when I was traveling there and it worked quite well. What kind of problems were they having?

Uber has not been successful in Japan for many reasons. 1) the public transportation system is excellent. 2) the taxis are ubiquitous in the major metro areas. 3) the taxi companies have worked together to compete against Uber Japan successfully (Japan Taxi app, etc.)

Taxis in Japan had already solved the problems that pushed me towards Uber/Lyft in the first place. Credit card readers work properly, virtually every payment method is accepted, the drivers use GPS, availability was good (for my use case), and they are polite.

It's hard to get public support of law breaking when your solution is just incrementally better than the existing system.

When I tried using Uber in Tokyo, I was only able to call a licensed taxi through the app, which was incredibly expensive. The one time I actually needed a taxi (in a tiny town in Tohoku) I had to walk around hoping to physically hail one (getting a SIM card that can make phone calls is apparently very difficult in Japan, so I didn't have one).

A pocket WiFi and Skype-Out resolved the issue for me.