Topic: BTC violates GAAP, result a mess. - page 5. (Read 13751 times)

You don't seem to know much about how bitcoin operates and programming at all. Duplicate same data twice? Stupid.
Using timestamps in distributed network? Foreign currency account without any way to link them to real world accounts? You don't know what you are talking about.

aaaxn:
Please explain the transaction records you propose more detailed.

Do you agree to my proposal?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2221423

A field for the used currency could be added
(see foreign currencies account https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2328815).
A numbering is possible but not needed (due to the timestamp, which could be date+milliseconds).

Or where a distinctions?
Please do not forget. Each transaction has 2 sides: payer and receiver.

So we need for each transaction 2 records, one for the payer, one for the receiver.
The entries in the corresponding fields are just mirror-inverted.
The amounts could and should simply be: - (minus) for the payer, + (plus) for the receiver

And please forget and ignore all the stuff and nonsens kjj is writing.
Insultings are no arguments, prove only that their author does not have them .
 

I love when people post ways to improve BTC without trying to make it into something tangible... I'll believe an account-tracking cryptocurrency is better when I see one that is better.

1 + 5 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 24
This is simple pay to address transaction. I could probable make amount field even smaller and account offsets to until there are more than 2^32 simultaneous non-zero accounts.

Quote from: kjj on May 31, 2013, 03:21:22 PM

If we've had the scripting debate before, I'll just refer you back to that.  I'm not sure how many people there are out there that think it wise to upgrade every node in the network all at once for every new transaction type.  I thought that one was too many.

A scripting system lets everyone figure out what they need without needing any (new) help from the rest of the network.  Writing new software for each transaction does in theory, allow more transaction types, and in that sense can be more "powerful", but it just isn't going to happen in a decentralized system.  Do you also argue that no one should own a horse because a pegasus would be much better?  In this case, the horse is just a pony, but the pegasus is still not real.

Reality check:

Quote from: Gavin Andresen on May 30, 2013, 12:38:19 PM

Security, yes (including potential for denial-of-service attacks of various sorts).

But demonstrate a spiffy, compelling use of new opcodes on testnet and we'll talk about making them standard.

Give me a list of your 24 bytes, and I'll give you a partial list of capabilities you've thrown away.  Without knowing your scheme, I'd guess that some subset of "secure", "useful", "decentralized" is not possible with the information you are keeping.  Most likely, you've lost at least two of those.

If we've had the scripting debate before, I'll just refer you back to that.  I'm not sure how many people there are out there that think it wise to upgrade every node in the network all at once for every new transaction type.  I thought that one was too many.

A scripting system lets everyone figure out what they need without needing any (new) help from the rest of the network.  Writing new software for each transaction does in theory, allow more transaction types, and in that sense can be more "powerful", but it just isn't going to happen in a decentralized system.  Do you also argue that no one should own a horse because a pegasus would be much better?  In this case, the horse is just a pony, but the pegasus is still not real.

Anyone can keep archived transactions for how long he want (and it's validity can be checked by anyone). I think especially node should keep all history of its own addresses. Full history is just not necessary for payment processing so standard nodes would just drop it and save history logging for specialized nodes.

Carry-overs

Using balances is a very good idea, much better than current BTC.
But deleting old transfers is not GAAP-conform, therefore a bad idea.

See above about closing books and carry-overs: We start a small new database, but keep all previous transfers available in archives.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2307474

Any BTC user should be able to read and download the archives.

Legally financial books must be kept available for at least 10 years.

Enlighten me. Bitcoin smallest transactions are ~250 bytes. Tx signature takes ~70 bytes. With account ledger smallest transaction would take 24 + 70 = 94 bytes while tx to address not currently in db would take ~22 bytes more and be still 2x smaller than bitcoin. Average tx would probably beat bitcoin even more (no need to combine inputs)

These were description of capabilities. No logic behind it. Programming language is more capable than scripts simple as that. Scripts are more flexible in theory but in reality they must be artificially limited to prevent abuse.

EDIT: Nice recent example of how scripts degenerated in 'convince developers your script use-case is important'
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2320603).

This doesn't save as much (of anything in particular) as you'd hope.  The problem is that you are comparing the pathologically bad case of bitcoin to the pathologically good case of the alternative.


This is perverse logic.  You are again comparing the worst case in one system to the best case in another.

Foreign currency accounts

Based on GAAP foreign currency accounts could quite easily be provided by BTC if there is just one little additional field in the GAAP-conform transaction records defining the currency used in the specific transactions (USD, EUR, BTC, XRP, JPC.... whatever)

And software beeing aware not mixing different currencies.

This very, very easily implemented feature would be a GREAT advancement in a worldwide used system like BTC.
Neil Armstrong would say: "One small step for BTC, one giant leap for mankind."

It would just cause UTXO to be spread over many addresses instead of one. It wouldn't affect number of outputs. With account ledger one person gets payment to same address and they are merged. This is source of savings.

You just shouldn't mix different colored coins under one address. Such coins need to be separated anyway, so you wouldn't accidentally spend it. Such rule could be even enforced by network if colors are public.

It is easily possible and actually recommended to use addresses as "transaction identifiers" instead of Tx hashes - so addresses are only used once, ever. That way the UTXO set would be equal to the "addresses with balance" set.

Something that might be hard to emulate with ledger systems would be different colored coins in one single address for example:
1 cCoin Satoshi representing 1 share of ASICMINER, 1 cCoin Satoshi representing 1 share of TradeFortessBTC.
If 1 Satoshi gets transferred off now, which one was it? Currently one can loot at the outputs used, with a ledger not so much.

My understanding of accounting is that you take finalized transactions and store them in a certain format.
Bitcoin however can deal with transactions that are not finalized, might never be finalized, depend on external events to be finalized, stay in limbo until one of the participants moves, depend on several parties to collude... and that's just the current functionality that is considered standard (there's much more possible with nonstandard scripts).

It seems to me (using a maybe bad analogy) similar to complain about web sites because they are breaking typography rules developed over the centuries when typesetting books and anything else to read - there are no chapter markings, "quotes" are a misused term all over the place and a title page often is done in a way that would make Mr. Gutenberg cringe!

This is not true. Ledger system done right provide big savings in memory, because you don't even have to store old past transactions. You can discard it after they are buried under enough blocks. See this for details https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/white-paper-purely-p2p-crypto-currency-with-finite-mini-blockchain-195275
Furthermore there is always only single entry for each address while bitcoin can hold any amount of unspent outputs for single address.
Transactions in such system are much smaller, because you don't even have to include pubkey hashes but just offsets of account in db. I made some calculations and tx could be as small as 24 bytes + signature.

Well bitcoin is more flexible only in theory. Most functionality of scripts is turned off until developers decide such scripts are nessesary and won't bloat blockchain, network etc. It's effectively not more flexible than account ledger.
Bitcoin scripts are constrained while with ledger you can make more powerful concepts because you have access to turing complete programming language and current network state. You can make complex constructs for example to make secure atomic laundry (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.2289285) and much more.

Yes I know that. Its always the same with you. Cannot help it. Not my fault if you cannot understand my English.

Your imputations are rigth from the beginning as clearly as possible answered.
Anyway: I am not inclined to write esp. for you the same things twice, in the end again and again.

If you have exact counter-arguments lets hear them.
Good night.

You seem to be living under the peculiar delusion that accounting is primary, and that money exists to facilitate accounting.  However popular that delusion may be among accountants, around here, it just makes you sound silly.

I assure you that a business that wants both accounting and bitcoin can have both easily.

I'm not really sure what your argument is.  Either GAAP is flexible and can work with bitcoin, or bitcoin is incompatible with GAAP.  You can't seem to make up your mind.

Personally, I think that the profession of accounting will adapt to bitcoin just fine.  They may need to throw out some of their generally accepted principles*, the ones that make no sense in a bitcoin world, but new ones will take their place.

P.S.  In no way have you "shown" anything in your incoherent posts, far less "in detail".  If someone else has "showed in detail" your mythical ~80% savings, please feel free to point me to it.  Note also that my posts were about the technical problems with ledger-summary cryptocurrencies as compared to ledger-journal systems (like bitcoin).    If you feel that I'm wrong about them, you are free to make your own GAAPcoin and we'll see how the two systems fare in the arena.

*  Note that I make a clear division between accounting, and a body of standards that accountants use when dealing with the fiat world (GAAP).  This is not an accidental division, but an intentional one.  To argue that bitcoin is incompatible with accounting would be silly.  To argue that bitcoin must conform to present systems for accounting is just as silly.

@c4n10

I agree to your statement and esp. your political considerations.
No taxation without representation! Fine!

With Money has no earmark I remind what imho is meant with this (not?) popular saying:
the number printed on bills or where bills and coins exactly came from normally does not matter.

The Romans likewise used the slogan:
"Pecunia non olet" - Money has no smell.

In criminal and other special cases this might be different of course.
But even clearly stolen, robbed or extorted money can be acquired in good faith.
Thats the law at least since the old Romans.

BTC nevertheless tries to simulate such "earmarks" with its cash/change theatre, normally not relevant in cash and simply impossible in cashless transactions. A source of endless subsequent problems only.

I couldn't understand the point of your post as it seems English may not be your first language and quite a bit was incomprehensible, but I have to point out that this statement is false.

Money is earmarked. Look at the face of any denomination of dollar bill, there is a serial number which is on both the left and right side of the bill. Every dollar you earn and spend is QUITE traceable, if it weren't there would be FAR less risk involved in robbing banks and people wouldn't have to pay their taxes.

Many major criminal organizations are brought down specifically by tax evasion or the fact that the money in their possession has been traced back to a high profile robbery or they were given money by undercover agents/officers in exchange for drugs, guns, etc.. and the money with those serial numbers is found in their possession thus linking them to the illegal purchase/sale. I'm not saying these actions should be condoned, but the potential implications for governments and private entities to trace every sale, purchase and money gift are repulsive.

The idea behind bitcoin (aside from a decentralized currency which does not rely on governments or private entities like banks and the federal reserve) is that it is nobody's business but your own what you are spending your money on. Governments and private entities should not be able to track your purchases (which believe me, with cash everything you buy is tracked and recorded SOMEWHERE) nor should you be subject to taxation at every turn when buying/selling or gifting monies to another person.

In the U.S.A. we were promised no taxation without representation which essentially means that the people should not be taxed unless we have a fair say in our governmental proceedings, yet time and time again our government continues to rule against the will and desires of the masses. We are essentially living in a semi-benevolent dictatorship and we are paying out the ass (via taxes) for the luxury of living in this semi-benevolent dictatorship.

Bitcoin was created as a tool to assist in fighting back against taxation, invasion of privacy and in a way it helps to put some of the power back into the hands of the people.

OK. Nobody expects or suggests a complete accounting system.
But BTC is a payment system, used to transfer money.

Or would you even deny that BTC is used to transfer money?
I was told by another "Hero" that BTC is "just money" and nothing else.
The next one just told us: "Bitcoin is in no way incompatible with GAAP."


One example please, just ONE. I am almost sure, you are wrong.
Anyway. We cannot build more complex things on sand.
Might it be you have no idea how flexible and efficient GAAP really is?

In the wiki this basic notion GAAP doesn't appear at all.
https://en.bitcoin.it/w/index.php?search=GAAP&button=&title=Special%3ASearch
Conclusion: Bitcoiners know nothing about GAAP. Can be seen everywhere.

You've gotta be kidding?