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

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

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

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

    The state is working with the cryptocurrency
    payment startup BitPay to handle its payments,
    which will convert the bitcoin to dollars.

Which is itself accepting a payment network’s promises to deliver bank deposits to you which are, themselves, a promise by a bank to redeem to you electronic or physical dollars. Ohio is replacing the Visa layer with a Bitcoin layer; all else is the same.

These would be two completely independent transactions, involving agreements between you and two entities (whoever you exchange your MtG cards with and the Ohio Department of Revenue). There would be no connection whatsoever between the site where you arrange to sell your MtG cards and the site where your pay your taxes.

OhioCrypto.com is operated by the state of Ohio. When you register, the TOS says it is a contract between you and the Ohio Treasurer of State. To pay your taxes in Bitcoin through OhioCrypto.com, you do not first change them to USD via some third party. You present the Bitcoin payment information and your tax information, much the same way you would present your credit card information on a site that accepts credit cards.

OhioCrypto.com then uses BitPay to process the Bitcoin payment information, much the same way a credit card accepting site might use Authorize.Net or Braintree to process the credit card information, receiving eventually USD deposited to their account.

In your MtG hypothetical, in no sense would Ohio be accepting MtG cards. By the time they are involved, you are giving them USD. It would not make headlines because Ohio has no involvement.

With OhioCrypto.com, you are giving Ohio your Bitcoin payment information, and Ohio is dealing with having that payment information used to exchange your Bitcoins for USD. This makes headlines because Ohio is directly accepting Bitcoin payment information at a state run website.

Edit: updated to not imply Ohio holds Bitcoin, in response to tptacek's observation below.

Aren't there more interesting responses possible for this move than outrage? Right now this seems limited to businesses, I'm curious why specifically target them instead of all taxes (given that the backend infra seems like it would be the same for both). How does the pricing work given volatility (is there potential that you'll pay taxes and the price will shift such that you owe more / get a refund after the fact)?

Not paying taxes on a publicly-ledgered asset with a well-accepted monetary value that you then disclose to a government is the height of stupidity. If your friend’s home country has any tax treaties with the United States, I’d encourage him to get his paperwork in order with them.

And yet many people hold gold, or other precious, non USD materials, but nobody freaks out about their about tax fraud risks.

If the government starts coming after everyone's non USD commodity holdings (which, to be fair, isn't entirely unprecedented. Owning gold was illegal at one point), then we have much bigger problems than just as it applies to the comparatively tiny crypto market.

Ohio isn't making a claim that they're changing their official currency to Bitcoin, any more than a site that adds Paypal support or Apple Pay support is claiming that their new currency is AppleBucks.

Probably too late though, I think true BTC believers are few and far between these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-q4bEULG64

It's nice to see governments to embrace technology but, it will be nice to start from the ground up and what I would like to see is: modern websites, one mobile app for everything, transparency of the money they spend, multiple payment options for taxes and transportation, simple online forms, digital signatures, etc.

They take a step, then skip 100, do another one and then: "oh we are done here, we embraced technology"

That means Ohio is putting the USD in competition with cryptocurrency for the primary thing the USD is used for: Paying Taxes. Federally that's going to remain USD of course, so it's not an existential threat for the Fed, but if enough states move to crypto as an option for tax payments the Treasury/Fed is going to have to make some major moves to prevent it spreading.

That's not the primary thing the USD is used for. Paying US federal and some other taxes is one of several things that the US dollar is the sole thing used for, but that is very different than being the primary thing it is used for.

But unless they are denominating tax debts in Bitcoin, it's not meaningfully different than exchanging bitcoins for dollars to pay taxes, just a little more convenient.

Sure.

> Legally you cannot pay taxes in any other currency than USD.

Sure. But though that two sentence pair is both true and includes the word “primary” and a reference to “USD” and paying taxes, it doesn't support th conclusion that the primary use of USD is for paying taxes.

I'm also pessimistic that this will be used. The new taxes on cryptos that the feds put in place have done a great job at icing speculation and making people's lives a living hell should they engage in crypto-trading (a pretty darn good disincentive). I think the federal government is well on its way to killing crypto currencies already.

How can that be given so many taxes are some fraction of some other transfer of USD?

This is a bit strange especially with Bitcoin tanking.

And sure, they could support paying in all kinds of things. But Bitcoin has a decent wave of popularity among humans, so they're taking a swing at supporting it, similarly to how a variety of online retailers have. It seems like a weird case to see them add support for a popular method of payment and respond "but why not gold".

I don't know if you've tried to sell gold, but it's a little bit more involved and difficult than exchanging BTC/USD

Edit: misread the parent comment.

As stated in the article, it's one of several symbolic gestures being made in an effort to market the state as “tech friendly”.

Because as the article states explicitly this is a “tech friendly” image generating marketing stunt; accepting gold doesn't serve that purpose.

If Ohio wants to go through the process of allowing alternative commodities to be accepted as payment, then good for them?

If the headline said "Ohio switches all operations to be Bitcoin-only" and then the fineprint said "we're turning all the bitcoin into USD immediately using BitPay", that would be a "gimmick".

They said "we're going to let businesses pay taxes via bitcoin", and they are. What do the businesses care if they convert the bitcoins to USD, gold, or chickens immediately after?

This is no different than selling any other asset (stocks, a house, etc.) to get cash to pay your taxes.

Nothing, because like most other traditional economy outlets “accepting” Bitcoin, they are just contracting with a processor that actually accepts the Bitcoin and pays the State in dollars.