On Jun 28, 2014, at 6:19 PM, Rainer Dorsch <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Saturday 28 June 2014 16:18:33 you wrote: >> On Jun 28, 2014, at 12:20 PM, Rainer Dorsch <[email protected]> wrote: >>> Hello, >>> >>> Yahoo and Google start to list the bitcoin currency >>> >>> http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/06/12/google-and-yahoo-finance-now-show-> >> the-price-of-bitcoin/ >>> >>> e.g. >>> >>> http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=BTCUSD=X >>> >>> What is the status of the addition of BTC to gnucash? >> >> You could use it now as a security (which the US Internal Revenue Service >> requires), except that the max denominator is still 1E6. You could work >> around that by using milli-bitcoin with a 1E5 max denominator. >> >> 2.8 will be able to support the additional required precision, though >> Christian Stimming and I are at the moment having a frank discussion about >> what's the best way to get there: See the "Rethinking Numerics" thread in >> this list. >> >> It isn't going to be treated as a currency until the ISO's 4217 Maintenance >> Agency says it is one. >> > > The downside of not treating it as a currency is that its "exchange" rates > may > not be maintained through finance::quote. > > Why do you want to limit gnucash to the performance of a (slow moving?) > standardization organization? If it's a security, then it has prices rather than exchange rates, but that has noting to do with Finance::Quote. If the quotes are available on Yahoo in the same way that other securities and currencies are, then F::Q can get the quotes. Accounting is all about standards, and GnuCash is an accounting program. Besides, in the USA at least bitcoin is legally a commodity and purchases using bitcoin are barter exchanges: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-25/bitcoin-is-property-not-currency-in-tax-system-irs-says.html That gives our position a legal basis as well. AFAIK no other financial regulator has said anything about bitcoin's status as a currency. Do you know of any such authority or convention that recognizes bitcoin as legal tender? Regards, John Ralls _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel
