This blog post discusses the legality of doing business using bitcoins. It was written by Addison Cameron-Huff, a lawyer who specializes in Bitcoin. He highly recommends that you seek legal advice when considering Bitcoin legal issues.
Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/10710442@N08/4034636727/
Businesses are adopting bitcoin (BTC) as a payment method at an ever faster rate (20,000 merchants use the BitPay network and coinmap.org has mapped >3000 businesses). Despite the growing adoption, some people wonder whether “it’s legal”. This blog post takes a look at the legality of doing business with Bitcoin.
The starting point for any discussion about what’s legal or illegal is this default principle in Canadian law: it’s legal unless it’s not. You are permitted to do anything so long as there isn’t a (valid) rule that prohibits/ regulates that conduct.
There have not been any laws passed in Canada that specifically address Bitcoin (although there will be). But there are laws of general application that apply to all transactions, and more specifically, barter transactions (trading good X for good Y). Canada has always taxed barter transactions and the Canadian Revenue Agency has provided guidance on bartering with digital currencies.
Beyond tax implications, the question of whether it’s legal to use Bitcoin can usually be rephrased as whether the transaction is legal. The use of bitcoins doesn’t affect a transaction any more than substituting soybeans for dollars would. Legal business remains legal and illegal business remains illegal.
The technology may be new but the legal principles are not.
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