Bitcoin will soon be accepted for tax payments in the US state of Ohio. (Image source: AP)Bitcoin might be experiencing one of its worst falls, and is down to under $4000, but it looks like one state in the US will soon accept taxes in the cryptocurrency. A report in Wall Street Journal says that Ohio plans to accept taxes in Bitcoins, and will be the first state in the US to do so officially.
According to the report, the state will allow businesses to register on OhioCrypto.com and pay all kinds of taxes, including sales taxes via Bitcoins. The report notes that the push for Bitcoins and cryptocurrency for taxes has come from the state treasurer Josh Mandel, who told the paper, that he does see Bitcoins as a “legitimate form of currency.”
Ohio will rely on a payments firm processor called BitPay, which will convert “the Bitcoin to dollars for the state treasurer’s office,” notes WSJ. While Ohio has shown faith in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is struggling.
The currency was down by as much as 13 per cent this week. It is currently trading at around $3900. This is in stark contrast to Bitcoin’s spectacular rally last year, where it was trading at close to $20,000 in December 2017. Other rival cryptocurrencies like Ether, Litecoin and XRP have also see dropped. The exact reasons for why Bitcoin has dropped remain unclear.
While in the US and European Union trading in Bitcoin is legal, in India the cryptocurrency remains illegal, though the government had said that it will explore the use of blockchain technology on which Bitcoin rests.
Bitcoin is peer-to-peer based currency, and is based on Blockchain, which is an online ledger that gets that gets updated in real-time. With Bitcoin there is no one regulating or issuing authority like in the case of traditional currency. Instead, users get bitcoins for solving complex mathematical puzzles.
