MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => General Stock Discussion => Topic started by: leaf on April 27, 2018, 00:58
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I thought it would be interesting to put together a list of all the blockchain based stock photography sites. I just discovered a new one this morning, Wemark, who has quite a few recognizable faces on their advisory board.
List:
Photochain
Wemark
Totem
Kodak Coin
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Would be interesting to know what stage they are at and if anyone is uploading and their experience. If it costs me nothing I will probably give it a go only time to lose and I've lost plenty chasing sales on the declining "minnow" sites.
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Please could someone in explain in one sentence, without jargon, what the benefit is of such sites to a customer.
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Please could someone in explain in one sentence, without jargon, what the benefit is of such sites to a customer.
The benefits are toted to be .. that the money can be transferred direct from the buyer to the photographer, no paypal middle man fees. Some blockchain sites also claim to have some copyright protection embedded in the image. I'm not totally sure how that works.. .. but it could be something like this...
A buyer buys a photo and pays for it with crypto
The transaction 'receipt' .. a reference to the record of the purchase on the blockchain (which is public) is embeded in the image.
If that image gets used by a second person or multiple people, it will be obvious because you will see that they are not the original purchaser of the image. If that thief needs to prove they purchased the image, they won't be able to because there is no record of it on the blockchain.
What i'm not sure about however, is if I'm selling 'direct' to the buyer - am I going to be the one responsible for charging / reporting correct sales taxes to wherever the images are being sold. If a buyer is in Norway, I should charge them 25% sales tax. outside of Norway, no tax.
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Would be interesting to know what stage they are at and if anyone is uploading and their experience. If it costs me nothing I will probably give it a go only time to lose and I've lost plenty chasing sales on the declining "minnow" sites.
I tried uploading a few to Wemark.. will see how it goes. I'm guessing one such solution will be successful, it is a great idea and blockchain is here to stay, but guessing what implementations of it are going to be successful is pretty hard. Just because it's incredible technology, doesn't mean every platform and industry has a use for it. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
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Please could someone in explain in one sentence, without jargon, what the benefit is of such sites to a customer.
The benefits are toted to be .. that the money can be transferred direct from the buyer to the photographer, no paypal middle man fees. Some blockchain sites also claim to have some copyright protection embedded in the image. I'm not totally sure how that works.. .. but it could be something like this...
A buyer buys a photo and pays for it with crypto
The transaction 'receipt' .. a reference to the record of the purchase on the blockchain (which is public) is embeded in the image.
If that image gets used by a second person or multiple people, it will be obvious because you will see that they are not the original purchaser of the image. If that thief needs to prove they purchased the image, they won't be able to because there is no record of it on the blockchain.
What i'm not sure about however, is if I'm selling 'direct' to the buyer - am I going to be the one responsible for charging / reporting correct sales taxes to wherever the images are being sold. If a buyer is in Norway, I should charge them 25% sales tax. outside of Norway, no tax.
Yes I can see potential benefits for the seller...but I have yet to see anything that would encourage a buyer to use it. If someone approached a business and said "you should ditch SS and use Wemark" and they asked "why?" What would the answer be?
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I'm quite sure that it will take many years to takeoff
but ?m also sure that it's the future, and I'm really interested to understand more about this!
Better to choose one platform, or upload to any or all of these? In the next years there will be dozens of platforms
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Please could someone in explain in one sentence, without jargon, what the benefit is of such sites to a customer.
The benefits are toted to be .. that the money can be transferred direct from the buyer to the photographer, no paypal middle man fees.
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Thank you! And thanks to everyone else for their explanations too
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Please could someone in explain in one sentence, without jargon, what the benefit is of such sites to a customer.
The benefits are toted to be .. that the money can be transferred direct from the buyer to the photographer, no paypal middle man fees.
.
Thank you! And thanks to everyone else for their explanations too
+ We get 85% of a sale and the rest stays in the network. A good client will certainly appreciate this!
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Please could someone in explain in one sentence, without jargon, what the benefit is of such sites to a customer.
The benefits are toted to be .. that the money can be transferred direct from the buyer to the photographer, no paypal middle man fees.
.
Thank you! And thanks to everyone else for their explanations too
+ We get 85% of a sale and the rest stays in the network. A good client will certainly appreciate this!
You have a touching faith in human nature ;-). Surely the 15% will go in salaries running costs and returns for investors.....to be honest I'd be more positive if they took 50% and did more marketing.
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How much does it typically cost to convert Tokens to Dollars or to a cryptocurrency? Genuine question I have no idea?
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
I think the most credible offer so far....but I think you have hit the nail firmly on the head.
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
If buyers want new content they will make the move. Getty with their Premium Access Theft Collection will get no new content very soon!
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
If buyers want new content they will make the move. Getty with their Premium Access Theft Collection will get no new content very soon!
You seriously think new content will dry up at other sites?
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
If buyers want new content they will make the move. Getty with their Premium Access Theft Collection will get no new content very soon!
You seriously think new content will dry up at other sites?
I think photographers are smart people and they will decide what is best for them at the time.
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
If buyers want new content they will make the move. Getty with their Premium Access Theft Collection will get no new content very soon!
You seriously think new content will dry up at other sites?
I think photographers are smart people and they will decide what is best for them at the time.
We will see but I think it would be a massive gamble to upload to exclusively to an unproven platform and hope that a significant number of competitors would.
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I can see Wemark has some heavy hitters behind it and the concept is great ... I just wonder how they will drive buyers to the marketplace. There is really no incentive for buyers to move away from the established stock agencies. That said ... I hope they do.
If buyers want new content they will make the move. Getty with their Premium Access Theft Collection will get no new content very soon!
You seriously think new content will dry up at other sites?
I think photographers are smart people and they will decide what is best for them at the time.
We will see but I think it would be a massive gamble to upload to exclusively to an unproven platform and hope that a significant number of competitors would.
Giving away photos at $0.01 through a newly invented premium access collection through a proven and ''trusted'' platform it is also a gamble.
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Interesting (and pessimistic) article about KodakCoin:
https://www.finder.com.au/kodakcoin-is-a-failed-ico-rebranded-under-kodak-name (https://www.finder.com.au/kodakcoin-is-a-failed-ico-rebranded-under-kodak-name)
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I think that one of the reason for customer can be the price. It's up to us to fix the price per image and it should be lower than on other microstock sites.
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I think that one of the reason for customer can be the price. It's up to us to fix the price per image and it should be lower than on other microstock sites.
It should be lower?
It should be fairly valued by the content creator
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I think that one of the reason for customer can be the price. It's up to us to fix the price per image and it should be lower than on other microstock sites.
Thats what worries me 85% of the race to the bottom price.
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Seems to me that these platforms have no interest in selling images, they have left the pricing and marketing up to us, their money comes from infringement technology and selling coins/tokens. One of the main reasons buyers use stock sites is indemnity, they buy trust, where is that going to come from on a peer to peer site?
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Here's a couple more for the blockchain list:
https://bitimage.io/ (https://bitimage.io/)
http://creativechain.org/ (http://creativechain.org/)
https://selfllery.com/ (https://selfllery.com/)
https://www.pibble.io/ (https://www.pibble.io/)
https://wirestock.org/ (https://wirestock.org/)
I think the gamechanger in the blockchain / stock crossover is the initial funding through ICOs.
Historically, startup stock agencies just can't compete with the established brands, based on marketing budget (IMO), blockchain has the power to change this.
If you did though the whitepapers, many of these projects have dedicated a solid % to the marketing plan, so if they do well during ICO, it could bring some solid brand awareness to the project.
Wrote in detail about this here:
https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-the-blockchain-revolution-7d5e0a7f42d9 (https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-the-blockchain-revolution-7d5e0a7f42d9)
Also did a writeup about the wemark project here:
https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-is-broken-could-wemark-com-be-the-fix-fcdfef03c946 (https://medium.com/@CryptoBlockBits/stock-photography-is-broken-could-wemark-com-be-the-fix-fcdfef03c946)
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Seems to me that these platforms have no interest in selling images, they have left the pricing and marketing up to us, their money comes from infringement technology and selling coins/tokens. One of the main reasons buyers use stock sites is indemnity, they buy trust, where is that going to come from on a peer to peer site?
Although I'm testing the waters I largely agree I think its potential is probably "middle tier" at best. I think it would be a very hard sell to Corporate buyers. So I don't mind spending a bit of time uploading but wouldn't touch investing with a 10 metre barge pole.
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I think that one of the reason for customer can be the price. It's up to us to fix the price per image and it should be lower than on other microstock sites.
Be careful. Price is a signal of quality. Price your photos too low and customers may think the price is low because the photos aren't very good. Remember, not every customer is sensitive to price.
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I don't mind customers paying $3.00 in cryptocurrency for my photos if I'm gonna get 85% of those $3.00 ($2.55). I would rather do that than get 15% ($1.20) of $8.00 paid by a customer, and I already own cryptocurrency. I don't think corporate buyers will rush to cryptocurrency stock agency to buy photos, but individual buyers might do it.... who knows. Anyway, it's gonna take time it to pay off.
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Interesting (and pessimistic) article about KodakCoin:
https://www.finder.com.au/kodakcoin-is-a-failed-ico-rebranded-under-kodak-name (https://www.finder.com.au/kodakcoin-is-a-failed-ico-rebranded-under-kodak-name)
Dated January 18, not news. The information is true, same as written by many others during the first week after the announcement. The name is a license by Kodak, to WENN and Kodak will benefit, payment, stock and by getting a percentage of the ICO. https://www.coindesk.com/kodak-earn-5-million-ico-brand-licensing-deal/ (https://www.coindesk.com/kodak-earn-5-million-ico-brand-licensing-deal/)
Note: the ICO hasn't happened yet? Announced early Jan. Then early Feb. put on hold to investigate financials of buyers and to make sure of investors, for "a few weeks." What's WENN doing? There site still lists the Feb. 5th news. How long is a few weeks? I'll just jump to tomorrow, months later, and the news is pretty quiet about Kodak or KodakCoin.
This was also listed as a way to protect the interests and rights of photographers. More sites coming online with similar claims and using their own coins. I still don't know why a buyer will pay for the trouble of buying some special coins, to be able to buy our work, when it's easy to find using credit or other means that are universal and easy to obtain.
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How much does it typically cost to convert Tokens to Dollars or to a cryptocurrency? Genuine question I have no idea?
Binance, for example has a 0.1% trading fee... so not much. I'm guessing the future will require some crypto currency of some sort so leaving it in Bitcoin or something similar isn't a bad idea.
Like someone else mentioned in another thread - I wish these projects would use Bitcoin or another well known blockchain for their project. people aren't going to be wanting to hold 50 different coins
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Like someone else mentioned in another thread - I wish these projects would use Bitcoin or another well known blockchain for their project. people aren't going to be wanting to hold 50 different coins
But then using a well known blockchain would require them to buy it.
While creating a new virtual currency out of thin air...
I guess this gives away my level of trust in such pyramid schemes.
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How much does it typically cost to convert Tokens to Dollars or to a cryptocurrency? Genuine question I have no idea?
Binance, for example has a 0.1% trading fee... so not much. I'm guessing the future will require some crypto currency of some sort so leaving it in Bitcoin or something similar isn't a bad idea.
Like someone else mentioned in another thread - I wish these projects would use Bitcoin or another well known blockchain for their project. people aren't going to be wanting to hold 50 different coins
Yes there are transaction fees to buy and to sell/convert coin into fiat currency. I found this pretty straight article about bitcoin, purchasing and trading. Especially good is the by the numbers, which show, what someone needs to open and account, finance it, buy coin, and putting it into your virtual wallet. https://www.mybanktracker.com/blog/investing/fees-trade-invest-bitcoin-cryptocurrencies-276084 (https://www.mybanktracker.com/blog/investing/fees-trade-invest-bitcoin-cryptocurrencies-276084)
Personally I tried a couple and Coinbase is the easiest most reliable system. I then transfer the funds into my Metamask wallet. Since I haven't transferred anything out, I can't really comment. ::) I've been breeding, buying and selling CryptoKitties. https://www.cryptokitties.co/profile/0x0542abab5c5415296682a5dc3c25d6ac70076e06 (https://www.cryptokitties.co/profile/0x0542abab5c5415296682a5dc3c25d6ac70076e06)
All transactions are public if someone has the link. Example: I paid to breed two of my Kitties. https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbd1610f948d1909801701a0322830e8b00182222235ca3dd498ba1e0e31e4fb7 (https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbd1610f948d1909801701a0322830e8b00182222235ca3dd498ba1e0e31e4fb7) that cost .008 ETH, anyone anywhere can read this, but it's just a ledger, nothing can be changed or altered. I suspect that's where the protection is being claimed.
I'm not sure if I've seen the answers yet, or I missed them.
Why would a buyer want to go through the time and trouble to buy a proprietary coin, in order to buy rights for one of my photos? Bitcoin, Etherium, Ripple would work just fine?
Since these places are not agents, they don't need to market, we need to keep all records and pay taxes ourselves. Maybe for someone who sells their own work, this is a great system. But for most of the people who want to upload and have the buyers find images in a search, I'm not sure I see the plan?
I don't see how this protects anything as anyone can still copy and re-use anything on the web, same as now. A good strong law or some legal remedy would make me much more happy, than a new way to pay. (whole different issue, but the question exists?) How does a transaction record protect us more than what we have now?
Why do we and why would a buyer, want to buy some volatile currency that trades up and down, during the day. If someone pays to buy the special coin, the market can change the value of their purchase. Say that value goes up, now they have leftover small increments of coin. Say the coin goes down, while they are deciding on a purchase, then they need to buy more.
Proprietary coin is pretty much like a debit card, using only their currency, that's only good at one store. That card is only good at store W. Now you find something at store K and you need to buy some of their coin, to shop there. And soon, you have a wallet filled with sixteen different currencies, if you want to shop for stock photos from each of these pop up coin shops. By the way, only place I've seen this work is Disney, where they sell Disney Dollars. Casinos do something like this with the tokens and chips/checks.
Would you go to McDonald's if they started only taking MickeyDCoin and not cash? Why would you buy the rights to a photo at an agency that only takes their coin, and limit your choice for image needs?
If you were a buyer, would you find any of this complicated, somewhat risky, unstable finance, attractive? Or would you go to an established agency that takes money. And besides, what happens when the big agencies decide to take crypto currency, one of the major coins, not some special limited coin. Then what?
Blockchain is a good answer to many Internet and value trading problems in a global economy. I'm not convinced that having 100 different kinds of coins, or currently around 1,000, with each agency only using their own, is the answer to anything that would help us?
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I'd like to see a site using steem. Zero fees appeals to me. Smart Media Tokens will be around in a few months, that might make it easier to have a stock site using steem. I like steem because I've been using steemit for a few months, the crypto version of reddit and that uses the steem blockchain. It has the largest number of transactions and seems to run smoothly most of the time https://www.blocktivity.info/ (https://www.blocktivity.info/)
I know most people can't see what all the fuss is about with blockchain and cryptocurrency right now but I have the same feeling I had in the 90's, when most people didn't understand the internet.
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I think Contributors must demand a rise of 10% per year to every agency, because inflation is taking contributors economy...if blockchain can assure that we can control price, it is no brainer that upload to them will be fruitful, if not Agencies will be giving us whatever we want 10% up, 15% up every year...really is an exciting news for contributors finally!!!!
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I think Contributors must demand a rise of 10% per year to every agency, because inflation is taking contributors economy...if blockchain can assure that we can control price, it is no brainer that upload to them will be fruitful, if not Agencies will be giving us whatever we want 10% up, 15% up every year...really is an exciting news for contributors finally!!!!
You can demand what you like but someone has to buy at that price
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Certainly owners and creators of these sites and tokes can raise money on ICO's. But will they invest in marketing and development of good website? I higly doubt so.
It is all about speculation on coin and token prices.
Blockchain technology exits 9 years already. Show me at least one real successfull project using it.
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Certainly owners and creators of these sites and tokes can raise money on ICO's. But will they invest in marketing and development of good website? I higly doubt so.
It is all about speculation on coin and token prices.
Blockchain technology exits 9 years already. Show me at least one real successfull project using it.
A lot of the banks are using this https://ripple.com/xrp/
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I think Contributors must demand a rise of 10% per year to every agency, because inflation is taking contributors economy...if blockchain can assure that we can control price, it is no brainer that upload to them will be fruitful, if not Agencies will be giving us whatever we want 10% up, 15% up every year...really is an exciting news for contributors finally!!!!
A silly post.
Some recent headlines.
Brazil Registers Lowest March Inflation in 24 Years
The Rio Times-10 Apr 2018
April inflation new lowest in 60 months at 3.73 per cent, but foodstuff ...
The Star, Kenya-1 May 2018
Lowest Egypt Inflation in Almost 2 Years Renews Rate Cut Debate
Bloomberg-10 Apr 2018
UPDATE 1-Nigeria annual inflation dips to lowest in two years in March
Reuters-12 Apr 2018
Malaysia March retail inflation print lowest in 20 months
Nikkei Asian Review-18 Apr 2018
UK inflation falls to lowest in a year
BBC News-18 Apr 2018
Uganda registers lowest inflation in four years
Xinhua-30 Apr 2018
Mexico inflation falls to lowest in over 14 months
Reuters-24 Apr 2018
South African Inflation at 7-Year Low Boosts Rate-Cut Case
Bloomberg-18 Apr 2018
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I wondering how all the blockchain sites will handle the EU-VAT. If there is no middleman i have to write an invoice and have to pay VAT for every single sale in the EU buyers country.
The administration cost will explode...
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I wondering how all the blockchain sites will handle the EU-VAT. If there is no middleman i have to write an invoice and have to pay VAT for every single sale in the EU buyers country.
The administration cost will explode...
This is the beauty of blockchain technology, it would reduce admin costs. The EU-VAT system could integrate it's own blockchain that would record all VAT transactions and it would become fully automated. This would also reduce fraud as a transaction in the EU would require the VAT ledgers "seal of approval" to show the transaction is legit.
The different blockchains don't have to be independent of each other, they can all work together.
In the case of stock photography. You license your photo on Block A to a consumer on Block B, Block C (VAT ledger) would look at the smart contract and determine the amount to charge depending on each individuals location at tax rate. The transaction would then be verified and there is a permanent record of the transaction stored forever.
I think it's only a matter of time before blockchain tech is incorporated into many areas of our lives. The governments are still trying to figure out how to regulate them right now but down the road there will be so much less fraud.
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A lot of the banks are using this https://ripple.com/xrp/
It doesn't say which banks exactly and how much they use it. Do you have any link to press release from actual bank? Or it mentioned on any bank website?
BTW. This page is actually wordpress blog. This doesn't look very serious to me.
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A lot of the banks are using this https://ripple.com/xrp/
It doesn't say which banks exactly and how much they use it. Do you have any link to press release from actual bank? Or it mentioned on any bank website?
BTW. This page is actually wordpress blog. This doesn't look very serious to me.
This article from January 9 tells you how many banks are using xrp, none.
https://hackernoon.com/4-alarming-reasons-ripple-might-not-be-what-you-think-9debc3c86985
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A lot of the banks are using this [url]https://ripple.com/xrp/[/url] ([url]https://ripple.com/xrp/[/url])
It doesn't say which banks exactly and how much they use it. Do you have any link to press release from actual bank? Or it mentioned on any bank website?
BTW. This page is actually wordpress blog. This doesn't look very serious to me.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/santander-ripple-money-transfer-app-2018-3 (http://uk.businessinsider.com/santander-ripple-money-transfer-app-2018-3)
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I wondering how all the blockchain sites will handle the EU-VAT. If there is no middleman i have to write an invoice and have to pay VAT for every single sale in the EU buyers country.
The administration cost will explode...
I've asked that question in the Wemark telegram group. They're looking into it. Will let you know what they say.
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The answer to the VAT question https://t.me/wemark/5556
Q. I'm a stock photographer, I was wondering how Wemark will deal with the EU VAT rules for selling digital goods? https://theaccountancycloud.co.uk/news/vat-rules-on-digital-service-businesses
A. (Roy - Wemark) Hi Steve, thanks for your question. These rules have been around for a few years now and we are currently working with Delloite in order to understand and set up the appropriate infrastructure.
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I wondering how all the blockchain sites will handle the EU-VAT. If there is no middleman i have to write an invoice and have to pay VAT for every single sale in the EU buyers country.
The administration cost will explode...
I've asked that question in the Wemark telegram group. They're looking into it. Will let you know what they say.
thx
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Are there any traditional stock agencies that pay in cryptocurrency? I'd be happier to experiment receiving some earnings in a small cap cryptocurrency than deal with paypal.