We’ve spoken about Living Room of Satoshi on Coin Fire in the past after doing an interview with the CEO, Daniel Alexiuc and earlier today they announced that they would be suspending operations and shuttering the service after the Goods and Services Tax ruling from the Australian government arm the Australian Tax Office.
The company provided Australians with a unique ability to pay bills. Living Room of Satoshi was a free online service that enables payment of any BPAY-enabled bill using bitcoin; including phone bills, electricity bills, school fees, credit card and tax payments.
The service was very promising seeing over $150,000 worth of bills in a very short three months of operations and sadly now features the following notice upon visiting the website:
Living Room of Satoshi has suspended all operations.
It is extremely disappointing, but we are one of the young and innovative companies that has been hurt by the ATO’s recent GST ruling on bitcoin. This ruling makes it economically infeasible for any Australian-based business to use bitcoin as the currency that it was designed to be.
We’d like to thank everyone who has supported us, we know that many of you have come to rely on this site. We’ve been amazed at how much utility this innovative service has had for Australians. We’re extremely disappointed, but please follow us and we’ll update you if things change. Feel free to contact us at any time too.
Sincerely,
Daniel Alexiuc
CEO and Founder, Living Room of Satoshi
It appears that Living Room of Satoshi is the first to suspend operations but with this new ruling they might not be the last as other services such as other services such as CoinSpot, HardBlock, BTC Markets, coin loft, and many others have been very outspoken against the ruling.
