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Bug 657215 - Need ability to declare new currencies
Need ability to declare new currencies
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: GnuCash
Classification: Other
Component: Currency and Commodity
git-master
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: Frank H. Ellenberger
gnucash-core-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-08-24 06:41 UTC by matthias
Modified: 2018-06-29 23:00 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Description matthias 2011-08-24 06:41:51 UTC 
I want to be able to add new currencies. Bitcoins, for instance.

Right now I need to use a Stock account for bitcoins, which is not correct at all.
Comment 1 Frank H. Ellenberger 2011-08-25 00:28:09 UTC 
Hi,

please have a look at 
Bug 648627 - "Support currency Bitcoin (BTC)" and 
Bug 130920 - "User-defined currencies should be available" 
for the discussions we had and possible workarounds.

I was tempted to close this bug as a duplicate of the above. Can you explain why the workarounds are not accepable for you? If you answer this, set the status of this bug to "unconfirmed" again.
Comment 2 matthias 2011-08-26 06:21:34 UTC 
My main problem with the workaround is that it's an ugly workaround.

Bitcoins behave like a currency. They should be treated as such.
They're also not the only ones (interesting offshots include namecoins and solidcoins). So using XXX as the currency code doesn't work.

There are banks and wallets and, by now, there's real stuff you can buy with these things. So using a commodity account doesn't work, you need income and expense accounts and whatnot. So using commodity-style accounts doesn't work.

One further example where the commodity workaround breaks down: Transferring "normal" money from A to B may incur transaction costs. That's entirely unlike what happens with a commodity; when you move a stock (something that one usually does NOT do, by the way), the transaction cost is always external, but never subtracted from the asset you're moving.

NB: Both workarounds fail for another reason: bitcoins have eight significant digits. A quick test shows that Gnucash's maximum for commodities as well as for the test currencies appears to be six. I suppose I should open a new bug for that, though.
Comment 3 Frank H. Ellenberger 2012-07-13 21:04:22 UTC 
The N.B. is reported in Bug 657402 - Max fraction is too low, which again depends on Bug 648829 - Mutual Fund accounts losing precision when converting backend to SQLite.
Comment 4 John Ralls 2018-06-29 23:00:28 UTC 
GnuCash bug tracking has moved to a new Bugzilla host. The new URL for this bug is https://bugs.gnucash.org/show_bug.cgi?id=657215. Please continue processing the bug there and please update any external references or bookmarks.