Bitcoin Forum

To moderators, I know this discussion is more alt orientated but in the altcoins section will be buried in a matter of seconds by useless topics and I won't find an answer ever so please let it here for at least a few days.

Now, I had a debate with a friend over this, so it made me really curious how things are in other countries

There are 3 cases:

1) You premine the coin, in this case, you are going to pay tax on revenue when you exchange the coins to fiat based on the value at the selling point. No much debate here I guess.

2) ICOs, in this case, things are getting blurry, do some stupid legislation here, the money you received as investments are free of tax but if you plan to sell some of the coins reserved (if any) you will have to pay tax on the on the profit (if any) based on the ICO price. So you're going to avoid a lot of tax since it costs you zero to issue those coins.

3) Now stable coins.
According to my friend here, if you issue 100 coins with a value of 1$ each it is going to count as selling goods for 100$ and if this is going to be taxed at a standard rate, so when you sell 100 coins you're going to have to pay 14$ in tax even if ...the next fiscal year the guy that you sold the coins sells them back to you as here we have no legal way to write this off.
Now, since we have no real legislation dedicated to this, creating a stable coin here is clearly a NO.

I'm really curious how this is in other countries and especially in the US since everybody is talking about FB issuing a stable coin and we already have a stable coin (USDC) run by Circle.
How are those guys taxed for what it looks like printing money?

Self-moderated for obvious reasons

in the USA, businesses get taxed on net business income. issuing a stablecoin in exchange for deposits doesn't constitute "income"---they're just taking in assets (customer deposits) and issuing them as liabilities. they're not actually generating profits with this activity.

i'm not sure about USDC's model, but i know tether (USDT) makes money processing deposits and withdrawals: 0.1% on deposits and 0.4%-3% on withdrawals. that's where they generate income. i'm not sure what jurisdiction tether is taxed in, but if it were the USA, then taxable income = gross income - business expenses.

Now why would your friend count it as "selling goods" isn't stable coins or any other cryptocurrency counted as an asset and should be taxed via capital gains tax?  So the only thing that should be taxed to you is when you sold your stable coins above your purchase price. If you aren't getting any profit from it then it won't be taxable.

Oh, how much I've searched for this term ;D.
We have a stupid law here according to which any financial institution is also taxed on net revenue before taxing profit.



I'm referring to the issuer, not to the person that buys those stable coins.

Since we have no law regarding this and cryptos are not treated as financial instruments they are excluded from any other regulations. According to him, a company registered as a financial entity wouldn't be able to issue freely assets denominated in local currency without the approval of the government financial regulators and since cryptos are recognized ...you can't issue coins legally ....no way of getting approval for something that has basically no legal framework. Vicious circle!

Right now everyone selling any kind of coins would be hit with a % tax on gains, no matter what kind of coins you sell.
And since obviously the profit is the same as the value....

I tried reading one of the proposals for regulations but might I need a barrel of coffee since I got to the 5 or 6 page and didn't understand a word of it.

This is why I wondered how others deal with this