Bitcoin Forum

Is trading crypto on your own with no employees and no storefront categorized as a real business?

If you profit $300 per year from this stuff, is that considered a business?

How about profiting $3,000 per year?

Or profiting $30,000 per year?

Where does trading online take on all of the aspects of being a legitimate and identifiable business?

no, it should belong to personal transactions. Like normal traders, they also trade coins and make lots of money from it, but they only pay personal income tax. You do not need to pay additional corporate tax.

No.
We could say they have both the same kind of profit which is unsure or there is no accurate number.
But the difference is there is more risk with doing crypto currency trading.
There is a way to make a business boom again specially now with so much social media thing.
But not with trading. You lose, you try to get back tomorrow and there is no assurance you will gain it back.

With business your item is intact. You just need the push. You never really lost anything.

For someone who does it as a livelihood, I will say yes, it is a business and you have to be serious with it.


All businesses involve risk. The businesses you think the profit is predetermined, stable or calculated, the proprietor has undergone training to be able to study and understand the market landscape, so also should trading be taken serious in learning the rudiments too

For tax purposes? The IRS does not consider trading to be a business activity. (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/09/incorporate-active-trading.asp) Trading income is unearned income, not business income subject to self-employment taxes.

There can be tax benefits to treating it like a business though. They are listed in the article I linked. The primary ones being

• You can deduct business expenses (like computer, trading software/subscriptions, internet access)
• In losing years, you can deduct more than $3,000 per year in net capital losses

Nope it cant be considered as a business but somehow on other countries it is subjected to extract out some taxes.
I do rather see this as a job than to be a business. Earnings cant be determined yet we know on how profitability works on this area.
I agree that someone said above that other people could treat this one as a business and get serious with it yet we've been generating money
for sustaining up our needs.

I can consider that as your business because you are earning money but make sure that you don’t need much money for your daily needs because trading can’t give you fix profit everyday. If you gain a lot of money from trading, treat it as your business and make a good decision for you to stay on that business.

Trading will have to be considered as a business as well. It is to consider because trading includes money, we earned, we lose, it all be the same approach with real stock business.
https://tradingeducators.com/books/trading-is-a-business if we have to read this, we can say that trading is another form of business which a lot of people are engaging in this certain thing. But what I can see is that trading is the riskier thing that we tried to engage for and many have suffered losses than of being profitable.

Anything that can be exchanged for money is considered to be a business in which crypto trading will not be exceptional. If it is done well with solid background and exposure to fundamental and technical analysis, then it becomes a huge business with good return as long the know-how is there

Are you asking if trading is a business in state's eye or in general?. since you are not working for someone else, it can't be called a job. So in your scenario I would say it's home business or self-employment. Having that said, I would recommend you to use some of your income in creating a real business beside trading.

Trading for me is somehow like a business too because you can generate a good income here and there are also bad times that you will lose your capital. But the more you are familar with how the market moves will give you more chances to earn more in trading. Just like if you cannot determine the movement of the coins in the market, you will surely lose your own capital.

business has a lot of meaning, and it depends on who understands and interprets it,
trading on crptocurrency can be a business or a job if we believe that, whether we have employees or not,
but unfortunately many traders do not want to recognize the business, they like to call it a trader, not a businessman. and this, including me, is better known to be unemployed with more money or traders than businesspeople.

It will depend on how you see trading because for me its a business and that's why I have to protect my capital and do my best to grow my portfolio. Business is something you do to create profit and that its our main goal in trading on any market. Crypto trading is the same with the legal businesses, we do this to have profit and we do this for us to achieve our goals in life in the future.

yeah... and if it really is, then what type of?!

It is not because commercial businesses will need permits to operate like licence and some legal documents from the government in which there is none for Crypto trading but they have the same tax obligations if Crypto is declared legal in the country.

I think trading crypto is included in the personal business owner. We work for searching for money like what other people's did. We don't have an office, and we don't have an employee who works with us. But we run the trading by ourselves. The world has been changed, the traditional work has transformed into digital work. So what we do in the online life will be considered as work as in real life. But many people out there cannot imagine how we can make money from what we did, and that is why they cannot accept that we can make money like them.

As long as you don't have any employer and you're making profit on it, it's considered as a business already. Business isn't about having an employee, paying different expenses, and etc. Also, you can be a broker in crypto trading, meaning you're handling other peson's money thus both of you can benefit from each other (considered as business already). Wether it's small time or big time, there's no problem on that.

I think there are some people who think that way, they have a lot of money capital and make trading as a main job because maybe he does not want to work leaving his family so trading at home can be a very pleasant job for people who can use it.

You can think of that way-a business! You can threat it as your business where you get your daily/ monthly income. You take care of it, sorting out problems, writing up a plan to become successful, no boss and you can manage your time.

But for me, rather than business, I consider it as a job because we all know that business needs consumers while trading is a different thing.

I think it is a business. fortunately regardless of size, it's still a business. with a large capital means a chance to get a bigger profit as well. even in a loss condition it is still a business. A business is a business based on a strategy prepared earlier, and trading is an opportunity

No as long as you are work for yourself and not involving anybody also have no benefit to other person ... i think it's just a self employment ... it is money that make you on the job.

your earnings are not considered to be earned income at some point you don't have to pay any tax.

Unless if you are a broker who managing other people money ... then it's a business.

If you consider forex and stocks as business then crypto trading is also a business.

When we are making profits or loss while doing something then its supposed to be business.

Trading generally has been a recognized business for ages, before cryptocurrency was invented, people including government has been trading Forex and stock and making money from it, and I don’t think that bitcoin trading too is different from this, even right now, china recognizes it as commodity asset, it is the currency feature of it they are not okay with even the US, but when it comes to trading with it, I think it is well recognized even if it has not been documented yet.

I respect anyone that is able to trade cryptocurrency very well than those trading stock and Forex, because the volatility of cryptocurrency is that which is really not so easy to manage or control. It has so much risk more than the other ones that I mentioned and which is even still the best of all for now.

Have you registered anything about establishing your own business with your government for you to trade? If the answer is no then you already know the answer you are looking for. In trading the most they can ask for you is KYC while if you want to put up a business then the process would entirely be different which will require you to have licenses and permits depending on what type your business you are building up. In trading even on stocks or foreign exchange what you earn is not income the gains you will receive or profit from it are capital gains which has a different tax compared to income. If you still insist of making it into a "business" then I don't see any benefit from it since income taxes are considerably higher compared to capital gains tax.

According to this link https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business.asp


On general means trading isn't a business but for our own personal views we can consider to be one.

Anything that can give us profit is business. Or maybe can be considered as a job. About profit, how much is it is no matter because at least we get an income. Although not all people can do it,  but some people can get their daily needs only with get profit in trading activity.

I think all of it depend on people own definitions to see whether trading as business or not but in my own personal view i consider people who run business should be sell things or they have particular products to offered and there are costumers involved too but trading is different although there was sell and buy activities but basically there is no product so i think trading could not be categorized as business and more likely can recognized as a job

It actually depends on what the law in the location you are defines as a business but from the look of it in my opinion, it is not. Earning an income does not mean owning a business. Just like employees that works in a company, they are earning money in form of wages and salaries but does not mean they own a business. However, if that employee sets up a business by registering with the body responsible for such, and then invoices to be paid in that regard, then he is running a business which I believe is applicable to other jurisdictions as well.

The difference here is that no matter how much an individual profits from its activities, he is subjected to tax as an individual if he income accrued to him directly rather than indirectly if he had set up a business for that purpose.

When we say business, it is very long explanation. Lot of people all around the world are earning without owning
their business. Because if you own a business, it means that business must supposed to be register under your name.
Therefore, if we are a crypto trader, while we do profit in trading, it means we are buying and selling under the business
of any exchange platform that owning by other people not our own business.

It can be considered as a good business even if you don't gave employees or other co workers.
If you are doing it alone, sooner enough, you can have other or employ additional hand.
On the other hand, earning only 300 dollars per year or 3000 dollars per year to me is not a good business or right  earning.

How to Start a Bitcoin Exchange in 10 Simple Steps
1.   Obtain proper legal counsel to ensure licensing requirements are met.
2.   Attain funding for venture.
3.   Find a cryptocurrency exchange software solution provider.
4.   Connect your exchange with others for added liquidity.
5.   Partner with a payment processor.
6.   Implement best security practices.
7.   Go live via beta testing.
8.   Start marketing & PR campaign.
9.   Offer customer support.
10.   Maintain a legal team for ongoing compliance.

You can treat it as a good business since you are already using it to generate earnings, there's different opinions about to this but the important thing is how you consider this venture. For people who can afford to generate bigger income from this field they can consider that it is an freelance business where you are the boss of your own income generating business.

No that wouldn't be considered as a business. Just making profit doing something does not mean it is business. If you go by this definition of making profit, then gambling would also be considered as a form of business. But do we consider gambling as a business? Nope. Again, a business should have an organization that is engaged in commercial activity, but there aren't any when you are trading to make profit.

Depends on your definition of real business. Lots of people make money selling things online, trading stock and Foreign currencies without employees and no storefront. I guess you don't consider this online businesses as real businesses as they can be done without employees and storefront . I really don't understand why alot of people think that online business aren't real business.

-You can consider crypto not as business, but as an additional source of income. If you can make enough money, yes, but when you want to meet your needs based on the earnings that come from crypto trading, you may starve for several months. IMO there should be the source of the fixed income, and the money coming from the trade should be seen as an additional. But if you think you are a professional in this business and can handle these risks properly, it is the best that you can do.

-How much you want to earn depends on how you want to live and where you live.

Anything you do and you have the intentions of making profit or having gain either in a short term or a long term can be considered as a business.
So I will think trading cryptocurrency as a business

Not entirely.

A business is where you have products and with trading I dont think it is a product but more of just money circulating and decision making.
With business you let it flow and you can do marketing strategies to make it sell to the public.

I dont think that is the same with trading. You are on your own and it is more like gambling your money. It is too far for a comparison.

I'm not a US citizen but it's great to know that you can deduct some money per year in net capital losses, for me that sounds amazing.

And also the benefits of treating trading as a business, I'm the kind of guy that thinks trading has only capital gains taxes, or that's considered investing?

I consider crypto trading by myself as a business, but I don't know what will people called it. As long as we can make money from what we did, it is called the business. Maybe people will not call that business because they see that business will need employee or place and have a product as you said. But with the growth of the technology, we break that because we can have an online store on the internet, we can sell some product in our website, we can work as a freelance and other else.

A business is something that we can do, and we can earn money from time to time so that it will give some return to us. I think that will be the same as what people did in their office.

It may differ in some ways on how people interpret or perceive independent trading.
Some may see it as a business but I think it's more of a source of income if your making
and earning a reasonable good amount from it. I believe it's more like a progressive
investment in a rapidly volatile yet lucrative market. It's hard to tell though, since
when your talking of business it is a discerning concept that implies money making on
a regular basis, both a long term and a short one in that aspect.

in my opinion, cryptocurrency trading is not a real business, it is a digital business. I categorize real businesses like buying and selling physical goods, such as vehicles, food, medical devices, and others. that's the real business.

other than that, whatever the benefits, it will still be categorized as a business, even if you work alone. besides, business people don't always get profits. some business people also suffer losses in a year.

Well, I do consider trading as a business but not entirely. Business is not all about buying, selling goods, product and service. For me business is getting a benefits or simply profit for your own good and for other as well. Some other says that business runs by multiple number of people but the truth is there is sole proprietorship which run by single person and just like other it sells product and service. Now if we were going to apply it in crypto trading, a single person buy and sell his/her coins to public(refers to fellow traders). It is more likely as long as there is transaction involved it CAN be considered as a business.

As far as legitimacy of a business is concerned you can consider any activity which you are doing as business until and unless that thing is legal in your country. Which means even trading is considered as a legitimate business. From a legal standpoint you are a sole proprietor carrying on his trades all on his own and enjoying the profits and bearing losses all on its own. This is a identifiable business model however your business is not a separate entity in eyes of Law. This is how sole proprietorship works in all the countries. Moreover it absolutely doesn't depends upon what you are earning. Infact, it's a business if you are not earning anything.

I want you to know that a business is what ones do regularly to earn money or get pay either by selling of product, trading or offer service which I believed crypto trading also fall the exact category.

Every aspect of life or selling product is a form of gambling until ones get require bullish result. An example is the owner of KFC which risk his reputation by creating a new chicken recipe.

It is clearly stated here https://www.expowest.com/en/register/business-categories.html where trading belongs to and definitely it was a business. I don't think we have to put in doubts.

As everything we do around that involves money are to be considered another form of business even though we benefited from this or not. But most likely we do business just to have profit and that is what we do in trading.

I don't know if it's a business but technically crypto trading is relevant to the government. If you haven't registered a business, then it is not considered as a business, but it is still considered as income if you profit from trades,.and you need to report it to your government.

some people consider trading as a job but in my opinion if trading is made as a job I think it is not enough because the need for human money when you have a family is very much and if you only rely on trading then it is very unsuitable if it is used as your main job.

Maybe something that can make us earn money is kind of business. No matter we are offer service or maybe sell something. Maybe business is like kind of something that we do for ourself. And not like works, we manage our own income and can control it as much as we want.

Yes, it is a real business, anything that we do as our profession and we are earning money, we can call that a business, it doesn't matter how much you earn, money is still money. The only I like when you are a freelancer is that you don't have any boss that will shout at you when you showed up late in your work, you control your time when you are working, there is no due dates on submitting your paper works and other things that are related to your work, and so on.

Being a freelancer is like a bird that you can go wherever you want, whenever you want, you don't have to wrote a letter for vacation leave, and it is not tiring compare to a real job that is stressful because of too much work load.

In as much as you don't want to refer trading crypto as a business, but from your analysis above still applies to every form of business in one way or the other. Every business requires a skill set to be able to carry it out properly in order to make progress. Crypto trading has its own skill requirements too for the progress of the business.

Trading crypto on your own, with no employees and no storefront, is categorized as a real business. Because the primary aim of every crypto trader is to make a profit. Business is a commercial or industrial enterprise and the people who constitute it, with the sole aim of transacting for profit of all parties. But the priority of individuals to make a gain. Therefore, trading is considered a business

I completely disagree. Because if that is true then what about gambling? People there are betting and profiting without even paying nothing back the government if they won the jackpot. At least in some local exchanges, you pay your taxes when you convert your coins to cash. Just categorizing crypto trading as a business is so weird because we are not buying and selling products but only currencies.

It cannot considered a business even if you are earning more than 30,000$ per year.

It will be considered as business only if in case you will hire some employees to manage your trading and you will process a legal papers like business permit and etc. but if you are doing it by yourself then it cannot be considered as business.

In my country, we have this kind of business where you can approach someone that has cash to give you cash using their that travelling far to an ATM locator to use ATM, but you could see such person very close to your street with POS, they will debit your money and then give you the cash equivalent while you pay them their fixed service charge.

These people have product also, and their product is their money, they are selling their money to make profit and that I think is how trading is also, you out in your capital which serves as a product that you sell, and then buy again, and sell. Provided what you are into has to do with buying and selling, I think that this is the strictly going to be called business, so for me, trading full time should be regarded to as business also.

Real business, digital business or whatever business you want to call it, business is business, as long as you are earning money it is business, as long as it is your occupation it is business, or even your profession, it is still business.



Maybe not, the only difference is that you only buy and sell tokens just like physical goods that you have mentioned, I don't why you use the term "real", it is like you are saying that Trading is a "fake" business or you are playing by Trading. I will consider Trading as a real business because it is more complex and the earnings in Trading is much bigger than what you have mentioned physical goods.


Just like in Trading. Traders doesn't always gain profits because like "real business" traders are also people that is not perfect and made mistakes, that is why they are losing profits sometimes.

For professional traders. trading can be the main source for their life I am talking about for trading on the stock market. but for trading on the crypto market. Hard to predict market charts and price movements are not always as expected and based on a certain news or reason. even with no reason at all price can moving up or down unpredicatable. for me consider trading in bitcoin just as alternative income.

It could be for some, especially when you take it as a full time job or quit your job doing it, trading as we know is not easy, it takes those who have the TA knowledge to do it successfully and profit from it,
anyone who takes trading as a business is definitely a professional and have the full understanding of market trend, if you are good at trading or can consider yourself as a pro, i don't see why not take it as a business or full time job, you will have the comfort of working from where ever pleases you, plus you are answerable to yourself,
and if what you generate from your trade is higher than your monthly salary, why wasting time, just concentrate on what profit you most.

I don't think we considered trading as a business because it is kind of investment that's I think. The good with that while you are doing a trading you do also a business but time management is really need for that. Even a trader earn more money in trading it is not good to consider it as business. But both of this two need hard work , plan and of course the good capital to buy coin for trading and to buy goods for the business.

I guess it depends on country, yeah? What if you are trading through bank? (Yeah, some banks offer bitcoin exchange services). So I guess this action is pretty similar of national currency / usd exchange, do you pay fees for that? Personally in my country there are no fees on it from buyer. So I think you don't have to pay anything when you trade with crypto but still, maybe it depends on country and rules will be different in your one.
Don't know exactly what happens when you use international exchanges but still consider that in some countries, you pay zero fee for profit from foreign country.

Recently, news appeared in the media that bankers are demanding to tax activities on the cryptocurrency market.  In turn, the governments of certain countries expressed their opinion that cryptocurrency users can only be taxed if the cryptocurrency is converted into fiat currencies.  But if we are talking about those countries where cryptocurrency is prohibited, then the user can use international exchanges using VPN to bypass the restrictions of his state.  But in this case, there should not be any connections of the cryptocurrency market with its bank accounts.

In my opinion, That's wrong. We are well aware that forex trading, Stock trading etc are regarded as businesses. So why not Crypto trading? If you're serious about taking your crypto trading to the next level, You can turn it to a Full Fledged business. It's possible. It'll shock you to know that there are folks that take their trading as a business. Don't forget taxes are charged in some countries on capital gains. So to get past this, You need to start thinking of crypto trading as a business.

You can't consider it as a business. Your perception is wrong, just because you can earn profit from trading it is not mean that it is a business. There is a high risk that you  may face in trading of cryptocurrencies.

No its not, because you don't have a product to sell or exchange. You can't add personal profits and make sell it. You don't have the power to control the price. Even if you take investments from others, create a pool and trade yourself, I don't think you can consider that as a business unless you have it registered as an investment company then you have a business.

This answers everything.
Theres a legal difference between "business" and some personal activities that generates income. Regardless, of the effort and the features that resembles to a real business, its still not considered as business if it wasnt registered to legally operate. Another thing, business is taxable.

No, because you can lose money in trading and you can even hit rock bottom when you are going to trade, but if you win large you should enjoy it and take all the profit.
Business is providing of service or having a customer. Trading is a personal earned money and should not be considered as a Business, and also in trading the business part there is the trading website, but the traders will be called as a customer.

There are professional crypto traders who trade cryptos as a full job thus trading it independently as a business having resigned from their daily job they took to trading as a full time trader having acquired a lot of skills with a huge investment portfolio while risking maximum of 5% per trade invariably trading with a strategy which has a high risk to reward ratio while reasonable amount of profits is made monthly which the trader withdraws to pay bills, buy stuffs etc.