Indeed, that's one of the snags that encourages people to keep funds on exchanges -- the inconvenience of maintaining different altcoin wallets.

All your Ethereum-based assets like ETH and ERC-20 tokens can all be held in a single Ethereum wallet like MEW or Mist. Other altcoins are more cumbersome and usually require their own wallets.

There are some multi-coin wallets like Coinomi, Jaxx, and Exodus that support a wide variety of coins. These are closed-source wallets with questionable security, so I can't wholeheartedly recommend them, but they are still probably a better option than trusting exchanges to secure all your coins.

You aren't liable for taxes in the US in this situation. It doesn't matter where the trade happens. If you aren't a US citizen/national or resident alien, and you aren't engaged in a business in the US, you have no tax liability there. Your capital gains are between you and your local tax authority.

To spend or to hoard? The age-old question.

I have some bitcoin-denominated income and some unspent profits from altcoin trading, so I don't mind spending some bitcoins here and there. But first and foremost, I'm a hoarder. As a general rule, if I don't think I'll be able to get the coins back, I don't spend them in the first place.

Due to Bitcoin's scarcity, the writing is on the wall regarding how valuable they'll be in the future. I'm trying to hold onto as much as I can.

It doesn't matter. Anyone else can have the same copyright registered as well. Disputes over copyright ownership are sorted out in the courts, not the Copyright Office.

The whitepaper and original code were already copyrighted by default when they were published. Initial distribution under the MIT license destroys any chance Craig Wright has of charging rent to use the Bitcoin code, as he apparently intends to do.

It almost seems like another pathetic attempt to "prove" he's Satoshi more than anything else.

MIT the entity has nothing to do with it. They are just named for the permissive free software license that originated there.

Satoshi published the original code under the MIT license here. This is what the license entails:


I don't see how Craig has any leg to stand on, legally. I'm also fairly sure that Craig isn't the first to attempt a copyright claim like this.

This is pretty hilarious. Does he really believe this will hold up in court?

The code was released under MIT license. Hilariously, Wright seems very confused about how this works in practice:


As Jerry Brito from CoinCenter points out, these claims "have almost zero legal weight." It's sad that people will have to spend time and money to fight these frivolous claims in court, though, if he tries to exercise any rights under copyright law.

Notably, very little (if any) of the original codebase even exists in the current client anymore.

I used to ponder this same question. If it's an elaborate con -- perhaps having to do with his tax evasion case with Australia -- then it doesn't outwardly make sense. But maybe we don't have all the details?

At this point, I think it really is all about the publicity and the guy has psychological issues. I think he's a megalomaniac and is seeking out ways to inflate his sense of social importance by injecting himself into the media any way he can.

Maybe he is heavily invested in BSV and thinks this sort of notoriety is good for the price. That's one alternative explanation.

That's the point. Tether obviously requested this letter from Deltec. The fact that Tether published it suggests that Deltec was explicitly allowed to disclose their relationship.

It's reasonable that as a matter of protocol, a bank wouldn't confirm whether any relationship existed. I'm not surprised about that.

But you can't blame people for being skeptical when the letter looks like a grade schooler produced it and then the bank denies that any relationship existed. Bitfinex'd must have felt on top of the world at that point.


I'm guessing there is no "normal process" for that. It's a bizarre request.

I'm pretty sure it's unusual anywhere in the world to sign without a name.

I have no doubt the letter was authentic, however -- the chairman of the bank confirmed its authenticity. It's telling that no bank executive wanted to be associated with the letter, though, and they initially would not confirm the relationship existed.


I remember when that letter came out. It looked ridiculous.

At the same time, this was a phase of heavy scrutiny towards Tether. I remember Bitfinex'd was quite popular at the time. They seemed pretty desperate to produce something that showed adequate cash on hand, knowing that they couldn't produce an audit.

Any coverage is good coverage, especially if it's not intentional misinformation and debunking. 60 Minutes is huge among the mainstream middle-aged crowd. That kind of coverage combined with the recent rally will expose lots of regular folks to Bitcoin. Some of them will look further into it, or will be asking their children to invest for them.

I haven't done a deeper analysis, but I don't think it's just micro transactions that are clogging up mempools. I know VeriBlock is doing signficant transaction volume with their Proof-of-Proof model. We can also expect any other such protocols that are built on top of Bitcoin -- Microsoft's new decentralized identity project comes to mind -- to further add to on-chain volumes.

I agree that LN can and should be used for micro transactions but inevitably, fees might just continue going up.

No big deal for me, but I didn't have any coins locked up there.

I'm glad to see them fully operational again, though -- especially considering their colleague Cryptopia just entered bankruptcy today. Things can change so fast in this space.

I sure hope they've made the necessary overhauls to their security system without needing to impinge on the privileges of unverified users. I'm still a bit wary of depositing anything right now.

Not lost per se, but the company is entering liquidation proceedings. If you have a balance on Cryptopia, you will need to make a claim with the liquidators or trustee in the coming weeks or months. Then you'll wait in line with all of Cryptopia's other creditors who are hoping to get a fraction of their money back.

This could be a long, drawn-out process. It could end up taking years, like the Mt. Gox bankruptcy.

I don't think it's just small blockers vs. big blockers anymore. There's a third group who were (or may still be) small blockers but do advocate for future block size increases. We can't immediately write this group off as reckless like the Bitcoin Cash crowd. The question becomes, are we going to modestly increase the block weight as technology improves -- and when? -- or is this actually a complete impasse?


I don't think many people are taking the BCH or BSV approaches seriously, but I wouldn't quite say that. Judging by the recent aggravation I've been seeing around rising fees, I'm sure we'll be hearing more and more about this debate again as the months wear on.

I doubt it. Trading was available the whole time that withdrawals were down. Any customers who were holding stablecoins or altcoins were able to convert back to bitcoins.

Altcoins gained quite a bit after deposits came back online. I suppose that's not entirely surprising.

Maybe you should incorporate a company for this. It's fairly easy and cheap. That way, you should be able to separate your personal Bitcoin investments from your company's since receivables from your client become company assets, not your personal assets.

The tax treatments discussed earlier would obviously change, but it sounds like it might be worth it for you.

As I recall, Tether actually changed its terms to reflect this months ago. Very few people took notice, although I saw a thread about it at the time. It looks like they changed the terms when the loan took place. From the looks of it, the AG wasn't being entirely forthright in its claims, but regardless, Bitfinex had to go into damage control mode once the news broke.


Their legal counsel came out and said that the major auditing firms won't touch them. They have made some attempts to provide alternative proof.

Sounds like a recipe to lose your coins. Did you ever hear of Coinlenders? Read up.

Even if you can beat the odds after loan defaults, the custodial risk just isn't worth it on centralized platforms.

Decentralized/protocol-based lending seems cool but it's pretty limited since borrowers need to maintain cryptocurrency collateral to cover their loans -- using crypto as collateral to borrow more crypto. It would be a lot more useful if people could tokenize their automobile or house deed, etc. and use that to secure cryptocurrency loans, like they can IRL with fiat-based loans.

I find his wording puzzling. "The major part has been raised directly from iFinex. But SPVs and our investors helped in gathering investment from their communities. " Is it just his bad English? He can't possibly mean an insolvent company provided the majority of the funding, can he?

I think he must mean the majority was raised by iFinex. Right?

This is all correct. You need to keep track of the fair market value when payments are made to you. This is self-employment income and will be reported on Schedule C. The fair market value at the time payments are made also forms the cost basis for any capital gains/losses. When realized, net capital gains/losses will be reported on Schedule D.

Two things are missing; only one of them is material:

• You will need to file Form 8949 which itemizes each Bitcoin position you held and liquidated.
• Assuming you had net earnings of $400 or more, you will need to file Schedule SE. This is used to determine the self-employment (Social Security and Medicare) taxes due. This is an additional tax on top of the personal income tax.

See here for more info about Schedule SE.