Upon closer inspection it appears that it only defers taxes for 8 years and then reduces them by a paltry 15%. I mean it could be really good if you already had a business idea that would work well in a low income area but purely as a tax avoidance scheme, seems questionable.
In addition, the "opportunity funds" you'd be investing in appear to grow tax-free, forever, and they can be restructured without losing their status. So, they're essentially treated like retirement accounts -- no taxes paid until you withdraw the gains. I can't run the numbers, but quite a lot of compounded growth is possible with this structure, because they operate tax-free. However, I could not find any mention about bitcoin or cryptos here. That essentially means, you need to follow the existing federal guidelines that are there for crypto related investments. Company formation is obviously possible with greater level of tax reduction but for crypto, I don't think any special provisions have been given.
Yeah, AFAIK there's no way to apply or take advantage of these tax breaks with regard to past crypto investments. To me, this whole scheme is more about gentrification and pouring tax-free gains into real estate developer coffers. |
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I don't think that it's fair for electricity companies to be able to charge anyone more for the same product, regardless of what the business or person is using the electricity for. Bitcoin miners included, they're not getting any better quality electricity than anyone else.
But hey, what can you do. It's the government's decision, and if they're not generating enough electricity to deliver to every day citizens without having to raise prices, then they will eventually place a tax on electricity for mining.
As squatter said, miners, especially big mining businesses, can definitely just relocate to countries where mining is less expensive - a hassle, but still can be done.
I agree, this should be a violation of equal protection law. They have discriminated on a specific group or class of people, who are the miners, and this is unfair to them. In the US, equal protection applies to individuals, not businesses. From my reading of this Wikipedia article, it's the same in Canada: Equal protection of the law ensure that the protections imposed by law will be proportionate so that the human dignity of every person is equally safeguarded by the law. It seems like miners would be viewed as businesses in Canada, not "persons" in the context of equal protection: A business is an activity that you intend to carry on for profit and there is evidence to support that intention. A business includes: - a profession
- a calling
- a trade
- a manufacture
- an undertaking of any kind
- an adventure or concern in the nature of trade.
Quebec will lose investors and mining industries if this were to be implemented and enforced.
I think that's the point.  |
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It sounds like it'll probably gentrify the shit out of poor neighborhoods and force residents out, while allowing developers and investors to avoid paying taxes. So I'm thinking, yeah, maybe you could dump a bunch of BTC gains into real estate in a dumpy neighborhood, renovate your crack houses and quadruple the rents over 10 years, and pay literally no taxes on the gains as long as they're deemed part of an approved "opportunity fund." Sounds like a real sweetheart deal. Cities are likely to attract real estate developers, startups and venture funds. Just keep building that bubble!  |
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Bitpay are heading down a dead end with their continued disdain for BTC. It's only a matter of time before someone pops along who is actually interested in doing business rather than fulfilling Bitmain's doomed agenda.
They probably realized their whole business model is untenable. If Bitcoin/cryptocurrency actually sees mass adoption, nobody needs a payment processor. And what is that, 10 years out? Maybe less? They'll be looking like Pets.com. I assume that's why they only care about the immediate future (big blocks/cheap fees now). |
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I wonder what plans Coinbase has in place about insider trading considering how fucked up their Bcash launch was. They're moving into the big leagues now and previous kludges won't cut it. There's more than a slight warping there that the announcements of their own listings can massively pump things.
It's definitely a concern for securities listings, but can probably be written off for obvious non-securities like Bcash or any other POW coin. Insider trading laws (at least in the US) generally only apply to publicly traded stocks and similar securities. For commodities, the law is mostly limited to things like front running. I suppose the "we might list these assets" announcements are intended for transparency in that respect? I think they've probably tried to choose assets which are arguably not securities, although I'm not sure about BAT and XLM. |
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I'm curious about why people are complaining. Would you really want to continue mining if your daily revenue is $5 and your daily maintenance fee is $7?
Some of the complaints I've seen are more like this: Daily revenue $5, daily maintenance $7, upfront 12-month payment $84 -- where they stop paying daily revenue after one month, no compensation. People who pay for cloud mining BTC are obviously not savvy investors, I get that much. And terminating contracts is fine. Pocketing money for services not provided isn't, though. |
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thats both expected and unexpected,since the mining has been unprofitable for quite a while I'm seeing allegations that these terms -- "if mining remains unprofitable for 21 consecutive days the Service is permanently terminated" -- were added in June. Obviously, those party to 12-month, etc. agreements didn't agree to those terms and are being swindled out of their contracts. Is there really no compensation offered if they take payment upfront for a year, then terminate the contracts a few months in? Just because they have the right to terminate contracts doesn't mean they have the right to steal peoples' money where they didn't provide the contracted services.  They're a UK company. I can't be bothered to research UK law, but they're common law, so this should be patently illegal. If this is truly their position, this is no different than an exit scam. The only thing cloud miners are good for is speculative mining of low-difficulty coins near launch. Long term contracts are like using exchanges to store money. You're bound to get fucked eventually.  |
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BMW definitely doesn't accept BTC for payments. It's just one car dealer in the UK (not BMW). And he accepts fiat payment via Bitpay, which makes this even more anti-climactic: https://twitter.com/SJBMWGroup/status/1014887028746571777These threads remind me of the merchant adoption hopes in 2014. Price kept dropping and dropping and everyone kept trying to hype merchant announcements (or rumors) like Dell, Paypal, etc. The truth is that merchant acceptance (especially through Bitpay) doesn't matter. What matters are real users and network liquidity. Merchants aren't in the business of asset/currency speculation -- they will migrate to Bitcoin when they are forced to. |
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The full hearing is here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?448611-1/house-panel-examines-digital-currencyIt seemed pretty positive overall. The witnesses weren't all perfect, but they were good on the whole. Dr. Michel in particular was perfect as far as I saw. Sherman spouted his usual FUD, but he was mostly alone. It seems that they're mostly thinking of competing with Bitcoin, which is a hilarious effort doomed to fail. 90% of Bitcoin's value proposition is inherently in opposition to government control: irreversibly, privacy, limited supply, decentralization, etc. Any "FedCoin" they'd create is going to be a total failure, at least on any level that normal people would notice. If they created an actually-private e-cash system without any redundant block chain nonsense a la How To Make a Mint, then that's something that could actually compete with Bitcoin on some level, but there's basically zero chance of them doing that. Thanks for posting that. I'd agree, it went reasonably well, especially when you consider that Brad Sherman's focus on drugs and terrorists was completely expected. Pretty harsh stuff, though: "We should prohibit U.S. persons from buying or mining cryptocurrencies," Rep. Brad Sherman of (D-Calif.) blasted from the podium. "Mining alone uses electricity which takes away from other needs and-or adds to the carbon footprint. As a store, as a medium of exchange, cryptocurrency accomplishes nothing except facilitating narcotics trafficking, terrorism, and tax evasion." Aside from him, the atmosphere seemed reasonable and the panelists weren't too bad. As a couple others said, nothing will come of this -- this is just an informational hearing. But it's interesting to see the evolution of how elected officials view Bitcoin. They seem generally more receptive than what I remember from ~2013. |
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"Hydro-Québec stated that it had received approximately 300 new requests for power from mining and blockchain-based entities. This translates to 18,000 milliwatts (mW), or more than 40 percent of the distributor’s generating capacity."
If that's true then I can see why they're not keen. You wouldn't really want real people freezing to death in the dark to make sure Rapecoin keeps ticking over.
If it would screw electricity supplies to more important areas then it should be a straightforward ban. If they can deliver that capacity then I see no reason why anyone should pay more than anyone else. It's just as meaningful or meaningless as any other industry that sucks up huge power for their own profit. That's why they're paying for it.
For sure they wont risk out the supply and just diverting it to be given to those miners.Its just really a dumb thing for them to be done but i dont see a point why would they do charge up not us just the same on a typical consumer?They do really took advantage on what they can possibly get in means of taxes. Sad for miners on that place indeed. Because in spite of the shitty job they do, governments are supposed to answer to residents, and treat public health and safety as paramount. What they spelled out in the report is basically this: Miners are applying for such capacity that Hydro-Québec would be forced to bid "for large amounts of power and energy that may be unnecessary and costly for all customers." If they don't discourage miners with an additional tax, they predict that costs will rise, and those additional costs will be distributed to residents and typical businesses. The logic is that if miners are causing costs to rise, they need to pay for it. Perhaps that's fair enough. I think Bitcoin miners soaking up excess capacity is great. But if I lived there and saw miners literally driving my electricity costs up, I'd be fucking pissed off. Residents don't owe miners anything. If electricity is too expensive, miners can set up shop somewhere else where there is excess capacity (and therefore cheaper electricity). |
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At this rate we might see ETH fall behind on the crypto market's latest price rally. If ETH is having issues as what has Bitcoin has experience before then we might see a shift of funds from its holders as we have seen before in the market. Last year -- in Bitcoin's case (and actually probably in Ethereum's too) -- there was a positive correlation between transaction fees and price. They rose together. All those claims that rising fees would cause declines in demand and price were wrong. So, while this may seem like bad fundamental news, it won't even matter if the demand/hype is strong enough. If Ethereum will not be able to come up with something like Lightning but for smart contracts soon, it will be forced to become more centralized by bumping blocksize more and more so the only nodes left in their networks will be a few datacenters.
The Raiden Network (Ethereum's Lightning Network) is in development, and the Github looks fairly active. Supposedly, they are on track for a Q3 mainnet release. Sharding seems pressing given the rate of growth, but I have no idea how far the core devs are with that... |
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So many news for ETF and SEC this week? how can happen after 10 th august?
It's an "exchange-traded fund." Basically, an ETF holds a type of asset (or basket of assets) and issues shares to be held by investors. Since the shares are backed by the underlying assets, share prices usually track an index of the underlying via arbitrage. The Winklevoss twins have been trying to get an ETF approved for years because it'll give traditional investors better access to Bitcoin's volatility without some of the risks associated with spot exchanges. The Cboe is trying to bring an ETF to market as well. |
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What are the biggest exchanges in America? Will they also need to apply as a broker-dealer? If they plan to offer securities, yes, they're supposed to be a licensed broker-dealer. That's what Circle's plan is with Poloniex (they apparently got the SEC's blessing to do so without bearing responsibility for Polo's past behavior). I imagine this is why Coinbase was so careful in the past not to list anything but POW coins (not securities). “Ultimately, we can envision a world where we may even work with regulators to tokenize existing types of securities, bringing to this space the benefits of cryptocurrency-based markets — like 24/7 trading, real-time settlement, and chain-of-title,” [/glow]Coinbase President and Chief Operating Officer Asiff Hirji said in a statement. As much as some would like to see tokens die, I think this is the direction we're heading. Tokenization and therefore 24/7 and P2P trading of existing securities. The first generation of ICOs were just the start. This might explain the little bump in the price lately, but is that enough to spark a Bull run or do we have to wait for the SEC's decision on the ETF's  It looks like the birth of a new trend, but I've been around long enough that I'm skeptical of another bubble happening so quickly. |
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Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II wasted no time in castigating the “crypto industry” for its role in the DNC hack. The fact that Russians had apparently used bitcoin to cover their tracks was of more concern than the numerous other failings that the indictment revealed, like the inability of Democrats to detect basic phishing attempts, or of DNC admins to detect the X-Agent malware that was installed. No, the biggest takeaway from all this was that bitcoin had facilitated one of the gravest nation state-orchestrated crimes in years.
This reminds me of the Congressional calls to ban Bitcoin back in 2013 because of it association with the Silk Road. What better boogeyman could there be than the evil freedom-hating Russians?  Never mind that the DNC's information security apparatus was completely pathetic, and that it had high-level employees getting phished... sure, that's all Bitcoin's fault. |
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So what? Anyone can set up a node and add any amount of Bitcoin to provide liquidity to LN.
Yup, making mountains out of molehills here. Brekken's always been a douchebag. He's capitalizing on people's ignorance. The article (paid for, I assume) almost makes it sound like he could 51% attack the network: Concern is mounting over Bitcoin’s Lightning Network
with Brekken now comprising 49 percent of total network capacity The state of Bitcoin media... |
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There's a huge difference when we say bull run and futures bull run, i felt that futures has increased pressure on bitcoins and it broke down under the heavy expectations
I think that's generally correct, although the launch of futures was just one piece of the overall "peak hype." There were inflated expectations all around. I felt the same thing in 2013. The bubble/deflation cycle is only natural. I've studied the past runs quite a bit and the best model I've found is one of repeating hype cycles. They're sort of like sine waves as well. At the peak, we have inflated expectations and people think price will never stop rising. Then we crash and most people become disillusioned. Then we return to the mean and wait -- almost in dormancy -- until the next run gets triggered. |
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It's actually an interesting subjects of law and ethics. If you take advantage of someone's hardware without his knowledge, but at the same time you don't limit his abilities in any way, is it a crime? I think it's usually a crime if you access someone's computer without authorization. In the US: The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is a United States cybersecurity bill that was enacted in 1986 as an amendment to existing computer fraud law (18 U.S.C. § 1030), which had been included in the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984. The law prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, or in excess of authorization. Many people whose computers were being used for mining didn't even notice and did not mine or plan to mine for themselves, so the hacker took advantage of their lack of knowledge and overall carelessness. He made money by using them, which is a bad thing, but he also did not make them lose money. Their computers were mining in the background only when these people were using them for other things, so they would be drawing power anyway at that given time whether they'd be infected or not.
How much does CoinHive, etc. slow down your computer? Maybe they "paid" by suffering through slower processing times. |
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Why should this be news? It seems like our crypto news channels are pulling bag of celebrities, CEOs, big economists, every time some important person talks about crypto is enough to become headline on all crypto news channels. Most of it is just clickbait. But I do think Sergey Brin might be seen as more of a visionary than most of those celebrities, economists, etc. after founding Google. He seems legitimately fascinated by various cryptocurrencies and like Tim Draper (another tech/VC visionary), he thinks they'll be heavily integrated into society. To be honest, I'm pretty interested in the opinions of tech people who have a knack for social trends. Price predictions are a dime a dozen, though. |
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The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has declared victory over Bitcoin, stating that the market leader’s trading in its national currency has fallen to less than 1 percent of total global volume. That's all they wanted -- for Chinese trading volume to move to Hong Kong/Japan? Maybe they've slowed down CNY-->BTC capital flight, but even that's doubtful. There's an assortment of shadow banks that Chinese residents could use instead, and I've always had a hard time believing the exchanges were very significant in that respect. I think the real reason is that China is scared of capital flight, which has been a problem for them for a long time.
They must be worried about future bubbles to much higher prices. Seems like a drop in the bucket until then. |
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