Category: Exchanges

ST. MORITZ — The United States may be entering a second Cold War, according to some investors, who seem mildly curious but otherwise unconcerned about the prospect. “It’s a kind of Cold War, but not just for crypto,” said Multicoin Capital’s Beijing-based partner Mable Jiang. “Currency is the leverage.” Jiang said China’s goal is to leverage the rise of cryptocurrency, including both domestic bitcoin mining and a state-issued digital currency, to supplant the dollar and become the world’s leading economic power. Such rivalries feel lightyears away in the frosted Swiss…

U.S. lawmakers have resurrected a bipartisan push to exempt gains from small cryptocurrency transactions from being taxed.  On Thursday, Reps. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), David Schweikert (R-Ariz.),  Darren Soto (D-Fla.) and Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) introduced “The Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2020,” an amendment to IRS tax code that would exempt realized gains under $200, otherwise known as a de minimis threshold. From a practical standpoint the bill could simplify the tax burdens of day-to-day crypto users who must report even marginal capital gains under current federal law. This is…

This is part of a series of op-eds previewing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. CoinDesk will be on the ground in Davos from Jan. 20–24 chronicling all things crypto at the annual gathering of the world’s economic and political elite. Follow along by subscribing to our pop-up newsletter, CoinDesk Confidential: Davos. Arif Khan is the CEO of Alethea AI. The opinions here are his own. Despite its shortcomings, the World Economic Forum has laudably established itself as an important venue for highlighting controversial technology trends that will have…

New Hampshire legislators have scrapped a bill that would have allowed state agencies to accept cryptocurrencies for tax payments. On Jan. 8, the New Hampshire House of Representatives accepted a motion from the General Court’s Executive Departments and Administration Committee stating that the tax bill was “inexpedient to legislate” and should be removed before it reaches the floor. The committee voted to kill the bill in November on a 17-1 vote, as originally reported by The Block. The bill would have required the state treasurer to develop a means for…

The new owner of the Chrysler Building is selling a property worth $135 million to a blockchain real-estate company, taking a fifth of the purchase price in tokenized securities. New York-based RFR Holdings, which purchased the Chrysler Building in a joint agreement in March 2019, agreed to sell its majority stake in a commercial property in Zurich to BrickMark, a Switzerland-based real estate agency. Announced Wednesday, BrickMark said roughly 20 percent of the purchase price will be paid in the firm’s BMT security token. The deal gives BrickMark 80 percent…

Former Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, former LabCFTC head Daniel Gorfine and Charles Giancarlo want to take the dollar digital – and they’re not waiting for the Fed. The three are forming the Digital Dollar Foundation, working with Accenture to design and push for a potential U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC). The new not-for-profit organization has a multi-part plan to first create potential designs and proposals; convene economists, lawyers, academics, technologists and others to evaluate these designs; and create a framework for testing the new system,…

A newly launched fintech firm hopes to leverage the token sale model to back investments in real-world assets. But it’s taking a different approach than many previous projects. Hong Kong-based Two Prime – recently founded by open-source veteran Marc Fleury – calls the sale a Continuous Token Offering (CTO), as opposed to an initial coin offering (ICO) in which most tokens are sold early on. The goal is to use the funds raised to help make crypto a proper new asset class that appeals more to the financial world. The firm…

South Korea-based exchange Bithumb is fighting a move by the country’s tax authority to withhold over $69 million in tax on foreign cryptocurrency transactions. Confirmed by the company in December, National Tax Service (NTS) based its demand on the rate for miscellaneous income. The tax is calculated at an annualized rate of 22 percent, and in this case was based on the amount of foreign withdrawals from Bithumb. A withholding tax is paid by the income provider rather than the recipient, so in effect Bithumb’s foreign customers are paying the…

U.S.-based Kraken announced its plans for expansion into the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region on Tuesday after acquiring one of Australia’s longest-running cryptocurrency exchanges, Bit Trade. Kraken is aiming to position itself as the premier cryptocurrency service within the region, identifying Australia as a key growth area for retail and institutional clients. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Its acquisition of Bit Trade, a platform that combines liquidity from several exchanges into one interface, signifies a major step into the APAC region by offering local customers access to Kraken’s…

The for-profit entity working on Zcash has published a software development kit (SDK) for both Android and iOS. According to a blog post Wednesday, the Electric Coin Company (ECC) has published an improved Android SDK and new iOS package to help developers support shielded payments on mobile devices. The new software tools come alongside a lightweight server for backend processing of mobile shielded payments, meaning addresses, transaction amounts and memos within transactions are obfuscated. While multiple zcash wallets already exist for laptop and desktop computers on the ZecWallet service, today’s…