“With two competing amendments and pressure from the White House and Treasury, crypto taxation is suddenly the crux of the massive infrastructure bill. After industry objections to a flawed initial proposal, there are now two competing amendments about how to scale back its demands. According to the Washington Post, the dispute is now holding up the entire $550 billion bill.
Things seemed to take a turn for the better on Wednesday when Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) filed an amendment refining and scaling back the rule’s definition of a broker, including carve-outs for node validators (miners), software developers and wallet developers. That amendment, though not perfect, received widespread praise from industry figures.
From that moment of hope, the situation has rapidly degraded.
A second proposed amendment to the tax was introduced last night by the provision’s original authors. The main difference is the Warner-Portman-Sinema amendment is narrower. It specifically protects proof-of-work miners and wallet developers, but not protocol developers [or validators!].
As Hemel observed, it seems very weird the U.S. government would write legislation favoring proof-of-work mining (e.g., bitcoin), given the widely acknowledged need to at least explore more environmentally friendly consensus algorithms. It certainly contradicts SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s recent commitment to be “technology neutral.”
Support for the still-basically broken Warner-Portman-Sinema version of the amendment is worryingly strong. The White House has issued a statement in support. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has reportedly been lobbying for the bad version, too. That would seem to back rumors that Treasury had been involved in crafting the original language, perhaps as a shortcut to imposing reporting requirements on which it had already been working.
Meanwhile, the generally high-pressure environment around the bill leaves little time for nuanced debate and education. A vote on the full bill is now expected on Saturday.
Figures including Senator Lummis are calling for public pressure to support her version of the provision, and that may be the most important factor in what happens next. So if you feel strongly about this, call your senator. This tool from Fight for the Future makes it easy.”
See Also: Janet Yellen Has Been Lobbying Against Wyden-Lummis-Toomey Crypto Amendment: Report
See Also: Senator Who Wrote Controversial Crypto Tax Rule Proposes Modest Revision
See Also: Crypto space weighs in on proposed amendments to US infrastructure deal
“Overall, call options have registered higher activity than puts, and the most popular options have been calls expiring March 2022 with strike prices of $50,000 and $40,000. The bullish mood is also evident from the negative one-week, one-, three- and six-month put-call skews, which measure the cost of puts relative to calls.
The data show investors are buying the narrative that the London hard fork implemented on Thursday will curb supply growth over time, yielding a price rally.
London hard fork is driving this activity, it’s mostly institutional.
Of particular note was large buying interest in tail strike calls such as a $40,000/$50,000 ETH bull call spreads that were traded with us. A total of 12,500x contracts were traded. We had to take a second look at the screen to make sure those were ETH strikes and not BTC!”
See Also: Ethereum Burns 36% of New Coin Issuance Over 2 Days
See Also: Bitcoin Surges Above $43K for First Time Since May
“Audius – a music streaming platform that runs on the Ethereum blockchain – hit a major milestone on Thursday, as five million people a month now use the platform to stream music, making it one of the largest consumer applications on any blockchain.
More than 100,000 artists use the platform, including deadmau5 and Skrillex.
Blockchain technology has been touted by many in the community as a way to make the monetization of art and music fairer in the digital age by giving creators more ownership of their work, as well as by clarifying the licensing and metadata issues that cause music to be taken down from online platforms. Audius’ rapid expansion is a sign that artists and fans alike are increasingly finding value in blockchain-based streaming.”
“The popular, global label, named for its German designer but based in Switzerland, will accept 15 cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether. Crypto payments will be accepted both in Philipp Plein bricks-and-mortar retail stores and online. The brand has partnered with Coinify, a crypto payments platform owned by Voyager Digital.
I believe that cryptocurrencies are the future and my team and I have made a major commitment in time and resources, performing all necessary system modifications to adopt this new type of currency.”
See Also: New bill in Ukraine to allow payments in cryptocurrency, says official
“Chainlink, a leading provider of data feeds to blockchain-based smart contracts, has now fully added decentralized weather data to the Google Cloud. Google and Chainlink signed an agreement in 2019 that allowed Google to integrate Chainlink’s data.
The reason weather data is important is because it powers decentralized insurance around weather.”
“This risk lies in banking customers moving funds from checking accounts to a CBDC account, which could lead to the exodus of as much as 30% of commercial banks’ funding base.
Relatively heavy handed caps on holdings would be needed to reduce the utility of a retail CBDC as a store of value.
JPMorgan strategist Josh Younger proposed a limit of $2,500.” [😂]
“In a statement, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao (Binance.US’ chairman) said he is ‘confident in Binance.US’s business and its commitment to serve its customers.’
Neither he nor Brooks elaborated on why they parted ways. No word on a successor.”
The Disrupt 