When Buying a Burrito is a Taxable Event

The arrest heard ’round the crypto world

There are an awful lot of people taking a very close reading of the SDNY press release, which states it specifically charged Chastain “with wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading in Non-Fungible Tokens.” They notably describe NFTs as “digital assets” later in the release. Also, it’s worth reiterating that this is the DOJ — not the SEC — charging him, though it is the Office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force handling this case.

Now, why don’t crypto people want NFTs to be classified as securities? Well, there’s a lot of existing regulatory guidance there, and most feel it would basically upend the industry if NFTs were unilaterally subjected to securities law; it would certainly raise the barrier of entry for creation of NFTs and curtail a lot of the experimentation happening in the space right now.

Another big reason that it would be bad if NFTs are treated as securities is that it would mean an awful lot of people have been doing illegal things for an awfully long time.

Can the SEC stand up to billionaires like Elon Musk?

And when it comes to resources, a wide gap exists between the SEC and the executives and organizations it regulates. To put this into perspective, Musk’s net worth is more than 100 times the SEC’s annual budget.

“The SEC is sort of driving their Model T, when everybody else is out there in their sports cars,” Chung says.

New York Senate Passes Two-Year Bitcoin Mining Moratorium

The bill calls for a two-year moratorium on fossil-fueled cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work (PoW), a particularly energy-hungry method to verify transactions on the blockchain.

It also essentially caps the electrical consumption of existing mining operations at their current levels.

The bill doesn’t stop any operations that run on renewable energy though, nor does it prevent the use of less energy-intensive alternatives to proof-of-work, such as proof-of-stake (PoS), used by many other cryptocurrencies to verify transactions.

The PoW algorithm underpins the industry’s two biggest cryptocurrencies—Bitcoin and Ethereum.

It’s still 2014 in crypto payments, and buying a burrito is now a taxable event

In conclusion, cryptocurrency payment systems have not advanced one dot since 2014, and may in fact have gone backwards.

What times we live in, where this sentence exists: buying a burrito is a taxable event.

Adam Neumann’s ‘Goddess Nature Token’ Is the Future of Crypto—for Better or Worse

Flowcarbon’s status as a Web3 darling says a few things about the movement. First, that attaching the word “blockchain” to any startup business plan draws investors. Second, that Web3 doctrine holds that the tech behind blockchains makes any startup better and its goals more attainable—despite there being scant evidence for that, and plenty of informed critics who disagree. And finally, that in an industry where hype can seem the primary currency, even Mr. Neumann’s notoriety doesn’t preclude getting funded.

Mike Novogratz’s Crypto Comeback Faces a Trial by Fire

In an interview, Mr. Novogratz said that while he had been publicly optimistic about the future of Luna and other cryptocurrencies, he made sure to include words of caution. “It’s painful to me that too many people lost too much of their earnings” in Luna and TerraUSD, Mr. Novogratz said. “I always said don’t put too many eggs in one basket.”

Digital currencies will rebound before stocks and the current downturn will prove healthy, he added. “It washes out people who came late, testing the system,” he said in the interview. “I’m arguing the system is gonna hold.”