5th March 2022 > > Lugano and tax dollars.

tl;dr

Why Switzerland is ahead of the UK in winning the crypto tax dollar prize.

Market Snap (at time of writing)

Market Wrap

Once Joe Biden had ruled out military engagement by the West in Ukraine two weeks or so ago, any sabre rattling now – as we saw overnight – will be ignored by the Russians and ignored by risk markets too. Weekend Wall Street is flat from last night’s March futures close.

BTC however breaks $40k to the downside, which is a shame.

Occasional Series – Curious Cryptos’ website

www.curiouscryptos.com

After much delay our website has been revamped and relaunched with new content added daily.

And only because of Janey’s very hard work. I would never have got around to it myself.

My daily missive is posted there, and over time we are adding in the back copies for ease of reference, cos we know how much you all love reading them time and time again.

Our free training course to cryptos is being added to daily, whilst we also work on developing the premium product.

I invite you to have a gander and give the team feedback if you will.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Lugano

The city of Lugano, in southern Switzerland, has announced plans to allow residents to pay taxes, parking tickets, and other services in BTC, USDT, and LUGA, a new CHF stablecoin:

https://twitter.com/paoloardoino/status/1499472211232571395?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1499472211232571395%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fcointelegraph.com%2Fnews%2Fthe-city-of-lugano-will-accept-bitcoin-tether-and-lvga-token-as-de-facto-legal-tender

More than 200 shops and businesses have also signed up to the scheme which in effect makes cryptos legal tender.

Tether is committing 100mm CHF to a fund to finance blockchain start-ups in the city which has big ambitions to be major blockchain hub – it will be the host for the Bitcoin World Forum conference in October.

This focus on developing an environment which fosters innovation and growth will lead to a surge in crypto tax dollars for Lugano in particular, and Switzerland in general.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – the UK

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is working hard to crack-down on unregistered crypto businesses. As an institution, the FCA is proud of its efforts to stymie and prevent innovation and growth in the UK crypto industry:

“We’re taking a more assertive approach to tackling harm in the consumer investments market, including stopping a quarter of new firms from entering the market”.

Now I am not suggesting for one minute that there aren’t bad actors out there, and a strong monitoring and compliance regime needs to be put into place to protect individuals from scams.

But if the focus of regulation in the UK continues to be simply on stopping businesses from starting up and developing, then places like Lugano will get an even bigger share of the crypto tax dollar prize.