6th October 2024 > > Satoshi, God, & wealth taxes.
tl;dr
Is Satoshi about to be doxxed? Is he selling BTC for that reason? Or is he about to be made destitute with the dumbest of wealth taxes ever conceived?
Market Snap
Market Wrap
Regardless of your thoughts and views on the rights and wrongs of the situation, one would think that Ayatollah Ali Khamanei declaring war on Israel (“… Israel will not last long”) whilst immediately afterwards confirming that Hamas and Hezbollah are under his command (no surprise there, but he has never been so blatant about it before) would be a thing.
But risk assets go “meh”.
Because the money printer will go “brr”.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Satoshi Nakamoto
Or God, as he is more generally known.
HBO has been trailing a documentary which may or may not reveal the real Satoshi. These are our runners and riders:
Don’t trust, verify.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – An ancient whale
A wallet holding 1,220 BTC (yep, I know) has just moved 5 BTC to Kraken, presumably to cash out.
All the BTC in this wallet were mined in February and March 2009, just one month after God created Bitcoin.
Electricity cost? Pretty close to zero.
Technical skill? At the time, not that hard, but perhaps a little bit fiddly.
Foresight? Out of the park.
Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Kamala Harris
Harris has been forced by Trump’s pro-crypto pivot to respond in kind. She has recently been saying the right kinds of things, suggesting that the Biden/Warren/Gensler anti-crypto army’s days are over.
Sadly, I think she might have been lying to us.
…
Wealth taxes are terribly destructive.
They penalise the investment of wealth earned by labour. It is a form of double taxation. Any increase in wealth taxes reduces the incentive to save and invest, promoting consumption today. It reduces the attractiveness of being entrepreneurial, raises the cost of capital for all businesses, reduces productivity, and makes all of us poorer, not just the individual whose tax bill goes up.
We will soon see this ourselves in the UK with the budget planned for 30th October, but not even Sir Keir Free Gear Starmer would countenance the horror of Harris’ latest proposal to charge 25% capital gains tax on unrealised gains.
The usual cheerleaders will applaud such a move, without really thinking through the consequences.
For those who own and run their own business, how will the state value that business to determine the unrealised capital gain? How would a small business owner find the cash flow to pay such a tax?
For stock investors, the valuation is easy, but given the volatility in share prices, will you get a refund if shares are down one year? I think not. And again, how could an investor fund a charge on unrealised stock gains, other than by selling some of those stocks? Since when did the government become competent enough to determine when you should or should not sell your investments?
And when it comes to cryptos, those problems are magnified tenfold.
If the intention is to engineer a spectacular crash in crypto prices, this unrealised capital gains tax policy would be one of the most effective means of doing so.
Operation Choke Point 4.0 anyone?
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