CoinDesk Podcast Network

The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss the US tax treatment of "Virtual Currencies" and how scams find a home wherever opportunity exists, at least for a while.

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This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com, eToro.com and Purse.io.

During our first segment, we'll discuss:

Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2020: The proposed legislation would exempt capital gains taxes if any individual transaction results in a capital gain of $200 or less.  Previous versions of the bill proposed a $600 cap. If passed, it would take effect in the 2020 tax year. Link -  H.R. 5635

The IRS has a question for you: Tax filers in the U.S. are being asked if At any time during 2019, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency? Link -IRS Form 1040

Yang proposes "Digital Asset Regulation": U.S. Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang wants to Clarify the tax implications of owning, selling, and trading digital assets.    Yang says clear policy will allow businesses to invest and innovate in the area without fear of a regulatory shift. Link - Yang 2020

Later on, we'll dig into the "why" of scams as we begin a longer conversation on the topic.

Three main points on scams:

Links:

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com, eToro.com and Purse.io.

Photo by Fernando Venzano on Unsplash

This episode was produced by AP's Don and Ned. It featured discussion by Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan Mohan.

Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, From Ether and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas. 

Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email [email protected]

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Bitcoin is on a 7 week upward trend. Having already smashed through its $9,000 Vegeta memes, it is now inching closer towards $10k. 

On this episode, @nlw is joined by Kraken’s Dan Held to discuss how bitcoin has changed in a number of ways since the last time we were at the $10,000 price level last year. They look at:

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That’s the way Meltem Demirors described Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s remarks at Stanford yesterday. For the first time, the Fed has said that it is actively researching and experimenting around digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies. This is a change in tone from a Fed that, when asked previously, has more or less dismissed digital currencies. 

On this episode, @nlw looks at Brainard’s speech, along with: the latest from Japanese lawmakers proposing a digital currency to counteract the influence of a forthcoming Chinese digital yuan; a Bank for International Settlements digital currency working group with 6 major central banks; and the potential implications of CBDCs on bitcoin. 

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If venture investments and acquisitions provide a window into the sentiment in markets, boy did we get a big dose of information today. 

Today we look at investments in the world’s best known developer of the Lightning Network; a new prominent corporate investor for a tokenized securities platform; and Square’s investment in a real-time payments company. 

We also look at a set of acquisitions, including a ConsenSys acquisition poised to get them in the $3.8T municipal bond space; a Bakkt acquisition poised to get them ready for a consumer app that includes more than just cryptocurrencies; and an attempt by Bakkt-parent ICE to buy eBay for north of $30b. 

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As claims of election tampering, fraud, and other dubious activities fly around the botched Democratic Caucus in Iowa, trust in our public institutions continues to crater. 

The question of trust and censorship are at the heart of our episode today. Handshake is a new protocol for uncensorable web domains. The goal is to create a new blockchain-based Top Level Domain system that governments can’t censor or block. 

To explain why Handshake (HNS) matters, @nlw is joined by Tieshun Roquerre, the CEO of Namebase, a next-generation domain registrar for HNS. 

In this interview, they discuss: 

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Bitcoin and porn go hand-in-hand in this interview with Spankchain community manager Allie Eve Knox.

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Much of the Crypto Twitter conversation this weekend was dominated by talk of Twitter’s suspension of ZeroHedge. @nlw explores why the specifics of the infraction or the quality of the publication aren’t the important part of the conversation, and why he thinks we’ll see arguments for social media platforms to be turned into public utilities in the years ahead. 

Also on this episode:

The last section features comments from Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier. 

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In “Libre Not Libra: Facebook’s Blockchain Project,” Andreas answers the burning question… Has he tried haggis? Just kidding… He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook.

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This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com

Years of jokes about “FaceCoin” and “ZuckBucks” have finally come to life – sort of. In a previous episode, he talked about how some venture capitalists are monkeying around by downplaying the killer applications of open blockchains in favor of… bananas. Now he makes us wonder whether Libra will even survive to become a production network. Is Silicon Valley coming for banking? Will Libra’s challenges have any impact on open public blockchains?

This talk took place on June 19th 2019 at the Scottish Blockchain Meetup in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Follow Andreas on Twitter: @aantonop

Andreas's website: https://aantonop.com/

Andreas's live talks released in podcast form

Episode Credits:

Today’s show featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, with a little narration by Stephanie Murphy and Adam B. Levine, as well as the live crowd and that guy with the great laugh about three quarters through. 

Original Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Unsplash

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com

This episode featured music by Jared Rubens, Orfan and general fuzz. Production support was provided by Erica and Jessica, with sound editing by Dimitris of Sampi Media. 

Want to hear more of Andreas’s Live talks? Check out new episodes every week on Unscrypted, or just head over to aantonop.com . 

Have any questions or comments? Email me at [email protected]. 

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On this special interview episode, @nlw talks with Sergey Nazarov and Kain Warwick, the founders of Chainlink and Synthetix respectively about: 

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The best way to fund open source projects remains a question, and one that - in the context of crypto protocols - has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches. 

Gitcoin grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum 

After months and months of concerted community debate and conversation, Zcash will implement a new Dev Fund of 20% of the block rewards after the Founders Reward runs out in November, splitting it between the Electric Coin Co (7%), Zcash Foundation (5%) and 3rd party developers (8%)

A consortium (cartel?) of the 4 largest BCH mining pools tried to insist upon a 12.5% block reward diversion to a new dev fund, with a threat to orphan blocks that didn’t comply. The plan ran into a barrier when Roger Ver’s bitcoin.com backed away. 

Also in this episode, @nlw looks at the latest in CBDCs - including Japan’s continued hedging that they’re preparing for the possibility of needing to move quickly and Cambodia’s announcement that they will be implementing a CBDC this quarter. 

Finally, Andrew Yang took a few minutes yesterday to talk about cryptocurrencies and why regulation with the intent to stop them would be doomed to fail.

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