Topic: [2021-08-06] Senator Who Wrote Crypto Tax Rule Proposes Modest Revision (Read 97 times)

While the original code is open source (and I'm the 2nd main developers of it)
most miners these days are closed source, built on that open source software, and in violation of my software license.

@o_e_l_e_o. Agreed and they clearly do not care about the cryptospace. Also, why would they make it easy for the cryptospace? Its success will kill the interests of those people who control the those politicians hehe. They will always protect the system that gives them their money and their power.

I doubt it. The bill reads entirely like it was written by people with almost zero understanding of bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It seems they are genuinely surprised there has been such a backlash. They thought crypto would be an easy target for some extra tax revenue, copied some legislation which applies to stocks and bonds and slapped it on to crypto, and are now having to backpedal and actually educate themselves about the thing they are proposing and the entire sector they were so close to destroying. With continued pressure we can maybe get enough Senators to support the far better Lummis-Toomey-Wyden amendment, but I doubt many (or indeed any) of them will really understand what they are voting on or why it is important.

It's a disgrace that our entire country continues to be ruled by a bunch of Luddite boomers who are bought and sold by the banks and media barons.

Ah so you're making an ideological comparison then. I don't disagree, but it still feels like semantics to me. You've probably got to meet some miners, at least in Southeast and Central Asia. As you say, it's a completely profit-driven choice for them. PoW mining is to them a lot more profitable -- merge-mining, switching between BCH and BTC after difficulty adjustments, and a willingness to hold against the market during a slowdown. If they made more money staking, I promise you they would switch in a heartbeat.

Sunday staker is just a made-up term, someone I suppose just switches on his computer on Sunday to see how his stake is doing;) The ultimate passive participant.

My initial comment was in response to what seemed to me was your comparison of investment of "hard earned money and time", which for me, is really the same thing no real difference. And you saying only rich guys for validators simply isn't true. It's cheaper to participate in a validator pool than it is a Bitcoin mining pool (with a minimum amount to expect some returns anyway). Not to mention far easier.

Note that I'm defending PoS at all. They shouldn't be exempt from tax on energy considerations. I just don't think the elitist distinction of PoW will hold true for most people.

That hobbyist miner is investing into actual hardware to run a software. Simple as that. The market ascribes value to the mined coins but it is not a fee for having a stake. I generally try to compare it to the dividend and stock analogy. When a hobbyist miner buys a S19, is he buying stock into a central body called bitcoin network? Doesn't seem so. He is just running a software.

When a Sunday staker (LOL, you have to tell me what the Sunday means, though) buys a little ETH to delegate to a pool, is he buying into a "share of the network"? Yes. Is he expecting a constant stream of income aka dividend simply for holding that "share/stock"? Yes.

The two seem very different to me. You could argue that the miner is also expecting a return but that is really just the way software works and market ascribes it value. Its more like running a business  (on which i guess they already pay the taxes depending on jurisdiction), than holding a stock.

I probably agree to most extents that miners are very different from validators. But from a business and hobbyist perspective, a small hobbyist miner committing time and investment contributing to a Bitcoin mining pool can't be very much different from the Sunday staker also contributing smaller stakes to an Ethereum validator pool.

For both networks, private, independent mining is unattainable for most people.

The twitter campaign for calling Senators worked for setting the record straight in terms of miners. As far as PoS is considered, people have already started saying stuff like "Alternate technologies" should not be viewed this way.

Nobody in their right mind would consider that a PoW miner is the same as a PoS validator. A PoS validator is simply one of the biggest shareholders of the network. A miner on the other hand is basically investing his own hard earned money and time into running an open source software. He is performing work in return of remuneration form the blockchain. A PoS validator on the other hand is just a rich guy willing to buy up enough stake.

Hope the senators can understand this very basic difference. The lobbying from the PoS group is hard though. Already Coinbase has come out in support of PoS. I don't think there is anything that the deep pockets of centralized wannabe validators cannot accomplish when it comes to getting legislation passed/ modified in the USA.

IMO, This is probably the biggest test of erudition and integrity of the Senate and US legislative system as a whole. If they end up judging PoS and PoW in the same way on the basis of some stupid arguments about energy, that would be proof enough that those Congressmen and Senators are really just working based on lobbies. Well, we already know that but one can hope.

These 2 senators created an amendment excluding only proof of work mining and the selling of hardware and software that allows the users to control their private keys from being classified as brokers and the crypto tax reporting provision. If this bill, with this amendment is approved into law, will Ethereum dump their roadmap to proof of stake hehehehe.



Senators Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) submitted a competing amendment on Thursday to an earlier amendment to the Senate infrastructure bill’s cryptocurrency provision.

The amendment, a copy of which was obtained by CoinDesk, is limited in scope, excluding only proof-of-work mining, or the selling of hardware or software that permits individuals to control private keys that provide access to digital assets.

Read in full https://www.coindesk.com/senator-who-wrote-controversial-crypto-tax-rule-proposes-modest-revision