BCH and taxes, and possible Fraud

There are rumors going around that the recent Bitcoin fork, the creation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), could be treated by the IRS as a taxable event. Here is an article on the topic. I only have one minor gripe with the article, where it says, "Bitcoin cash recipients could owe tax this year at rates as high as 39.6%". This quote is potentially slightly misleading. To mean it implies that there is something special about BCH that would cause it to be taxed at this rate, however, this is just the highest rate that ordinary income can be taxed at. There is nothing special about it.

So there is no guarantee BCH will be taxed. But it is interesting to think, what would be a tax payer's basis in BCH if its acquisition is not a taxable event? Perhaps part of their basis in BTC could be transferred?  Who knows, this is all unprecedented.


In other news, some people are predicted downward movements in Bitcoin's price. Here is one opinion on the subject.

Earthcoin Mining Characteristics and Analysis

Recently there has been more interest than usual on r/earthcoin. I mentioned on the subreddit that earthcoin has some interesting mining characteristics. Many coins, like bitcoin, offer a set reward for solving a block. For instance, miners would originally get 25 bitcoin per block  (excluding any transaction fee rewards). Earthcoin works differently - it matters when the block is mined.

This is best explained from this excerpt from github:

Besides its very fast transaction speed, Earthcoin is unique in the way it is mimcs the seasonal cycles of Earth. The mining rewards system of EarthCoin follows the same type of 365 day cycle as we do in our daily life similar to the earth moving around the sun. And like the equator is moving, so is the amount of coins being released to the miners. For example: in the 1st year of its release, the coins released to the miners were 10,000 per day starting to work to a positive deviation of 2,000 extra coins after 3 months, then falling back to its original 10,000 coins after 6 months to end up with a -2,000 deviation after 9 months. At the end of the year the amount would then return to 10,000.

14 days

In addition to following the equator, EarthCoin also introduced the full moon cycle. This cycle is translated to a double release of coins to all the miners mining for EarthCoins. This is also know as a X2 payout.

31 Days

Earthcoin also incorporated the other well known moon cycle called month. But in this scenario, the amount of released coins is a five fold of normal. This is also known as a X5 payout.

The occurances of these events can be tracked here: http://poolerino.com/eaccountdown/

Let's look at the effects of this in more detail. Some people complained that these practices invite volatility in the price of the coin. My response is perhaps not.

Some people might say that rapid increases in supply will lower the price. However, since the supply increases are known beforehand, this might not be the case, as the future increases in supply will already be factored into the current price. This argument basically assumes the Earthcoin market is efficient, which is probably another blog post on its own.

Some people have complained these mining effects result in a bit of an instamine, as more coins were released in the beginning of the life of the coin. This may be true, but I personally don’t think this is a big issue. The dev team seems to be long gone and the effects of any premine/ instamine have probably passed.

Lastly, it is interesting to note that earthcoin has a halving feature, like bitcoin. It sounds like it happens yearly, with a cap of 13.5 billion coins.

Approaching Moon?

I’m off on vacation right now, so I don’t have much time to report, but Bitcoin’s price is going crazy. It is over $4,000 at the time of writing this.  In addition, interest rates on margin lending is quite low, meaning the market isn’t confident that Bitcoin will lower in price. Which might mean there is still potential for upward movement. Here we can see margin loan supply on Polo:

Here is another more mainstream article on Bitcoin; however, it does seem to get some information wrong. In particular, it implies that hacking the blockchain is the same thing as hacking a particular exchange, which is totally incorrect. In addition, its criticism that “Bitcoin values are purely dependent upon holders having faith they will continue to have value” is something all currency share. The US dollar has no value except the value that people give to it, and likewise if people universally stopped accepting USD it would lose its value as well.

Also, I made a new page for my ebook, check it out here

Russia and Bitcoin News

I always found it interesting that a large portion of my Audience is from Russia, especially considering Bitcoin's questionable legal status there. I recently found this article on Bitcoin in Russia. Which talks about a few interesting points I did not know. For a preview of some, it appears the Kremlin was interesting in making its own digital currency as well as the idea that Russia is becoming more accepting of Cyprocurrencies. Anyways, enjoy!