Bitcoin and altcoin prices are down sharply, with the leading crypto losing 9% to currently be priced at $59,078.
The Ethereum price is giving up 10% at $4,253, Litecoin is off 15% at $233, Polkadot down 13% to $40 and Uniswap 12.9% lower at $21.
Yesterday US president Joe Biden signed into law the infrastructure bill, which is though to have triggered selling. Tax reporting requirement for digital assets are included in the bill in a form unchanged from the initial wording that critics from said would hurt the industry.
All “brokers” will now be required to fill in a 1099-B form, or something similar, which is currently used to report income from self-employment earnings, dividends, interest and other payments received to the Inland Revenue Service (IRS).
At issue is the legislation’s broad definition of a broker, which is defined as “any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person.”
Although aimed at brokers, the legislation provides to all types of cryptocurrency, even including non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Adding to the negative crypto sentiment today were comments overnight from Twitter CFO Ned Segal said investing company capital in crypto “doesn’t make sense right now”. Elsewhere, Marathon Digital was also served with a subpoena by the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday concerning funds raised for a new mining facility.
Exchanges will have to report all crypto payments received valued at over $10,000
Back with the tax issue, in addition to reporting the size of payments transacted, the new law also includes so-called “travel rules”, which will require “brokers” to keep and supply a record of the identity of each party to a transaction, which will likely be especially burdensome for many companies, projects and protocol developers.
The industry has lobbied hard against the changes but failed to…
