Ep. 158 Ruben, Come!
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, Mastercard talks crypto integration, what’s up with this unrealized capital gains tax idea, Motley fools goes full shitcoiner, Tesla possibly bringing back BTC payments, a record breaking RarePepe sale, and whether or not we really need the mempool in bitcoin.
From CNBC: Mastercard is preparing to announce that any of the thousands of banks and millions of merchants on its payments network can soon integrate crypto into their products, CNBC has learned. That includes bitcoin wallets, credit and debit cards that earn rewards in crypto and enable digital assets to be spent, and loyalty programs where airline or hotel points can be converted into bitcoin. To do so, the payments network is partnering with Bakkt, the crypto firm recently spun off by Intercontinental Exchange, which will be the behind-the-scenes provider of custodial services for those who sign up, executives at the two firms told CNBC. – https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/25/mastercard-says-any-bank-or-merchant-on-its-vast-network-can-soon-offer-crypto-services.html
From Marginal Revolution, on the proposed unrealized capital gains tax: Maybe I don’t understand how the supposed plan is supposed to work. There is no tax credit for unrealized capital losses, right? So you won’t want to hold volatile asset classes any more, right? Imagine the value going up, you pay some tax, and then the value falls and you move into loss territory. You still paid the tax! You get nothing back. By exactly how much do the prices of these assets have to fall, ex ante, so that holding them is a good idea in the first place? Or maybe the wealthy investors subject to this tax are not significant enough to on their own move market prices, in which cases they are just pushed out of these very risk asset classes? If you can deduct unrealized losses, just how much revenue will the bill raise? Might the wealthy be incentivized to hold ever yet riskier assets in that case? And how will debt assets be treated? What exactly is equity anyway? Do all options and derivatives positions have to be considered as well? (If not there is a massive arbitrage opportunity, hold some assets with a big chance to take losses but hedge your position with derivatives.) Has anyone estimated all this and figured it out? Should we pass such a tax bill without such estimates and public debate? Isn’t that kind of democracy “good”? What would The Party of Science say? What am I missing here? – https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/10/the-tax-on-unrealized-capital-gains.html Related: https://twitter.com/embarrassedOK/status/1452999802170580998?s=2 Also related: https://babylonbee.com/news/janet-yellen-proposes-tax-on-coins-you-acquire-in-mario
MotleyFool recently published an article entitled “Bitcoin at $61,000: 3 Better Cryptocurrencies to Buy Now”. It’s as unremarkable as you’d expect, but I just wanted to point out that as late as 2019 and 2020, Motley fool was publishing articles like “3 Reasons Bitcoin Is Fundamentally Flawed as an Investment” and “For the Last Time, Bitcoin Isn't the New Gold” and “Here's Why I Won't Buy Bitcoin, and You Shouldn't, Either”, then in december of 2020, someone at MotleyFool finally bought some bitcoin...and ethereum “Why I Invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum”. Now it’s all about those shitcoins.
From Techyno: Tesla previously accepted Bitcoin as payment for electric vehicle purchases between January and March of this year. The move came as part of a broader Bitcoin embrace from Tesla, with the firm also investing $1.5 billion worth of its treasury into BTC during the first quarter of 2021. However, support for Bitcoin was quickly shelved after the firm faced criticism for supporting BTC despite perceptions that proof-of-work mining has a negative impact on the environment. In June, CEO Elon Musk indicated that Tesla would consider resuming support for Bitcoin payments once at least half of the Bitcoin’s network hash rate is powered by renewable energy. has hinted that it may soon look to restore support for crypto payments. In a September quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), the firm stated it “may in the future restart the practice of transacting in cryptocurrencies,” suggesting Tesla is eying resuming support purchases made using digital assets. The company also expressed its long-term belief in crypto assets as a store of value and means of payment, stating: “We believe in the long term potential of digital assets both as an investment and also as a liquid alternative to cash.” – https://techyno.com/telsa-hints-it-may-soon-resume-support-for-crypto-payments/
From a tweet from fan of the show and former guest Joe Looney, The top selling lot at the @Sothebys Metaverse auction is a bitcoin NFT, the Rare Pepe PEPENOPOULO. Congrats to the buyer! Also, big thanks to my friend @TokenAngels for blasting through years of greenwashing and getting it done. Memes do come true. The buyer paid $3.65M for the 1 of 1 rare pepe.
Niftynei started a discussion on the mailing list about possibly removing the mempool functionality from Bitcoin Core: ""Mempools make sense in a world where mining is done by a large number of participating nodes, eg where the block template is constructed by a majority of the participants on the network. In this case, it is necessary to socialize pending transaction data to all participants, as you don’t know which participant will be constructing the winning block template. In reality however, mempool relay is unnecessary where the majority of hashpower and thus block template creation is concentrated in a semi-restricted set. Removing the mempool would greatly reduce the bandwidth requirement for running a node, keep intentionality of transactions private until confirmed/irrevocable, and naturally resolve all current issues inherent in package relay and rbf rules. It also resolves the recent minimum relay questions, as relay is no longer a concern for unmined transactions. On the other hand, removing the mempool would greatly complicate solo mining and would also make BetterHash proposals, which move the block template construction away from a centralized mining pool back to the individual miner, much more difficult. It also makes explicit the target for DoS attacks."" – https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2021-October/019572.html
https://twitter.com/_jonasschnelli_/status/1451268520159875080?s=2