Morning Report: Bitcoin’s recent declines are not a surprise. However, what Congress has in store for crypto folks may be.
Thanksgiving brought bitcoin discussions into homes around the nation. Christmas could do the same, albeit with a different tone.
Over the past few days, bitcoin and its related blockchain-based digital assets and currencies have fallen dramatically. Declines of a quarter or more have been recorded. Bitcoin fell even further than a fourth before recovering.
The recent crypto selloff isn’t a surprise. Bitcoin and the fellow members of its asset cohort are notorious for price swings both up and down. So to see the lot give back some of their recent, historic gains is quite reasonable.
But if you just heard about bitcoin, say, last month, December could be a shock.
The red ink is also not the only thing dampening spirits across the blockchain sector. Tax changes could lessen speculation, it turns out. Bloomberg has the news:
New limits in the bill would bar cryptocurrency owners from deferring capital gains taxes when trading one type of virtual currency for another — effectively closing a gray area in the tax code, experts say.
The articles goes on to quote a tax attorney who claims that any exchange of one coin for another in the future will “be a taxable event.” So no dropping your bitcoin gains into, say, ether to take part in an ICO without paying the taxman at least once.
This will — as does any sort of external input — harden the shells of the bitcoin-rabid who will, presumably, only hodl all the harder. But like bitcoin sporting price volatility, one law of crypto-anything is that there are some folks who won’t let go of their digital-currency-store-of-value-inflation-hedge.
Regardless, heading into Christmas as we are, after serving up quite a lot of holiday cheer, bitcoin is busy putting as much coal into as many stockings as it can.
Ho Ho Ho.
From The Crunchbase Daily:
- Bitcoin plunged below $11,000, down more than 40 percent from its all time high a few days ago. The currency lost more than $1,000 in value in one hour alone on Friday.
Schmidt steps down as Alphabet chair
- Eric Schmidt, the executive who led Google through its IPO and initial years as a public company, is stepping down from his post as Alphabet’s executive chairman. He will continue as a member of the company’s board.
- FullContact, a provider of software for managing contacts, has agreed to acquire Mattermark, a startup-focused data and marketing platform that is reportedly shutting down its business. San Francisco-based Mattermark previously raised $17 million in venture funding.
WeWork spends big on expanded mission
- WeWork has helped define modern coworking. But like any good unicorn, the seven-year-old company has outgrown its initial vision. CEO Adam Neumann says WeWork now is focused on “building a community of creators.” And following a huge capital raise, it’s spending copiously on buying and backing startups that help bring that notion to fruition, Crunchbase News reports.
Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily.
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