Daily Archives: August 24, 2021

‘The Green Knight’ Has No Chest – by Hannah Long – The Dispatch

Posted: August 24, 2021 at 10:29 am

In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis wrote of a fundamental quandary facing modern Westerners: We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. How, he asks, can we expect people to exhibit virtues which they have never been taught? How can we require honor from men without chests?

The 14th-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written before the great deconstruction of Christian virtues in the modern mind. But the film adaptation, The Green Knight, could not be a more post-Christian, more 2021 storyfor it is a film about honor full of men without chests, distributed to an audience that has been raised to disdain the search for greatness.

One might question whether in our society so full of quislings and tyrants it is really honor and chivalry that need debunking. But pushing that question aside, even to deconstruct honor meaningfully, a narrative must understand it. The Green Knight does not. Part moody fantasy and part impenetrable A24 art film,The Green Knight evokes honor culture only aesthetically, and thus it fails even at deconstruction, for it is impossible to effectively deconstruct a culture you do not comprehend.

The story begins on a snowy Christmas day, when the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson) bursts into King Arthurs court. The knight bids some warrior to strike him down, and sinceand this is a notable choiceArthur (Sean Harris) is too frail and aged to take up the challenge, the kings young nephew Gawain (Dev Patel) responds in his stead.

Remember, croaks the haggard legend, Arthur, it is only a game.

There is but one condition for this contest: The challenger must be willing to take the same blow he deals the Green Knight one year later, at the knights chapel in the forest. Gawain, not the worlds greatest long-term thinker, lops off the immortal knights head, thereby signing his own death warrant. Months later, having procrastinated in drinking and whoring, he begins an episodic and dark journey to meet his doom.

Despite its neglect of the interior worlds of its characters, The Green Knight excels at exterior worldbuilding. Its cinematography beautifully establishes a strange and hostile outside world glimpsed through the windows of claustrophobic dwellings. Gawain's Britain is at once unmapped and very possibly unmappable. Giants and talking animals and haunted houses abound. Around every corner is something elemental and hostile. Nature is the antagonist, and man is the pest that entropy and time will exterminate.

This is dramatically and effectively evoked on screenan impressive feat given the films slim budget of $15 million. And this middle section, as nave squire Gawain stumbles from one perilous side quest to another, is the best part of the story. He lands in a version of the legend of St. Winifred, where he must help the headless lady to retrieve her skull. He meets a talking fox and encounters alarming scavengers on a smoking battlefield. The film threatens to be fun. But The Green Knights lack of interior worldbuilding and its grim tone drag it back into ponderous emptiness.

The films central problem is that it is about a questtraditionally an archetypal series of moral tests illustrating the search for wisdombut Gawains experiences never seem to amount to much of anything. Indeed, whether the quest itself is worth pursuing is very much up for debate. "Why do you need greatness? Isn't goodness enough?" asks Gawains prostitute mistress, Essel (Alicia Vikander). A wise question, but one posed by a woman whose own characterboth in personality and in virtueis not clear. What does goodness mean to Essel? Presumably were supposed to fill in the blanks with our own ideas of goodness and greatnessand assume that the two are somehow inherently opposed. To seek greatness is inherently to disdain goodness.

This strikes me as a very modern, secular, andtrope-wisefemale point of view that carries with it several unexamined assumptions. Its not that this is a bad plot device, but it must be executed well. A a woman asking the hero to abandon his ambitious ways and commit to humble civilian life is a common trope in films critiquing honor culture.

The greatest treatments of the theme in American film are in classic Hollywood Westerns, which offer a valuable contrast to post-Christian myths like The Green Knight. (Indeed, in a sense the Western is the American Arthurian myth. Robert B. Pippin, paraphrasing a German commentator, writes, the Greek had their Iliad; the Jews the Hebrews Bible; the British the Arthurian legends. The Americans have John Ford.)

The classic Western reveres the honorable man in the wilderness (while also being far more critical of the archetype than is commonly assumedsee The Gunfighter, The Big Country, The Searchers, etc.) It sees in him qualities of integrity and character, not simply a performative martyr complex.

This ethos could not clash more dramatically with modern mores. Many of the major on-screen stories of the last five years feature a beat where an ambitious male hero is humbled by a woman. Hamilton, The Greatest Showman, The Last Jedi, Minari, Enola Holmes, Loki, On the Rocks, Knives Out. I like and even love some of those stories, but the inherent badness of male ambition has become so axiomatic in modern storytelling that some films dont even bother to explain why it is that this ambition is bad. In The Last Jedi, for instance, acts of derring-do by men are condemned while similar actions by women are lauded. The film never offers a plausible philosophy to distinguish between these actions. Similarly, The Green Knight shirks its responsibility to define terms.

John Fords Westerns offer an excellent contrast, clearly defining the terms and the values of the honor cultures they examine. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford portrays a town ruled by a cruel tyrannous outlaw who can only be ousted by a dangerous man cut from the same clothspurred by an eastern lawyer bearing the virtues of truth and courage. Competence and virtue are both necessary to achieve peace, though the conclusion also hints that civilization and the post-honor world can only be brought about by betraying the honor code. In this complex web of characters, Ford intends us to love both the civilized man and the honorable, uncivilized gunfighter, for each has his virtues.

In many Westerns, men motivated by martial virtues of honor, heroismthe values required in a violent state of naturemust be domesticated by women, who value commitment, politessethe virtues of civilization. This is essentially the story of The Green Knight (sort oftheres also plenty of symbolism in the rather muddy film that presents femininity as wild uncivilized Paganism). But while Ford sees the dark side of honor culture, he also recognized that there is something admirable in acts of great courage and willpower, in the courageous self-definition of a brave man in the wild.

Green Knight director David Lowery doesnt offer us anything like this nuanced reflection on honor and civilization. For him, pursuit of honor is simply hedonism. There is no conception that with achievement of honor could come self-respect or even salvation. Gawain speaks of honor, but what does honor mean to him? Keeping a promise? Yes, this, at least. But dimly we intuit that there must be more to the virtuous life than simply winding one's weary way to the doorstep of the grim reaper. Gawain does not start asking these questions until late in his plodding way.

The films treatment of Christianity is important in this calculus. Christ is born are the first words of the film, spoken in a brothel, a nest of hedonism and thoughtless lust. For Lowery, Christianity is simply shorthand for all that is safe and civilized and decadent. In an interview, Lowery said that Arthur is the only character to reference Christianity, and analogizes this to rot at the heart of that court. While Gawain is not an articulate hero, his conception of honorthe thing driving him out to finish his questis surely shaped by the Christian milieu of his youth. His desire to be a legend like his uncle is inspired by hearing of the legend of his uncle, a Christian hero.

In paralleling Christianity and honor, the film is onto something. Christians are able to conceive of honor as the search for integrity, a quality which ultimately finds its only reward in Gods approval. All I want is to enter my house justified, says the protagonist in one of my favorite Westerns, Sam Peckinpahs Ride the High Country. This line is meant to explain why the man pursues honor even against his own physical self-interest. And it echoes Christs parable of the humble tax collector, who, Christ says, went down to his house justified for he had pleased God. All I want, then, is to enter my Fathers house justified. If there is no God, then such honor-seeking really is mere vainglory. We should rather live practical, compromised lives that dont take extraordinary risks for nonexistent spiritual rewards.

It is no surprise that the post-Christian Green Knight cannot conceive of spiritual rewards and does not think of honor-seeking in terms of integrity. Very modern, the film can see greatness only through the lens of oppression. Gawains striving for legendary status must really be a brutal, selfish process in which he gives little heed to those he leaves behind. His lust and vitality and ambition are the forces which propel him through the film.

To be fair, there is half of a good critique here. Using smuggled Christian virtues, Gawain comes to understand that the consequence of a hedonistic, nihilistic society (represented in the film by red, the color of lust) is death and horror (represented by green, the color of the plants that will one day blanket your bones). Abuse and unchecked desire lead to deaththe wages of sin. The Green Knight, therefore, accurately diagnoses the problem (using Christian virtues that it does not name), but gropes blindly for a solution. Seeking something older, the ancient virtuesit can only find paganism, blood sacrifice, oblivion. Oneness with an uncaring natural world instead of hard-bought reconciliation with a loving god.

A Christian vision of humanity is profoundly different. Man is not simply an animal, subject to the same decay, violence and entropy as a fox or a tree. Man has an eternal soul and thus is part of a rich narrative in which, by exhibiting moral virtues, even at great cost, he can rise above the great mass of humanity living and dying mindlessly.

And in this great narrative, a man might even dare to live to be a legend. In The Green Knight, true honor is bought only through utter self-effacement. This is not to dismiss the possibility of an honorable death, but to acknowledge that embracing oblivion through death is not a virtue in a Christian honor culture. Death, after all, is not oblivion. It is not the final word. We are, at the end of the day, more than just our red passions or our green decay.

Kneeling before the knights axe, weak-kneed Gawain asks, desperately, Is this all there is? Christmas bells ring dimly in the background as if in answer.

But all we hear is the Green Knight, a kindly executioner, rumbling in response, "What else ought there be?"

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Around Ascension for Aug. 25, 2021 | Ascension | theadvocate.com – The Advocate

Posted: at 10:28 am

Learn about creating fall vegetable gardens for small spaces

Learn how to grow a bountiful small fall vegetable garden in small spaces. Explore types of small gardens, including container and edibles in the landscape, with Janis Poche, Advance Master Gardener. Discover types of space-saving vegetables that produce plenty without taking up space.

The Fall Vegetable Gardens for Small Spaces workshop is set for 6:30 p.m. Sept. 7 at Ascension Parish Library in Galvez. This educational gardening workshop is brought to you by Ascension Parish Library and the Ascension Parish Master Gardeners Association under the direction of the LSU AgCenter.

Registration is required and space is limited. Call (225) 622-3339 to register or for more information. Masks may be required according to current mandates.

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ascension Parish Library is hosting an educational poster exhibition, curated by the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, that presents the events of that fateful day, the immediate aftermath of the attacks, the nine-month recovery period and the ongoing repercussions in order to give visitors a deeper understanding of this key moment in modern American history.

Told across 14 posters, this exhibition includes archival photographs and artifact imagery from the 9/11 Memorial & Museums permanent collection. To view this exhibition and learn more about the history of 9/11, visit Ascension Parish Librarys Gonzales, Dutchtown or Galvez locations during regular operating hours throughout the September. Masks may be required according to current mandates.

The 9/11 Memorial & Museum is the countrys principal institution concerned with exploring 9/11, documenting its impact, and examining its continuing significance. This poster exhibition has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy Demands Wisdom. For more information about the exhibition, visit 911memorial.org.

As COVID-19 cases rise in our area, many events are being canceled or moved to a virtual program.

We're listing planned events, but be aware that anything could get canceled. Call or visit websites to verify the event will be held.

The staff at the Ascension Parish Health Unit reminds residents they can get the COVID-19 vaccine at the health unit.

The Moderna vaccine is available at the Ascension Parish Health Unit, 1024 S. East Ascension Complex Blvd., in Gonzales. Appointments are available by calling (225) 450-1425.

For information, visithttps://ldh.la.gov/covidvaccine/.

Take off Pounds Sensibly meets starting with weigh-in at 9:15 a.m. and meeting at 10 a.m. every Thursday at the fellowship hall at Carpenter's Chapel Church, 41181 La. 933, in Prairieville. Dues are $5 a month. For information, call Miriam Sanchez at (225) 202-8521.

The Recycling Center is at the Department of Public Works headquarters, 42077 Churchpoint Road in Gonzales. Operating hours are 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

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Upcoming Netflix movie ‘We Have a Ghost’ starts filming in Ascension Parish this week – WBRZ

Posted: at 10:28 am

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DONALDSONVILLE - A movie boasting a cast that includes "Captain America" star Anthony Mackie is expected to film this week in Ascension Parish.

Local officials told the Donaldsonville Chief that production will begin as soon as Monday for the upcoming Netflix film "We Have a Ghost". Aside from Mackie, a New Orleans native, the cast will include David Harbour, Jennifer Coolidge, Jahi Di'Allo Winston, and Tig Notaro.

Filming in Donaldsonville will happen along Railroad Avenue, from Mississippi Street toward Louisiana Square. Filming in the city is expected to take at least a week, with officials asking some local businesses to close temporarily to accommodate the film crew.

The report said the production is requiring that all cast and crew be be fully vaccinated and that it's trying to avoid large crowds gathering during filming due to the pandemic.

Filming for "We Have a Ghost" is also expected to take place in New Orleans.

Another Netflix production, "The Highwaymen", filmed in Donaldsonville back in 2018. That film, based on the real-life pursuit of infamous criminals Bonnie and Clyde, starred Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson.

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Bitcoin at $50,000: Traders on how to play the space after cryptocurrency briefly reclaims marker – CNBC

Posted: at 10:24 am

Bitcoin fell back below $50,000 on Monday after reclaiming that threshold over the weekend.

The cryptocurrency traded at roughly $49,400 by the afternoon session, still shy of its all-time high above $64,000 set in April.

The space has seen a boost in the past week on increasing adoption. PayPal said Monday it would open its platform in the U.K. to crypto buying and selling, and Coinbase said last week that it would buy $500 million in cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.

Bill Baruch, president of Blue Line Capital, is a bitcoin bull but remains wary of jumping in right here.

"I think it needs to be in your portfolio, but is $50,000 the place to be buying it? I wouldn't chase it," Baruch told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Monday.

Bitcoin fell below $30,000 during a summer sell-off. Weakness in recent months was largely tied to a regulatory crackdown in China wherein some mining operations were forced to close. Since a June low of $28,600, it has rallied 73%.

In a separate email to CNBC, Baruch said he owns bitcoin but began to trim his holdings once it bounced back to $45,000 roughly the same level as its 200-day moving average and a 50% retracement level measured from its April peak and its June low. He said that level could prove a good entry point if bitcoin falls back to it.

"Again, I think it's a great space to be in, but don't chase it just because you see $50,000 in the headlines. Pick your spots and stick to your game plan," he said.

John Petrides, portfolio manager at Tocqueville Asset Management, said there are more ways to play the bitcoin bounce than just through the asset itself.

"If you put your long-term investment hat on, there are two ways to look at this space one is cryptocurrency the asset class and then the second one is an investment in the blockchain. For our team specifically, from a long-term theme perspective, we think that blockchain has a lot of value to it," Petrides said during the same interview.

He plays the space specifically through the ETHE Grayscale Ethereum Trust, which solely invests in ethereum open source blockchain, and mirrors the value of the ethereum held by the trust. It has risen 105% this year.

"As the world moves to more non-fungible tokens, NFTs, as we see more big players like PayPal and Visa and others start moving and converging in this space, we think that's going to lead to more activity on the blockchain, and ethereum is the largest open source blockchain out there," Petrides said.

Disclosure: Blue Line Capital holds bitcoin. Petrides holds ETHE.

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Cryptocurrencys Surge Leaves Global Watchdogs Trying to Catch Up – The Wall Street Journal

Posted: at 10:24 am

The cryptocurrency industry is getting so big and enabling so much risk-taking that governments around the globe are taking notice.

Bitcoin traded above $50,000 Monday; its total value now exceeds $900 billion, more than all but a handful of companies. Digital currencies called stablecoins grease ever more trading and issuance. Giant crypto exchanges in Asia offer 100-to-1 bets, often serving traders in countries where their products arent legal.

After years of relative inattention, regulators and lawmakers are scrambling to catch upbut it wont be easy. They aim to rein in a rebellious industry that has adopted the tech worlds blueprint for aggressively deploying new products to quickly amass userswhile often leaving regulatory compliance as an afterthought.

Some of the largest crypto firms are under increasing pressure. In recent weeks, Binance, the worlds biggest crypto exchange, was barred from or warned about offering certain crypto investments in the U.K., Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Hong Kong. It said Friday that all new users would have to provide an identification document and photo of themselves to verify their identity. BitMEX, another large exchange, paid $100 million to settle a U.S. regulatory investigation related to claims of illegally selling derivatives and lackluster anti-money-laundering compliance.

Yet few industry participants expect the crypto world, emboldened by a surge over the past 18 months in the value of and interest in their products, to suddenly change its ways. Regulators are scrutinizing the industry as never before, but so far coordination appears limited and key jurisdictions are pursuing widely divergent approaches.

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This map shows where cryptocurrency is taking off around the world – CNBC

Posted: at 10:24 am

Global adoption of cryptocurrency has taken off in the last year, up 881%, with Vietnam, India and Pakistan firmly in the lead, according to new data from Chainalysis.

It is the second year the blockchain data firm has released its Global Crypto Adoption Index, which ranks 154 countries according to metrics such as peer-to-peer exchange trading volume, rather than gross transaction volume, which typically favors developed nations with high levels of professional and institutional crypto buy-in.

Chainalysis said the purpose of the index is to capture crypto adoption by "ordinary people" and to "focus on use cases related to transactions and individual saving, rather than trading and speculation." The metrics are weighted to incorporate the wealth of the average person and the value of money generally within particular countries.

Most of the top 20 countries are emerging economies, including Togo, Colombia and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the United States slipped from sixth to eighth place, and China, which cracked down on crypto this spring, dropped from fourth to 13th.

Chainalysis ascribes the rising adoption levels in emerging markets to a few key factors.

For one, countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, Vietnam and Venezuela have huge transaction volumes on peer-to-peer, or P2P, platforms when adjusted for purchasing power parity per capita and the internet-using population.

Chainalysis reports that many residents use P2P cryptocurrency exchanges as their primary on-ramp into cryptocurrency, often because they don't have access to centralized exchanges.

The report also says many residents of these countries turn to cryptocurrency to preserve their savings in the face of currency devaluation, as well as to send and receive remittances and carry out business transactions.

Matt Ahlborg, a peer-to-peer data analyst, told CNBC that Vietnam is one of the top markets for Bitrefill, a company that helps customers live on cryptocurrency by buying gift cards using bitcoin.

"Vietnam stood out to me because it dominated the index," said Chainalysis' director of research, Kim Grauer, who compiled the report.

"We heard from experts that people in Vietnam have a history of gambling, and the young, tech-savvy people don't have much to do with their funds in terms of investing in a traditional ETF, both of which drive crypto adoption," Grauer said.

Nigeria is a different story, Grauer said. "It has a huge commercial market for crypto. More and more commerce is done on the rails of cryptocurrency, including international trade with counter parties in China."

These top-ranking nations have another thing in common, according to Boaz Sobrado, a London-based fintech data analyst. "Many have capital controls or a strong emigrant and immigrant population," he said.

Take Afghanistan, a country currently in turmoil due to the Taliban's recent overthrow of the government.

"Afghanistan on top makes sense from a capital controls point of view, given it's hard to move money in and out," Sobrado said.

The correction for purchasing power parity and gross domestic product may also have boosted its placement, given that Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries.

Analysts note that measuring cryptocurrency adoption at the grassroots level isn't easy.

"The methodology has a huge blindspot," Sobrado said. "Unlike many other countries, sanctioned nations don't have good and clear data on P2P markets."

Because of that, he said, he believes sanctioned nations such as Cuba will be underestimated, simply because it is harder to track those transactions.

Ahlborg said there is no perfect way to measure per capita global crypto adoption but that this index is "one of the best we have."

--CNBC's Nate Rattner contributed reporting to this piece.

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Cryptocurrency supporters are in the middle of their first big fight in Congress – The Verge

Posted: at 10:24 am

Last week, the Senate approved a massive infrastructure package making serious investments in building out the USs roads and bridges. It would be the largest domestic spending bill in almost a decade, and nearly every powerful lobbying shop circled Washington for months trying to shape its language.

But one industry was surprisingly thrown into the fight last minute: cryptocurrency. When the Senate finally announced the bill text earlier this month, it included a provision that could impose devastating new tax requirements for wallet developers and miners. Suddenly, the cryptocurrency industry and its few lobbying shops faced one of its largest regulatory threats ever. They needed all of the digital foot soldiers they could get to help rally senators and fix the problematic language.

So, they turned to their vast and vocal online community of investors and posters.

We are at an advantage in grassroots organizing because were a structurally networked community, Neeraj Agrawal, director of communications for Coin Center, told The Verge. Everybody in cryptocurrency knows everybody else for the most part so information moves really fast across various social channels.

Advocacy groups and blockchain organizations were quickly able to direct their grassroots digital communitys energy toward the fight. Fight for the Future and the Electronic Frontier Foundation were able to prompt more than 40,000 calls to senators ahead of the bills final vote on the floor.

High-profile celebrities and influencers like Ashton Kutcher and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also came out in opposition of the bill, posting tweets prompting their followers to call on their senators to fix the language. These tweets inspired other community members to take part in the effort by making calls and posting their own tweets with information from Fight for the Future.

Senators who were probably not even paying very much attention to this section of the infrastructure bill suddenly saw their Twitter feeds swamped with messages from their own constituents, said Rainey Reitman, EFFs chief program officer. It was so much they couldnt ignore it.

The reason this even became a conversation in Washington was because of Twitter, Reitman continued.

Even crypto-focused YouTubers and TikTok accounts pivoted toward advocacy, informing their followers about the bill and how it could affect the industry. One TikTok user posted a video dancing behind text that said, Dance if ur an 87 year old senator single-handedly ruining the economy over a $50 billion military dispute, calling out Sen. Richard Shelbys (R-AL) objection to an amendment to fix the language.

Its a surprising shift for an industry that has typically been an outsider in Washington, often directly opposed to well-established players like law enforcement and the banking industry. But as digital assets companies have been drawn into regulatory fights, theyve had to engage with the process to defend themselves, whether against regulators calling for more authority over the industry or a growing concern over ransomware attacks.

The new push drew heavily on infrastructure from previous online organizing drives. The 2017 net neutrality fight was fought largely online with organizations like Fight for the Future and EFF using social media to prompt internet users to get involved in a policy battle that affected their favorite websites. Once the controversial language was added to the infrastructure bill, those same groups used the tactics theyd perfected in the net neutrality fight to push back.

Reitman says the shift to digital organizing has also been a factor, as cryptocurrency fans are using online platforms like Twitter and Hacker News to educate themselves, educate other people, and then start speaking out about regulation.

Even with the heightened political pressure, its too early to say where Congress will land on the new cryptocurrency rules. Cryptography groups failed to stop the provisions in the Senate, and all hopes now rest on stripping the language from the House version of the bill. As of publication, its unclear if congresspeople will have one last opportunity to amend the bill before it reaches its final vote.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) faces an uphill battle in passing the infrastructure package at all. Progressive members say they wont vote for the Senate-passed $1 trillion package unless its tied to a broader $3.5 trillion social services bill. Some moderate Democrats pushed back, saying they wouldnt vote to begin writing the larger bill unless the infrastructure package is approved first. If the two bills get tied together, it could make it harder for any lawmaker to bring an amendment to change the cryptocurrency language to the floor.

Still, last weeks organizing efforts proved that the cryptocurrency community has grown into an impressive political force in Washington.

It was really amazing to see how quickly they were able to turn that functionality on and get so many people involved, Kristin Smith, executive director at the Blockchain Association said. Its definitely a turning point for the industry and I think one that will hopefully lead to better policy down the road.

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What you need to know about cryptocurrency and taxes – RochesterFirst

Posted: at 10:24 am

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) The IRS has a warning for people dealing in cryptocurrency pay your taxes!

CPA Dave Young discussed the emerging currency and what the IRS is doing to make sure people who deal in crypto pay their fair share Monday during News 8 at Sunrise.

The IRS is taking a keen eye on it, Young said of cryptocurrency. They have a very big interest if you have cryptocurrency. As a matter of fact, on the front page of your Form 1040 in 2020 the IRS is specifically asking at any time in 2020 did you receive, sell, send, exchange or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency. The fact of the matter is if you have the virtual currency youll likely need to report it. Some exchanges are actually going to be sending the IRS a form and sending you a Form 1099-K saying hey, these are the transactions that you had.

Young explained what you need to know about reporting cryptocurrency transactions and profits or losses. Its going to come in a couple of different buckets. The IRS is going to treat it just as if youre basically selling a capital asset like a stock. So if you bought a cryptocurrency and held it for more than a year youre going to report it as a long-term capital gain. So your tax rate could be as low as zero percent or up to 20 percent depending upon your tax bracket. If its held less than a year its going to be a short-term capital gain. So its really important for people to realize you can trigger this by selling your crypto for cash. So you had crypto and you converted it to fiat currency cash thats going to be a taxable event. If you exchanged it from one cryptocurrency to another thats another taxable event. What we see a lot is people will take their cryptocurrency and buy something. If you took your crypto and you bought a good or service, youve just triggered a taxable event. So those three things could trigger you having to file short or long-term capital gains. Be very, very careful because in the background the IRS is getting this report and theyre not going to look too kindly on you if you did not report this transaction on your taxes.

Young noted that many people are getting into mining and there are considerations there too. So mining is going to have possibly two transactions A, the income you receive from mining the cryptocurrency. Thats going to be income. As a sidebar note, the expenses that you have related to mining will be deductible but when you sell that cryptocurrency after you mine it were back to triggering a capital gain, short-term or long-term. Also, what you see often is businesses are accepting crypto as a form of payment. So its no different than if someone pays you on a credit card or cash. Its income so you need to report that. Sometimes your currency will hit a hard fork. If youre into crypto youre going to know what a hard fork is. And airdrop is kind of like a free giveaway or winning the lottery, so you might get that or even getting crypto rewards. Those are just some examples of other transactions where you need to report that. The bottom line is the IRS is taking a very hard look. So if you have crypto you want to make sure youre reporting it and look at your 1040, page one, there should be no excuse for missing this. The IRS put it right there in plain sight. Youve got to make sure youre recording your cryptocurrency transactions or you will have a significant problem with the IRS.

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More than $90 million in cryptocurrency stolen after a top Japanese exchange is hacked – CNBC

Posted: at 10:24 am

An illustration showing physical bitcoins alongside binary code displayed on a laptop.

Jakub Porzycki | NurPhoto via Getty Images

Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Liquid said Thursday it has been hit by a cyberattack that saw hackers make offwith a reported $97 millionworth of digital coins.

Liquid said some of its digital currency wallets had been "compromised," and that hackers were transferring the assets to four different wallets.

"We are currently investigating and will provide regular updates," Liquid tweeted. "In the meantime deposits and withdrawals will be suspended."

Liquid did not provide an estimate for the loss. It says it is regulated by Japan's Financial Services Agency. The watchdog was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company, said its analysis showed that about $97 million in cryptocurrencies have been obtained by the hackers.

Of the total haul, $45 million in tokens were being converted to ethereum through decentralized exchanges blockchain-based platforms that require no intermediaries like Uniswap and SushiSwap, Elliptic said.

"This enables the hacker to avoid having these assets frozen as is possible with many Ethereum tokens," Elliptic said in a blog post.

Liquid ranks among the top 20 crypto exchanges globally by daily trading volumes, processing more than $133 million of transactions in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.

It's the second major crypto heist to take place in little over a week. On Aug. 10, hackers stole more than $600 million of digital tokens from Poly Network, a so-called decentralized finance firm.

In an unusual turn of events, the hackers opened a dialogue with the organization they attacked and gave back nearly all of the funds. However, more than $200 million remains locked in an account that requires a password from the hacker.

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More than $90 million in cryptocurrency stolen after a top Japanese exchange is hacked - CNBC

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Top 10 Cryptocurrency Prices on August 23rd 2021 – Analytics Insight

Posted: at 10:24 am

Analytics Insight gets to your notice the top 10 trending cryptocurrency prices

The current cryptocurrency market is volatile, it is always on the edge. And so it is unpredictable for the investors to predict and invest in the cryptocurrency. Here is Analytics Insight with the top 10 cryptocurrency prices on August 23rd, 2021.

Bitcoin ( BTC)- US$50,196.20 (up by 2.59%)

Ethereum (ETH)- US$3,347.15 (up by 3.22%)

Cardano (ADA)- US$2.78 (up by 11.16%)

Binance Coin (BNB)- US$470.61 (up by 4.41%)

Tether (USDT)- US$1.00 (up by 0.06%)

XRP (XRP)- US$1.25 (up by 1.12%)

Dogecoin (DOGE)- US$0.3224 (up by 2.17%)

Polkadot (DOT)- US$28.27 (up by 1.49%)

USD Coin (USDC)- US$0.9999 (up by 0.07%)

Solana (SOL)- US$75.25 (up by 0.62%)

The cryptocurrency prices here are according to the CoinMarketCap, which is a global cryptocurrency market cap with US $2.15T with a volume of US $2,152,954,457,243 billion over the past 24hrs with an increase of 3.08% over the last day.

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Top 10 Cryptocurrency Prices on August 23rd 2021 - Analytics Insight

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