Daily Archives: September 22, 2022

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has bolstered it cryptocurrency team as it looks to regulate more digital assets by classifying them as financial products, a move that would make selling them to Australians more difficult.

Asic has yet to decide whether to classify Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency after bitcoin, as a financial product after the way the currency operates changed last week.

Most cryptocurrencies have not been regulated by Asic because they do not meet the definition of a financial product, depriving the authority of jurisdiction.

However, the regulator increased the size of its crypto team in March amid a wave of collapses in the industry that devastated investors who poured money into the sector as prices soared in late 2020.

Other regulators have also begun taking a closer look at cryptocurrency, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission becoming aggressive in its approach to whether individual coins, including Ethereum, qualify as securities, bringing them under its regulatory umbrella.

Were not going to be the cheerleaders for crypto assets, Asics executive director for markets, Greg Yanco, said.

Because cryptocurrencies are mostly not financial products, the exchanges that trade them are largely untouched by Australian regulation, aside from a requirement to report transactions to the financial intelligence agency, Austrac.

But if Asic decided that one or more of the more popular coins were financial products, the exchanges would either need to delist them or become subject to a list of regulatory requirements.

They will need financial services licenses, which may require proof that they hold large sums of capital in reserve, and would be required to keep client funds separated something that collapses overseas have revealed was not standard practice.

A bigger challenge would be meeting new design and distribution obligations regarding financial products that came into force in last October as part of reforms after the banking royal commission.

In particular, dealers would need to identify a target market.

Who that might be was a good question, Yanco said.

Could it be only those people that are willing to take extreme risks, extreme risk on highly volatile products without any underlying asset, where the custody arrangements may not be, you know, maybe at risk or unusual.

Until recently, crypto was not on Asics hitlist it had just one person dedicated to the area.

In March, Asic added a second full-time employeeand expanded its capability. Crypto assets are now one of its core strategic projects, the regulator said last month.

Until I would say, even the last year, when we were doing our business planning, crypto was not the big priority, Yanco said.

Were seeing products that are mimicking financial products out there because there seems to be some crypto twist, they seem designed to avoid regulation. And so weve seen that and you will have seen that with similar products overseas, people have lost a lot of money on them.

The regulator has also been concerned by the convergence of crypto trading platforms with share trading platforms, along with research conducted for it by SEC Newgate in November. That research showed 44% of Australian retail investors held crypto and, of those who did, only 20% thought they were taking a risk.

If people are trading shares, suddenly theyre being offered crypto, and theyre beginning to think that theyre maybe not any riskier than share trading, Yanco said.

The regulator has obtained legal advice from senior counsel on whether some coin offerings qualify as financial products.

There are so many of these things, were probably not going to get to all of them, Yanco said.

But weve got a couple that were looking at really closely. And if we need to take enforcement action, we will.

In Ethers case, last week it moved from awarding new coins to miners who completed energy-intensive mathematical calculations, a process called proof of work, to awarding new coins to coin holders who agree to lock up Ether, a process called proof of stake.

The change, known as the merge, raises the possibility that Ether may now meet legal tests, in the US and Australia, that mean it should be regulated as a financial product.

Asked if Asic had decided whether or not Ether would be a financial product after the merge, Yanco said: No, no, we havent.

Were technology agnostic, and were looking at these things right now because its not just as straightforward as one thing once you start pooling assets together, it depends on how its done. Is there a common purpose? Or are you just in the pool and youre just getting a share? That may be something different, he said.

And so this is where it becomes a lot of work for Asic to get to the bottom of how things are designed.

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Asic bolsters its cryptocurrency team and looks to regulate more digital assets - The Guardian

The worlds second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum, last week transformed the fundamental architecture governing how it secures its blockchain an unprecedented demonstration of established crypto platforms ability to evolve to changing conditions.

The event, known as the Merge, was five years in the making. A few hours after midnight on Thursday, Ethereum shifted its blockchain from a configuration called proof of work also used by Bitcoin to one called proof of stake. Matt Nelson, a product manager at the Ethereum research and development firm ConsenSys, compared it to changing the engine in a car while driving it down the road.

The move to the new style of blockchain will reduce Ethereums energy use by 99.95 percent, according to the Ethereum Foundation. Thats significant in an industry that is so energy-intensive the White House warned this month that the growth of crypto could make it harder for the U.S. to meet its climate goals. And Ethereums good news comes at a tough time for crypto generally, with the prices of major cryptocurrencies dropping, the a major crypto lender collapsing and calls for regulation growing.

We wanted to be an inspiration, as the most-used smart contract platform in the community, to signal to actors, regulators and users that we were willing to change, said Nelson, who helped coordinate the switch. Were willing to work together as a community to create an extremely technically complex upgrade.

Ethereums transformation shows that the decentralized crypto universe can adapt as it grows. The blockchain concept that underlies crypto platforms like Ethereum is built on the idea that an entry cannot be altered once it is made which proponents argue makes it transparent and fair. But the Merge demonstrates that such architecture can still undergo major changes successfully, even with millions of users data in play (and a $180 million market cap). Call it a crypto coming of age.

That doesnt mean the Merge is without its critics. One persistent criticism is that Ethereums new architecture consolidates control of the currency among a relatively small number of major players.

Before the switch, users could mine Ethereum by using math. Under the old proof-of-work blockchain system, computers would race to solve complex math problems and log their work verifying batches of transactions to the blockchain. The first machine to answer a particular problem is rewarded with Ether (ETH). This process is known as mining, and it requires a lot of electricity.

Ethereums new blockchain architecture, proof of stake, replaces that computational work with pure economic interests. A staker, or person who puts up ETH to stake to the network, locks their money up for a set period of time and receives a vote for doing so.

Staking a full node requires 32 ETH, or around $45,000. People can pool their coins to fund a node, even staking a percentage of a single ETH. These pools, known as liquidity pools, are offered by a wide array of platforms and companies, such as the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase.

In fact, Coinbase, Binance and Kraken, some of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, own 30 percent of the networks stake. And Lido, a community staking collective of 183,975 stakers, controls over 30 percent. Critics of proof of stake are concerned that this puts voting control in a handful of major players, contrary to the decentralized ethos of cryptocurrencies. For many people, their original appeal was that no central entity that could control them.

I see many cheering on [proof of stake] as a way to reduce emissions, that it makes ETH greener, said Colin Harper, head of research and content at cryptocurrency mining software and services company Luxor. These takes never acknowledge why [proof of work] exists in the first place, and that is to ensure the censorship resistance and permissionless nature that makes a blockchain worth running or using at all. [Proof of stake] proponents turn a blind eye to this and say that you can have those guarantees without the energy cost, but I dont think thats true. Theres no free lunch.

Others say the environmental benefits of the Merge cant be overstated. The shift slashed the energy use associated with mining Ethereum.

You have this pervasive mentality in many different spaces that blockchain is an industry thats negative from a climate and environmental standpoint, said Nick Hotz, vice president of research at Arca, a digital assent management firm.

Some estimates put the annual energy consumed by mining another major cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, on par with the demand from the entire country of Argentina. Other supporters of the Merge say it matters because it shows flexibility within the growing sector. Mark Lurie, the CEO of Shipyard Software, which builds apps and tools for decentralized finance, said that any diversity in technology will make cryptocurrencies more flexible.

Different technology trade-offs are best for different use cases, said Lurie. I think [proof of work] is probably better for digital gold, like Bitcoin, but [proof of stake] is probably better for distributed computing platforms like Ethereum. There are a huge variety of use cases, and many will demand different technical trade-offs in scalability, speed, security and many other dimensions.

James Key, CEO and founder of the Autonomy Network, a decentralized automation protocol, also sees it as a positive for the industry writ large.

Its a very bullish sign that the space can continue to evolve and adapt, even with the size of a chain like Ethereum people have been worried about this aspect of crypto since Bitcoin has so far not been able to do so, said Key.

This is only the first of what will be other substantive upgrades to Ethereum. But Nelson said that, if some other consensus mechanism thats better than proof of stake comes along in the future, he could see the community deciding to change again. And now, they know its possible.

The only constant in life is change itself, so as long as the community is capable of coming together and adapting, the technology platform, it can, in theory, persist forever, said Lurie.

Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.

Original post:
What the Ethereum 'Merge' means for the future of cryptocurrency - Grid

Computers are useless, Pablo Picasso exclaimed more than 50 years ago. They can only give you answers. No doubt he would be turning in his grave at todays unholy alliance of computer programs, tech nerds and digital artists clustering together to create non-fungible tokens (NFTs).Its a quickly evolving and potentially very risky world for filmmakers, producers and others looking for new ways to raise funding but should be approached with caution, research and a good look at recent history.

From the heady heights of a $3 trillion cryptocurrency market, it took a perfect storm of surging inflation, interest rate rises and geopolitical shockwaves to batter belief and trigger a snowball effect: bitcoins constant price drops, for example, trigged more sell offs, so confidence plummeted, leading to more panicked selling. The high level of borrowing by crypto traders to increase the upside of their positions left them facing calls for more funds to support untenable bets. And buyers beware there are no questions about moral hazard let alone a bank of last resort in the wild west of crypto.

NFTs (in case you need reminding), are digital artworks and images, often carved up into bite- sized tokens, that rely on blockchain technology to prove ownership. The explosion in interest and speculation around NFTs and the wider crypto currency craze that heated up during the last decade has now spectacularly imploded over the past six months, with more than $2 trillion wiped out.The burst bubble in digital assets and decentralised finance (DeFi) has attracted acute attention, but also pain for millions of investors given that by mid-2021 more than 16% of the American population had bought into the crypto craze.

While all those consulted for this article took no issue with the underlying robustness of blockchain technology (essentially a digital ledger of transactions that is duplicated and distributed across an entire network of computer systems), its efficacy depends on what use it is put to. And while blockchain and cryptocurrency are two distinctly different technologies, they are inherently linked. Cryptocurrency operates through the blockchain, as it too is a decentralized, digital system but designed for and enabling trading in digital or virtual currencies.

The ethos of cybertarians, as media lawyer and analyst Bill Grantham calls believers in financial markets that are not controlled by centralized organizations or governments, is fundamentally flawed: There is no way to assess the underlying value of these assets, so crowds were relying on the truth of what they were being told. Theres a good reason why the 1933 Securities Act and 1934 Securities Exchange Act remains in place today.

Among the many crypto sceptics is BlackRock founder Larry Fink, who in 2017 quipped that bitcoin just shows you how much demand for money laundering there is in the world, which in turn has trigged the term shitcoin meaning a coin or token with no clear purpose or value, or one used for more nefarious purposes.

Digital asset evangelists such as Silicon Valley tycoon Marc Andreessen, responsible for backing multiple crypto start-ups, famously made a revisionist assertion that every failed idea from the dotcom bubble would work now. The latest bubble economy bust up does not bear Andreessens theory out, as crypto that has been underlying financial constructs, let alone currencies, has fallen like dominoes never to see the digital light again.

For example, so-called stable currencies in the decentralized financial worldhave tanked despite their reassuring moniker. Two of the most popular stablecoins, Tether and USDC, effectively mimic the function of banks: people give them money, and receive stablecoins in return, which can at any point be cashed in again. At least thats the theory. Punters must trust the entity behind thecurrency, confident that it will be kept safe, easy to access and not used to bet on another investment opportunity.

Things can get dodgy even when currencies are constructed to create stability, as with the case of TerraUSD and Luna. Terra had a value pegged at $1, which, in theory, it would not fall below, being kept at that level by its sister coin Luna. If the Terra price went above $1, investors could take Luna coins out of circulation (a practice called burning) in exchange for new TerraUSD coins, which brought the cost back to $1. The price of Luna, as coins becomeit becameincreasingly scarce, was supposed to grow.

However, the system only functions if Luna has any actual value. For a period following its launch in 2019, its price shot up, partly due to an aggressive offer to pay 20% interest on savings held using the currency, taking it to a high of $120 in April 2022. But as the crash kicked in, investors began to take their cash out to cover losses elsewhere and Luna cratered. That set off a death spiral, as people switched Terra into Luna, which hammered the price of Luna. Every redemption round simply witnessed Luna tumbling lower and lower. In just a few weeks, the value of the Luna coin fell to fractions of a dollar. The entire game was up.

Whatever the fate of decentralized crypto currencies, forms of crypto and blockchain technology are here to stay, explains Eswar Prasad, author of The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance. The challenge, explains Prasad, is multifaceted but is crying out for sophisticated regulation. The catch is that when an industry clamours for regulation, it typically craves the legitimacy that comes with it while trying to minimize oversight. The biggest risk regulators must guard against? Giving the crypto industry an official imprimatur while subjecting it to light-touch regulation.

Its a perplexing conundrum for filmmakers flirting with the market.Lets be honest theres a good reason why the celebrity-driven crypto and NFT scam market has collapsed, says Oscar-winning writer/producer James Schamus. To paraphrase Matt Damon, Fortune does not favor the gullible, which is maybe why the average NFT sale price has dropped 92% in the past six months. But all that said, there are still potentially legit uses for some of these technologies, including perhaps digital rights management, royalty and residuals tracking, and more. As with any hyper-financialized derivative commodity, there will still be speculators and gamblers and hustlers out to pump up markets for special-price-for-you-certifiably-one-of-a-kind-digital-whatzyhoosies but I wouldnt write off the possible utility of these technologies just yet.

Taking Schamuss cautious upside note a step further, delving into the terrain underlines the strong intersections between NFTs and the video gaming world, rather than directly to live action movies and TV (although animation is a different matter). Theres aclearerutility in video games because purchasing of NFTs is based on an emotionally driven, first-person investment basis, explainsmultimediablogger and digital entrepreneur James K. Wight. The clear message is that you buy because its fun and adds to a sense of completionand a digital communityforthe user. On the other hand, theres nothing that an NFT can do that a great video game cant do better.

Producers have long been drawn to potential new financing and creative goods opportunities, and therein lies part of the problem. Producers are sellers at their core and are desperate to find new and alternative sources of finance, explains Arclight Films CFO Brian Beckmann. So hence they are in danger of believing their own bullshit and therefore other peoples.

However, some canny producers have made it their business to kick the tires and investigate the feeding frenzy first-hand.

Red and Blacks award-winning film producer and games developer John Giwa Amu trekked from Wales to San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference earlier this spring. He had already experienced the less than thrilling experience of trying to turn his firstBAFTA- winningfeature,White Little Lies, into an NFT opportunity that was a valuable learning experience, but showed us how brutal that market is

Once you get past the gold rush hype and the 20-something year old [then] millionaires, you realise that this market is very young, has suffered from huge mistakes and has a basic lack of understanding about how finance and risk behave.Onekey takeaway is that IPs in the form of digital canvasses and in-game content etcare a tangible element behind NFTs, but the quality of that creative work really matters,as does how you market it.

High quality filmmakers have been attracted to the opportunities yet have approached the surging sector with enough caution to keep their shirts. Emmy-winning StudioNX, a UK-Canadian animation studio, felt the rush of demand when it launchedGorecats, a horror inspired collection with roadmap to animated series. They dropped1,111 NFTS at $100 per token on Magic Eden via the Solana network and sold out within 45 seconds. Since that heady start, founder Adam Jeffcoat has brought in a financial pay out manager to address the volatility and changing values of both the solana blockchain and the NFT market, never mind some solid financials! I see great potential but the rapid rises and falls left me thinking that I only want a portion of our business involved, not the whole hog. Jeffcoat stresses that the key to long term survival in this space is to be focused on building IP backed by great storytelling, which is far more engaging to both holders and potential buyers.

Scratch the surface of game developers-turned-Web 3.0 entrepreneurs out there and theres a host of creative work underway thats already redefining what the metaverse might offer us all. Developed by Tiny Rebel Games, an award-winning developer of games and Augmented Reality (AR), the Petaverse Network is the first cross-chain platform that has created the next generation of immortal pets across the metaverse. Cool things are possible, says co-founder Susan Cummings. Cats work better as an AR experience than for example dogs: We can get a cat up and running in space and make it interesting. Petaverses creation of virtual pets work across games, AR, VR, wearables and social. Cummings explains that their pets evolve based on the nature of their specific DNA and the nature of their bonding with you a kind of reflexive animal-human dynamic if you like.

A key motivation for Cummings and her partner Lee was the wasteland of virtual pets once adored but forced to be abandoned over the years. Neopets, Tamagotchi, not to mention the 24 million Nintendogs that were bought, loved and then dumped as technology inexorably moved on. We like the idea that everyone can own and take it with them, and that it will still be relevant some 30 years down the line a digital heirloom that you can send to your grandchildren.

By combining gaming, XR and Web 3.0 and housing the project via the Polygon Platform on the Ethereum blockchain, Petaverse has defined an open standard, allowing other projects to connect and build new experiences alongside the virtual pets. This is about creating an open, sharing community benefiting from an easy-to-use transportation system, Cummings stresses. That philosophy is far removed from the winner takes all competition found in Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

But while some smaller shingles find ways to tame and use crypto and NFTs, there is still too much volatility and questions to go mainstream in the entertainment business, until the next big funding thing comes along.

Angus Finneys latest book, The International Film Business: A Market Guide Beyond Hollywood, is available on Amazon.com.

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Film Financing Mavens, Banks Flirt With the Wild West World of Cryptocurrency - Variety

The Indian government is reportedly planning to finalize its stance on the legality of cryptocurrency by the first quarter of next year in order to become Financial Action Task Force (FATF) compliant. We will finalize our responses by February-March 2023. We have to respond to the FATF by May, a government official said.

The Indian government is finalizing its stance on the legality of cryptocurrency in order to submit its response to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for the countrys mutual evaluation by early 2023, Business Today reported Monday.

The Revenue Department has already sent their views and the Department of Economic Affairs has now been tasked to prepare a detailed response on Indias stance on the legality of cryptocurrency, a government official was quoted as saying.

The FATF mutual evaluations are in-depth country reports analyzing the implementation and effectiveness of measures to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, its website details.

The government official further told the publication:

One of the questions that we have to respond is on the legality of cryptocurrencies, since we have already started to tax them. We will finalize our responses by February-March 2023. We have to respond to the FATF by May.

In addition, a Financial Stability Board (FSB) report is expected in October. It will help the Indian government decide whether to ban cryptocurrency transactions or provide a legal framework for dealing with crypto trade in India, Outlook India reported Monday, citing a senior government official.

The official was quoted as saying:

We are awaiting the (FSB) report which will be important from the crypto legislation perspective. We are also hoping it addresses how to deal with wallet transfers (of crypto).

We will take a view on whether to ban wallet transfers depending on what the report suggests. The legislation part is still being worked on. When we had taxed it (in Budget 2022), we had made it clear that legislation is still a work in progress. This report would help address the legislation aspect to a considerable extent, the official additionally detailed.

India is currently not FATF-compliant on crypto assets since the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog requires countries to have a clear stance on the legality of crypto assets to be compliant.

Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman recently chaired a meeting of the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) where issues relating to crypto assets were discussed. The council stressed the urgent need for a clear consensus on the legality of cryptocurrencies.

The finance minister also recently had a meeting with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, where she urged the IMF to take a lead role in regulating crypto assets.

Do you think India will ban crypto? Let us know in the comments section below.

A student of Austrian Economics, Kevin found Bitcoin in 2011 and has been an evangelist ever since. His interests lie in Bitcoin security, open-source systems, network effects and the intersection between economics and cryptography.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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India to Finalize Stance on Legality of Cryptocurrency by Q1 2023: Report Regulation Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Over the past 24 hours, Wrapped Bitcoin's WBTC/USD price has risen 3.42% to $19,528.87. This is contrary to its negative trend over the past week where it has experienced a 4.0% loss, moving from $20,103.81 to its current price. As it stands right now, the coin's all-time high is $70,643.00.

The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for Wrapped Bitcoin over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.

The trading volume for the coin has tumbled 35.0% over the past week along with the circulating supply of the coin, which has fallen 1.57%. This brings the circulating supply to 245 thousand, which makes up an estimated 100.0% of its max supply of 245 thousand. According to our data, the current market cap ranking for WBTC is #18 at $4.78 billion.

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This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and reviewed by an editor.

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Cryptocurrency Wrapped Bitcoin's Price Increased More Than 3% Within 24 hours - (WBTC/USD) - Benzinga

Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency, has completed a plan to reduce its carbon emissions by more than 99%.

The software upgrade, known as the merge, will change how transactions are managed on the ethereum blockchain, a public and decentralised ledger that underpins the cryptocurrency and generates ether tokens, the worlds most popular cryptocurrency after bitcoin.

Vitalik Buterin, ethereums inventor, announced the completion of the plan on Twitter on Thursday morning, tweeting Happy merge all.

The move means that ethereum will no longer be created by an energy intensive process known as mining, where banks of computers generate random numbers that validate transactions on the blockchain and generate new ether tokens as part of the process. The process, known as proof of work in the cryptocurrency world, will now move to a proof of stake system, where individuals and companies act as validators, pledging or staking their own ether as a form of guarantee, to win newly created tokens.

Ethereum mining used up as much electricity as Austria, according to the Digiconomist website, at 72 terawatt-hours a year. Alex de Vries, the economist behind the website, estimates that the merge will reduce the carbon emissions linked to ethereum by more than 99%.

De Vries added that the move could represent 0.2% of the worlds electricity consumption disappearing overnight. However, he said bitcoin remained the biggest single contributor to the crypto worlds carbon footprint.

All eyes will be on bitcoin. It remains the largest polluter in the crypto space. Even today bitcoin is responsible for as much electricity consumption as Sweden. And we know thats not going to change, said De Vries.

Ethereum rose 2% to $1,630 (1,417) after the move, according to website coinmarketcap, valuing the currency at just under $200bn. Bitcoins market cap is worth $387bn, having fallen sharply from its peak of more than $1tn last year.

Carol Alexander, professor of finance at University of Sussex Business School, said the merge was a significant event for the crypto industry

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The merge is the most important event in blockchain history, she said. In my opinion, today marks the beginning of the end of bitcoins dominance over crypto assets. Ethereum is achieving something that bitcoin never could because bitcoin is a purely speculative asset and its mining network would never agree to drop that source of income.

Alexander added that the ethereum blockchain is a key feature of the web3 world - a catch-all term for the latest iteration of the internet - including its role as a base for non-fungible tokens. It powers the smart contract transactions on Ethereum that underpin web3 and therefore the digital economy today.

Original post:
Ethereum cryptocurrency completes move to cut CO2 output by 99% - The Guardian

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How To Withdraw USDT From The WhiteBIT Cryptocurrency Exchange - State-Journal.com

As the cryptocurrency market matures, more governments throughout the world are introducing legislation to tax proceeds from crypto-related activities, with traders often triggering taxable events that can lead to future complications.

Avoiding paying taxes is illegal, but there are legal ways to dodge triggering taxable events while hodling onto ones cryptocurrency holdings: Roth IRAs. These are individual retirement accounts (IRAs) with a special type of tax-advantaged system.

Using IRAs to avoid triggering taxable events with cryptocurrency investments is a strategy that has been considered for some time, with North American mining and hosting firm Compass Mining offering a solution for Bitcoin (BTC) users to mine directly to their IRAs last year.

Before diving deeper, its important to point out that Roth IRAs are only available in the United States, although other countries often have their own form of tax-advantaged investment vehicles. Often, stocks with significant exposure to Bitcoin such as MicroStrategy have to be used as a proxy for some of these vehicles.

A Roth IRA is a type of individual retirement account to which investors contribute after-tax earnings. What makes Roth IRAs stand out is that what investors place in these savings accounts can grow tax-free and be withdrawn without any other taxes being owed after theyre aged 59 , if the account has been open for at least five years.

Essentially, a Roth IRA considers that since taxes have been paid on the funds being contributed into the account, investors do not need to pay any further tax as long as they meet the specific conditions outlined above.

Roth IRAs can be funded in various ways beyond regular contributions, which have to be made in cash. Assets permitted into Roth IRA accounts include stocks, exchange-traded funds, money market funds, bonds, mutual funds and cryptocurrencies.

The Internal Revenue Service does not allow for direct cryptocurrency contributions into these accounts, but these are various Bitcoin IRA solutions that are designed for investors to save cryptocurrencies in these accounts. Its worth pointing out that yearly contributions to Roth IRAs are limited based on IRS specifications and that investors can keep Roth IRAs as long as they please, as there are no required minimum distributions.

Cryptocurrencies are known for being extremely volatile, which means they arent for every investor out there. More conservative investors will likely be happier holding bonds, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, while investors with a larger risk appetite may consider allocating to crypto.

The growth potential of cryptocurrency holdings in a portfolio is enough to lure in investors who believe cryptocurrencies will keep on growing in popularity as the infrastructure around them boosts accessibility and new crypto-related products and services are created. This growth potential, its worth pointing out, comes with heightened risk.

As tax-free withdrawals from Roth IRAs require accounts to be at least five years old, cryptocurrency investors looking to take advantage of them should always be prepared to hold onto their funds for a long time.

Chris Kline, co-founder of cryptocurrency IRA platform Bitcoin IRA, told Cointelegraph that there are no tax benefits on contributions to Roth IRA accounts, but there are tax benefits on distributions:

To Kline, cryptocurrencies are going to disrupt the very fabric of our everyday lives in ways like the internet disrupted communication and email disrupted the post office. The co-founder of Bitcoin IRA added that while real estate and gold were premier examples of diversification in the past, crypto has asserted itself as an alternative in the modern economy.

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Kline added that cryptocurrencies can offer an alternative path forward for people of all ages and that theres been a surge in interest in investing in crypto assets for diversification.

Kunal Sawhney, CEO of equity research firm Kalkine Group, seems to disagree with Klines approach. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Sawhney said that if a person has spent time and labour to earn money, it should ideally not go into extremely risky assets like cryptocurrencies.

Otherwise, he added, it defeats the idea of investing for retirement. Sawhney cautioned that cryptocurrencies arent just Bitcoin and that betting on these increases the risk that investors fall prey to Ponzi schemes.

As an investment category, he said, cryptocurrencies might not be so bad as these assets may become the biggest contributor to the overall amount in the Roth IRA when the contributor retires and plans to withdraw. Once again, their potential outsized performance is weighed against their risk.

For long-term investors expecting these outsized returns, placing cryptocurrencies in a Roth IRA lets them realize their capital gains without getting taxed, although theyll have to stomach the ups and downs for a while.

The extreme volatility of cryptocurrencies makes them a not-so-easy investment when talking about retirement, with the jury being out on whether including cryptocurrencies in a 401(k) retirement plan is sound financial planning or gambling with the future.

To Sawhney, investors need to have a predetermined strategy for their Roth IRA. The CEO noted that a 60/40 portfolio, with greater exposure to stocks than to bonds, was long considered balanced and financially rewarding but suggested cryptocurrencies are changing things:

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Due diligence, Sawhney concluded, is crucial, as Roth IRAs are often viewed as one of the best investment vehicles for young and low-income earners.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Kevin Maloney, interim CEO at crypto retirement account provider iTrustCapital, said that volatility is actually one of the main reasons why many investors prefer using a Roth IRA or any other type of IRA to invest in crypto. He added that even day-traders could benefit:

Whether investors are looking to add cryptocurrencies to their Roth IRA accounts, its important to note that crypto assets are only available for these accounts through custodians, which may charge hefty trading fees.

Its up to every investor to analyze what type of investment vehicle best suits their situation and risk appetite. Roth IRAs may be extremely beneficial for long-term investors, as the IRS has taxed cryptocurrencies as property since 2014, and capital gains taxes can be owed on depreciated assets.

The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Roth IRAs: The ideal long-term cryptocurrency investment? - Cointelegraph

Over the past 24 hours, LEO Token's LEO/USD price has fallen 5.06% to $4.44. This continues its negative trend over the past week where it has experienced a 7.0% loss, moving from $4.82 to its current price.

The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for LEO Token over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.

LEO Token's trading volume has climbed 100.0% over the past week, moving in tandem, directionally, with the overall circulating supply of the coin, which has increased 0.09%. This brings the circulating supply to 934.04 million. According to our data, the current market cap ranking for LEO is #20 at $4.16 billion.

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This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and reviewed by an editor.

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Cryptocurrency LEO Token Decreases More Than 5% Within 24 hours - Benzinga

Some scammers focus on altcoins with small market capitalizations, says an expert.DADO RUVIC/Reuters

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With cryptocurrency prices at a low ebb, investors might be tempted to put some money into these speculative assets. What should advisors tell them about the risks?

When clients want to test the water, one of the first things advisors should do is help them avoid becoming shark bait. Scammers can smell fresh chum from miles away.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commissions Consumer Protection Data Spotlight report published in June found more than 46,000 people in the U.S. alone had suffered from cryptocurrency scams since 2021, with losses totalling more than US$1-billion. Thats up from US$130-million in 2020.

The markets wild growth lured many naive investors afraid of missing out, says Greg Taylor, chief investment officer at Purpose Investments Inc. in Toronto, which offers cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

There was a greed factor that got in, he says. The hype blurred the line between investment and gambling and attracted some unsavoury characters.

When you get speculative excess, you must be wary of fraud. It happens in every bull market.

Those frauds are many and varied. In some cases, cryptocurrency exchanges themselves are guilty. In 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission described Vancouver-based exchange QuadrigaCX as a Ponzi scheme after it left users with a $169-million shortfall.

Some scammers focus on alternative coins (altcoins) with small market capitalizations, says Dragan Boscovic, research professor at Arizona State University and founder and director of its Blockchain Research Lab. These are classic targets for pump-and-dump scammers who stoke the coins reputation with social media posts.

Theres a lot of activity and the price of those assets with very low market caps and high volumes rises relatively fast, he says. Naive investors, perhaps remembering bitcoins huge growth, pile in.

Once those bad actors are satisfied, they sell all their assets and then the price goes down very quickly.

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are a variation on the theme. These token sales are typically tied to decentralized online services and promise big returns. Many have been exit scams in which the founders misused the funds and didnt deliver the promised services. Canadian and U.S. regulators have cracked down on these sales, deeming them securities.

Other scams steal assets from victims cryptocurrency wallets directly.

Michael Zagari, associate portfolio manager at Mandeville Private Client Inc. in Montreal, recalls a phishing e-mail that targeted owners of the ethereum blockchains ether coin. The perpetrators exploited a forthcoming change in the way that the ethereum cryptocurrency blockchain generates its ether coins. It told owners that they had to open access to their cryptocurrency wallets to prepare for the change. Anyone who did so had their funds stolen.

Ethereum owners didnt actually need to do anything to prepare for the change, says Mr. Zagari, but the e-mails were convincing enough to fool people unfamiliar with the technology.

Mr. Zagari says as an advisor, its his job to update clients on these developments, adding that many of his colleagues are still unprepared to guide clients on the risks of cryptocurrency investing.

They dont understand it and are avoiding the conversation, he says. Dealership compliance departments havent invested in understanding it either.

The first step for advisors in helping clients understand cryptocurrency is to educate themselves. Then, its down to a mixture of common sense and technical knowledge.

Advisors should persuade investors to understand what theyre buying rather than treating cryptocurrency as a purely speculative move, Mr. Zagari says.

Look for a solid use case. What problem is it trying to solve? he adds.

Clients should be investing in assets with high market capitalization, says Mr. Boscovic, pointing investors to well-established coins with high liquidity.

Mr. Zagari cites bitcoin and ethereum as the two go-to assets. He typically advises clients to expose no more than 5 per cent of their portfolio to direct cryptocurrency holdings.

Rather than managing the security of those assets in their own wallets, many choose to invest in a cryptocurrency ETF from companies like Purpose Investments or Evolve Funds Group Inc. These ETFs own cryptocurrencies and store them with New York-based Gemini Trust Co. LLC, a custodian that holds them in cold storage meaning the digital keys used to access the wallet are not accessible via the internet.

Mr. Zagari will also advise clients to hold a larger proportion of their assets up to 10 per cent in investments that expose them indirectly to the cryptocurrency markets. These are typically cryptocurrency services companies.

The appeal of cryptocurrency mirrors that of other disruptive technologies, Mr. Zagari points out. It offers potentially high returns.

That means you dont need a lot of cash to make a lot of money, he says.

However, its up to advisors to explain the risks involved, informed by a robust understanding of the underlying market dynamics and technology. Then, they must apply that understanding to the clients personal circumstances to factor in cryptocurrency investments as part of a broader investment strategy.

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How to avoid cryptocurrency investment scams - The Globe and Mail