Overview Of Bitcoin This Monday
We will talk about Chief Strategy Officer at crypto exchange Bitfinex in today’s edition.
Reuters reported, by quoting both him and the company, that, Phil Potter, as his name is, has decided to leave his post at the exchange. Bitfinex announced that he will be replaced by Chief Executive JL van der Velde. Potter, speaking of new opportunities without any precisions, stated: “As Bitfinex pivots away from the U.S., I felt that, as a U.S. person, it was time for me to rethink my position as a member of the executive team.”
Bitfinex is currently the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of trading volume. The company is owned by another British Virgin Islands-based company. The company gives traders the opportunity to buy and sell cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether. Bitfinex introduced trading for 12 altcoins in April.
Tether Limited, the company that issues the Tether token (USDT) shares management with Bitfinex. Tether token developers claim that it is attached to the US Dollar. The claim was contested by critics who doubt that the company holds $1 USD in reserve for every minted coin.
A research paper from the University of Texas reveals that Tether may have been used to manipulate the price of bitcoin last year – an allegation which was obviously rejected by Bitfinex. An investigation was opened by the US Justice Department, as they suspect that possible manipulations might be one of the reasons for the recent losses in the crypto market.
Several other interesting developments have been reported in the US since the country announced DOJ probe. The Supreme Court of the United States mentioned Bitcoin in a ruling not directly related to cryptocurrencies. This was arguably the first time it happened. An example of how views regarding money are changing over time is being outlined in “The dissenting opinion in the Wisconsin Central Ltd. V. United States case”, authored by Justice Stephen Breyer.
The focus of the case is the taxation dispute starting from the government’s assertion that the railroad company’s stock option payments to its employees represent “money remuneration” and should be taxed, which is not the opinion of Wisconsin Central and its workers who claim, as supported by the company’s view in a 5-4 vote, outlined in Justice Neil Gorsuch writings, that stock options were not money and could not be subject to taxation under the Railroad Retirement Tax act of 1934.
Breyer, backed by three of his colleagues, argued in his writings that the stock options were in fact money remunerations. He specifically refers to Bitcoin, stating that “[…] what we view as money has changed over time. Cowrie shells once were such a medium but no longer are […]; our currency originally included gold coins and bullion, but, after 1934, gold could not be used as a medium of exchange […]; perhaps one day employees will be paid in Bitcoin or some other type of cryptocurrency […]. Nothing in the statute suggests the meaning of this provision should be trapped in a monetary time warp, forever limited to those forms of money commonly used in the 1930’s.”
