Update: Senate shelves the BBB Act

[SuperSpreader]

So what's going on with crypto now?

[SaysWho?]

I enjoyed this line:

 

 

 

Some more snippets:

 

DeSantis:

 

 

[marioandsonic]

A shame we won't get to read any angry tweets about it. 

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

21 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

A shame we won't get to read any angry tweets about it. 

And yet I feel completely content assuming he’s beside himself with rage being unable to vent to a wide audience, without any proof to the contrary. 

[SaysWho?]

37 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

A shame we won't get to read any angry tweets about it. 

 

I'll never get sick of somebody going "Let's hear what Trump has to say: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump"

 

He was railing against this... and nobody heard it and 69 voted yes anyway.  

 

[Kal-El814]

54 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

A shame we won't get to read any angry tweets about it. 

 

[PaladinSolo]

[Anathema-]

I guess all we really needed to do was get McConnell in a room and say "cmon man" after all. 

[SuperSpreader]

39 minutes ago, Anathema- said:

I guess all we really needed to do was get McConnell in a room and say "cmon man" after all. 

[SuperSpreader]

I love that I don't even have to think about Washington anymore. Nothing happening? Better than the last 4 years!

[Jason]

 

[thewhyteboar]

What do you get when you take a dash of right-wing ahistorical nonsense, a pinch of that libertarian lack of common sense, and top it off with a sprinkle of religious zealotry?

 

 A crypto-bro!

[SaysWho?]

House is cutting its recess short to work on the bill:

 

 

[SuperSpreader]

 

[PaladinSolo]

 

 

 

Woah woah woah, you can't just go and spend money on these people in WV, we need to do the responsible thing and spend nothing so that when shit breaks we can spend twice as much down the road!

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Excessive inflation isn't happening you dumb fuck.

 

And the national debt is 100% not an issue, we issue debt in our own currency

[Jason]

11 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Excessive inflation isn't happening you dumb fuck.

 

And the national debt is 100% not an issue, we issue debt in our own currency

 

And the inflation that IS happening is from pandemic induced shortages, not the money printer going brrr. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

5 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

And the inflation that IS happening is from pandemic induced shortages, not the money printer going brrr. 

Yeah, and YoY isn't a good metric because of this reason.

 

That said, if we didn't spend all of this money we would be in a deeper, deflationary hole, a much bigger issue than what we face today.

[Jason]

No EV tax credit if you earn more than $100,000, says US Senate

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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The amendment would also limit the tax credit to EVs that cost less than $40,000.

 

My comment:

 

Quote

Quote

 

I really wonder how many folks making less than $100k would make enough to actually receive the full credit anyway.  I mean, anyone getting paid below $54,500 would basically zero out their taxes with one EV, and that's with no other credits or deductions.  Even up to $100k, you're only cutting the tax paid in half...

But even at that pay level, I highly doubt that they're going to have enough cash to buy a new $30+k EV in the first place.

 

 

If you lease the dealership keeps the $7,500. This is a big part of why you see good lease deals on EVs. I have no idea how the means testing of this would work though, i.e. does the dealership not get the $7,500 if you make over $100k? Does the dealership not get to keep the $7,500 at all if you lease no matter what since the dealership as an entity has income of more than $100k a year?

 

[Joe]

9 minutes ago, Jason said:

No EV tax credit if you earn more than $100,000, says US Senate

ARSTECHNICA.COM

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The amendment would also limit the tax credit to EVs that cost less than $40,000.

 

My comment:

 

 

When does this policy become effective?

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

 

OLO

 

 

[TwinIon]

So, as usual, press summaries don't link to the bill text, and when there's only two sentences about a subject it's hard to know what the bill actually says. So here's the bill text for anyone curious (let me know if this isn't the right bill, but I'm pretty sure it is).

 

The electric vehicle section (Sec 1211, page 401 of the PDF) is pretty short, and mostly says that the department of transportation needs to come up with a plan. It does specify that any chargers need to work with multiple makes of cars, that they need to be network capable, and that payment should be easy. It also says that they'll allow commercial activity as it relates to charging stations on interstate rest stops, which makes a lot of sense.

 

Later, in Sec 20101 (~page 1895) the bill specifies that the DOT should help amend building codes for including electric vehicle chargers, and that a task force has one year to come up with a plan for how to spend the money. I realize that kind of thing is standard in bills like this, and while I'm bummed that they only got half the money the administration wanted to begin with, it's still a good place to start.

 

 

I'm happy to see a Dig Once for Broadband provision. (sec 1603) I'm pretty sure this has been a thing in CA and elsewhere for a while, but it's just one of those common sense things that should be everywhere.

 

 

I tried to find the text of the crypto provisions and I'm not sure what the deal is. It should be in Section 80603, but the text from Congress.gov doesn't include it. I found this google drive copy of the initial Senate Text that is ~800 pages longer than what is on Congress.gov. News stories seem to indicate that the crypto provision didn't get cut, so not sure why it's missing. I'm guessing that congress.gov just didn't host the full text or I'm pulling the wrong version.

 

Either way, the crypto provision itself (Sec 80603, page 2436 on the google drive pdf) doesn't say much that I can puzzle out other than what has been reported. What I (a non-lawyer, non-tax accountant) really get out of it is that it's basically just including "digital assets" in existing IRS code. To me that says that this isn't some kind of crazy new provision that is putting an undue burden on crypto, it's just treating it the same way that we already treat other assets.

 

Bottom line: If you want crypto to be money, you should expect it to treated by governments like money.

[Jason]

41 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

Either way, the crypto provision itself (Sec 80603, page 2436 on the google drive pdf) doesn't say much that I can puzzle out other than what has been reported. What I (a non-lawyer, non-tax accountant) really get out of it is that it's basically just including "digital assets" in existing IRS code. To me that says that this isn't some kind of crazy new provision that is putting an undue burden on crypto, it's just treating it the same way that we already treat other assets.

 

I'd have to go digging to remember exactly what the problem was but nobody's complaining about Coinbase or whatever having to send you a 1099. I think it's that the law as written was (still is?) saying that middlemen like validators, who by the way things are set up do not and cannot know the identities connected to the transactions they're validating, also have to send 1099s.

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

Bottom line: If you want crypto to be money, you should expect it to treated by governments like money.

 

I was told this was the Kryptonacht

[TwinIon]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

I'd have to go digging to remember exactly what the problem was but nobody's complaining about Coinbase or whatever having to send you a 1099. I think it's that the law as written was (still is?) saying that middlemen like validators, who by the way things are set up do not and cannot know the identities connected to the transactions they're validating, also have to send 1099s.

I'm no expert, but I don't think the bill specifically includes them. The exact language says a broker is:

Quote

any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person.

I would imagine that this will be clarified by the courts, but to me a validator doesn't seem like it would fall under the category of a "service effectuating transfers." It's certainly arguable that validators are included in that definition, and I can see why people would be upset at the possibility, but I personally wouldn't expect it to happen.

[Jason]

5 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I'm no expert, but I don't think the bill specifically includes them.

 

I do believe that the concern is that it's sloppy language. 

 

5 minutes ago, TwinIon said:

I would imagine that this will be clarified by the courts, but to me a validator doesn't seem like it would fall under the category of a "service effectuating transfers."

 

Again, sloppy language and then by the time it's resolved in the courts the industry has fled overseas. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

25 minutes ago, Jason said:

by the time it's resolved in the courts the industry has fled overseas.

And nothing of value was lost

[TwinIon]

50 minutes ago, Jason said:

Again, sloppy language and then by the time it's resolved in the courts the industry has fled overseas. 

I personally wouldn't really mind if crypto left, but seems like an unlikely scenario.

 

I'm not expert enough to know if better language could have been written, but I think the language is as necessarily vague as most laws are. Crypto is still extremely young, and no one knows what the infrastructure will evolve into over time. The language is basically saying "if you run a service that helps people transfer money, you have these requirements," and that seems like a perfectly sensible line to draw. Even as it applies to traditional financial assets, there's a whole chain of technologies and services that make transfers possible.

 

If I build a Venmo clone, I imagine I have to follow some IRS guidelines (I think these exact same ones). My service almost certainly relies on any number of other services to function properly on any number of technical levels. I probably use AWS or something like it, I have a service for SSL certs, my app probably relies on Google and Apple as software platforms, there's probably some database in the back end that stores all the records, and I probably have to plug into some proprietary financial system to interact with banks and credit card companies and who knows what else. The law wasn't written to include and exclude each technical level of functionality with such precision, because it would be insane to even try, and even more insane for such a nascent technology as crypto.

 

I think this is much ado about nothing. Nothing indicates to me that any of the apocalyptic outcomes are even mildly likely. The culture of crypto is just very much wrapped around a sense of absolute libertarianism to the point that any regulation seems like the end of the world. It's not. Courts aren't all completely stupid, and if there's money in it, there will be sufficient action taken to keep things going.

[Anathema-]

9 hours ago, TwinIon said:

it's just treating it the same way that we already treat other assets.

 

Right, exactly. That's the holocaust. 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

 

[SaysWho?]

It is getting a vote.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, SaysWho? said:

It is getting a vote.

The tweet is wrong; they won't even consider voting for the bill until the bipartisan bill is signed into law, those are nearly the exact words. This is their public line in the sand. The subtext is they want to kill the recon bill plain and simple.

[Jason]

On 8/11/2021 at 10:49 AM, Kal-El814 said:

 

OLO

 

 

 

On 8/11/2021 at 2:03 PM, Kal-El814 said:

 

I was told this was the Kryptonacht

 

IRS Won't Go After Bitcoin Miners Regardless of ‘Broker’ Definition: Reports - Decrypt

DECRYPT.CO

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The IRS reportedly won't apply the Senate infrastructure bill's definition of "broker" to Bitcoin miners and other crypto actors.

 

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

Brb returning 10 framed pictures of Biden for this

[Jason]

20 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

Brb returning 10 framed pictures of Biden for this

 

Just light them on fire with your supply of Mueller prayer candles.