Iceland to Impose Bitcoin Mining Tax

An Icelandic lawmaker, Smari McCarthy suggested imposing a new tax on bitcoin mining companies

12 February 2018 992

The lawmaker Smari McCarthy of Iceland's Pirate Party suggested taxing the profits of bitcoin mines. This suggestion is likely to be well received by Icelanders because most residents are skeptical of financial ventures after the countries 208 banking crash.

This year the country is expected to use more electricity for mining than it uses to power its homes. McCarthy believes that it is unfair that mining companies are not paying taxes to the government.

Due to an access to cheap cooling and cheap energy Iceland has long played home to an ecosystem of bitcoin miners. Arctic air helps to keep mining hardware without added electricity costs.

Considering that the Pirate Party currently holds only 6 seats out of 63 in Iceland's parliament, it is unlikely to succeed in pursuing a bitcoin mining tax on its own. However, the lawmakers from other parties can support this idea if demand for the nation's cheap electricity continues to increase.

Bitcoin Blockchain

SEC to Need More Info on BTC ETF

SEC is gathering more input from the public – to date, according to the agency, more than 1,400 comments have been submitted

21 September 2018 145

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the beginning of a formal process for considering the application for the creation of bitcoin-ETF from the New York companies VanEck and SolidX. Nevertheless, the agency appealed to the community for more information. This is stated in the document published on the SEC website.

Institution of such proceedings is appropriate at this time in view of the legal and policy issues raised by the proposed rule change. Institution of proceedings does not indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions with respect to any of the issues involved. Rather, as described below, the Commission seeks and encourages interested persons to provide comments on the proposed rule change.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission

At the moment, the SEC received about 1,400 comments.

According to the document, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has signed an agreement on the exchange of data on bitcoin transactions, trading and the state of the market with the cryptocurrency trading platform with Gemini.

The agency asked commentators to clarify the position of Gemini in the digital currency market and assess the likelihood of increased volatility at this site in connection with possible trades of bitcoin-ETF.

So, before September 30, the department had to decide on whether to approve, deny or initiate the proceedings. The SEC chose the latter, which is likely to delay the process until the next year.