Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, has pushed back against claims that his company\u2019s lobbyists are working to block a Bitcoin (BTC) tax exemption in Washington, calling the allegations \u201ctotally false.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dispute has drawn in Bitcoin advocates, tax lawyers, and crypto lobbyists, and cuts to the center of a wider debate about who the biggest companies in crypto actually represent when they walk the halls of Congress.<\/p>\n
The allegations were made by Truth for the Commoner (TFTC), a Bitcoin-focused media account with nearly 100,000 followers on X, which posted<\/a> on March 11 that Coinbase had told legislators \u201cno one is using Bitcoin as money\u201d and that a BTC de minimis exemption would be \u201cDOA.\u201d<\/p>\n According to TFTC, Coinbase has a financial motive for opposing the BTC tax exemption. The account claimed that the exchange earned $1.35 billion last year in stablecoin revenue, with almost all the money coming from interest on U.S. Treasuries held in reserves backing USDC.<\/p>\n TFTC also suggested that a de minimis rule that covers BTC but not stablecoins would make the king crypto a more attractive payment option, and that would pull users away from Coinbase\u2019s yield-generating stablecoin ecosystem.<\/p>\n Recall that last year, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis introduced<\/a> digital asset tax legislation seeking to provide a de minimis exemption for crypto gains taxes on crypto transactions of up to $300. According to TFTC, the House version of the bill caps at $200 and only covers stablecoins.<\/p>\n Armstrong directly responded<\/a> to the accusations against Coinbase, saying:<\/p>\n \u201cNot sure where you\u2019re getting this misinformation (perhaps you can share?) but it\u2019s totally false. I\u2019ve spent a bunch of time lobbying for Bitcoin\u2019s de minimis tax exemption, and will continue doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n However, TFTC co-founder Mart Bent didn\u2019t back down, telling<\/a> Armstrong:<\/p>\n \u201cI have sources that say otherwise, not you personally but your team and\/or lobbyists.\u201d<\/p>\n He also asked whether the Coinbase chief would walk away from the market structure bill if it failed to have a Bitcoin de minimis exemption, as he had done earlier in the year, when he withdrew<\/a> support for the CLARITY Act after disagreements over stablecoin yield.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, tax lawyer Jason Schwartz, known as \u201cCryptoTaxGuy\u201d on X, has tried to offer some context in the exchange between Armstrong and TFTC.<\/p>\n According to him, the discussion might be mixing<\/a> up four separate policy ideas, which are a personal use de minimis rule, a gas fee exemption, a change in stablecoin reporting, and a plan to consider stablecoin gains and losses as zero.<\/p>\n Schwartz added that different market participants will naturally advocate harder for different provisions, and this alone shouldn\u2019t be seen as one party trying to \u201ckill\u201d another provision.<\/p>\n The post Brian Armstrong Denies Lobbying Against Bitcoin De Minimis Tax Exemption<\/a> appeared first on CryptoPotato<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, has pushed back against claims that his company\u2019s lobbyists are working to block a Bitcoin (BTC) tax exemption in Washington, calling the allegations \u201ctotally false.\u201d The dispute has drawn in Bitcoin advocates, tax lawyers, and crypto lobbyists, and cuts to the center of a wider debate about who the biggest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":141798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141797"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/141798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Policy Debate With Numerous Moving Parts<\/h2>\n