Official BGOL Crypto Currency Thread ★★★★★

Behind the scenes of Sierra Leone's presidential election Wednesday, a second, perhaps larger milestone was quietly achieved.

As voters lined up to cast votes in what had been a heated campaign between 16 candidates, unbeknownst to them, blockchain voting startup Agora was helping keep track of it all, and through its proprietary distributed ledger, providing unprecedented insight into the process.

In what, by all accounts, appears to be a world's first for the emerging technology, Agora used a private, permissioned blockchain - one inspired by the technology that backs bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies - to oversee the results of a national election in real time. It then relayed the data to individuals entrusted to oversee and verify the nation's democratic process.

However, for Agora, the elections could be step one in an even larger plan to launch a more decentralized version of its technology, and the startup boasts that it's already in conversations with a number of other nations interested in hosting future elections.




Indeed, as even such stalwarts of democracy as the U.S. have proven their susceptibility to elections fraud, the Sierra Leone election - exactly because it was so hotly contested - could prove to be a landmark of sorts, if blockchain can overcome just a few more hurdles.

"You're looking at a country that you probably wouldn't normally expect to be the first to use transparent voting tech," said Agora's newly appointed COO, Jaron Lukasiewicz, who previously founded Coinsetter.

He told CoinDesk:

"A country like Sierra Leone can ultimately minimize a lot of the fall-out of a highly contentious election by using software like this."

A long way to go
But while the voting may be over, the test for blockchain is, in some ways, just beginning.

As this article was being completed, Agora, a Switzerland-based foundation, was in the process of manually counting the votes and logging them on a blockchain.

"Voters complete their votes on paper ballots and then our team with impartial observers register them on the blockchain," explained Lukasiewicz, who formally joined the company in January after first joining as an advisor.

Stepping back, though, not only is this the first time blockchain has been implemented in a national election, it's also the first live implementation for Agora's stack of blockchain services - what the company calls "skipchain" technology, designed to reach consensus with each node only seeing part of the blockchain.

The lowest level of the stack consists of "write-permissioned" nodes operated by Agora and third-party witnesses, Red Cross, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Freiburg, as well as "read-only" nodes that let anyone observe the data.

SL_06.03.18_EG_10.jpg


And while the act of counting votes certainly introduces a number opportunities for fraud, Agora CEO Leonardo Gammar was on-location to help manage the operation as voter IDs were checked against Sierra Leone's National Electoral Committee's voter registration list. Future implementations, he said, may be even further decentralized by logging some data on the bitcoin blockchain.

According to Gammar, the firm is in conversations with multiple other nations in Africa and Europe and is pursuing a business model where they aim to provide their customers a 70 percent discount on their current cost.

"It has been incredible to play a role in helping Sierra Leone's citizens exercise their democratic rights, and to help their country maintain a transparent democracy," Gammar said, adding:

"I strongly believe that this election is the beginning of a much larger blockchain voting movement."

Kind of peaceful
On a more skeptical note, the election took place within context that transcends tech.

Viewed by one Sierra Leone native and current political risk analyst, the election was little better - or worse - than any of the previous three general elections. Blockchain or no blockchain, he finds little has changed since the end of a bloody civil war that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 50,000 citizens.

Abdul Deensie, who was born in Sierra Leone, left in 1997, five years before the civil war had ended. Eventually, he joined as a fellow with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and got a job at USAID, an independent agency that administers federal aid around the world.

Now, Deensie has been corresponding with several "sources on the ground" in Sierra Leone, as well as watching social media and news broadcasts closely, and he says that little he's seeing about the election process has changed.

Skeptically, Deensie pointed to Sierra Leone's "control of corruption" score, an annual rating of nations determined via a number of indicators, as something that was perhaps more important than the use of a novel technology.

Citing a history of failing scores in this category (this year Sierra Leone's government ratedworse than half the governments measured) and scattered reports of intimidation, he concluded ambivalently:

"The election itself, I believe, beside these little skirmishes, we can give it a pass as free and fair."

SL_06.03.18_EG_7.jpg


Election history
But according to Lukasiewicz, such skepticism was exactly what led the government to approach his company in the first place.

While Sierra Leone does have a history of largely peaceful general elections since its civil war, a number of violent incidents were reported in the days leading up to the event.

Further doubt was cast on the integrity of the leading All People's Congress (APC) party, when the nation's Accountant General found a reported $5.7 million in aid money had gone missing, leading to accusations of fraud and corruption.

Facing such concerns about the reliability of the election, national authorities implementedmilitary support provisions that placed police in the streets, and the national electoral commission has been posting updates on its blog about difficulties with the voting process.

Still, Lukasiewicz said the current Sierra Leone government wanted to create an extra layer of transparency by using Agora's blockchain technology. In total, 17,745 sealed voting boxes were used, with 37 exhibiting various problems, according to the commission's site.

"We're coming in with fully auditable code, fully auditable voting processes," Lukasiewicz said.

"We're really bringing something to the table where a voter themselves can audit the election."

Sierra Leone voting image via Shutterstock
 
So a buddy of mine was trying to explain to me that if you form a LLC (or in my case an S Corp) and “gift” your crypto to your company, it’s a non taxable event. Then you can either get a flat tax around 21% instead of getting taxed capital gains for each trade or put it in a self directed IRA and trade tax free. Anyone has any experience with this? My apologies if this subject has been discussed before...
 
suntannedsuperman757 said:
So a buddy of mine was trying to explain to me that if you form a LLC (or in my case an S Corp) and “gift” your crypto to your company, it’s a non taxable event. Then you can either get a flat tax around 21% instead of getting taxed capital gains for each trade or put it in a self directed IRA and trade tax free. Anyone has any experience with this? My apologies if this subject has been discussed before...
Click to expand...
Yea...what he said..
 
suntannedsuperman757 said:
So a buddy of mine was trying to explain to me that if you form a LLC (or in my case an S Corp) and “gift” your crypto to your company, it’s a non taxable event. Then you can either get a flat tax around 21% instead of getting taxed capital gains for each trade or put it in a self directed IRA and trade tax free. Anyone has any experience with this? My apologies if this subject has been discussed before...
Click to expand...
Found this.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tax-free-ways-to-transfer-bitcoin-and-other-crypto-expert-take

Despite recent corrections in crypto markets, you might have some big gains in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But taxes are an ever-present danger, and it is clear that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking for reporting. With all the worry about so-called 1031 tax-free exchanges that can no longer be used for cryptocurrency, are there any other ways to transfer your crypto without triggering taxes? Here are some ideas, each way has pluses and minuses.

Contributing to a corporation or partnership
How about contributing your cryptocurrency to a corporation or partnership that you will control? In general, transferring property into a corporation in exchange for its stock is a taxable event.

That is, the transaction is treated as if you sold the property to the corporation in return for cash. The difference between the stock value you received, and the tax basis in the property you transferred to the corporation, will result in a gain or loss. That means taxes. Of course, you generally don’t want this sale treatment.

Fortunately, Section 351 of the tax code generally allows people to transfer property to a corporation in exchange for stock without trigger tax, even if the property is appreciated. The corporation can be either an S corporation (basically taxed as a flow-through) or a C corporation (that itself pays taxes). The corporation can be newly organized or already existing.

Of course, some requirements must be met. But if you meet them, some gains on an exchange of property for stock can be delayed. The IRS can tax it later when the shareholder eventually sells the stock received in the exchange. No gain or loss is triggered as long as you receive only stock in exchange for your property and you are in control of the corporation immediately after the exchange.

The control means the ownership of stock possessing at least 80 percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock entitled to vote and at least 80 percent of the total number of outstanding shares of all other classes of stock of the corporation. If you, along with others, transfer property into a corporation, you can do this as a group. So you don’t have to have control personally.

The same kind of thing can work for partnership or LLC. Contributions of property or money in exchange for partnership interest are usually non-recognition events. In a way that is similar to the rule for corporations, the contributions can be tax-free, both to the contributing partner and to the partnership.

For partnerships, this non-recognition rule is contained in Section 721(a) of the Tax Code. It generally applies regardless of whether the contribution is made on the formation of the partnership or after it has been in existence and operating for some time. But there are some potential traps, more so with partnerships than with corporations. For example, this non-recognition rule does not apply to transactions between the partnership and a partner acting outside his capacity as a partner, or when the purported contribution is a disguised sale.

Moreover, under Section 721(b), the no tax rule also does not apply to gain realized upon a contribution of property to a partnership “investment company,” where the contribution results in the diversification of the transferor’s assets. All of these issues that can trigger taxes can be hard to spot.

How about gifts?
You can give crypto as a gift, and it doesn’t trigger income taxes. That’s right, no income tax to you as the donor, and no income tax to the recipient. Of course, when the recipient transfers or sells it, there would be income taxes then.

And at that point, the donee would need to calculate gain or loss. What is his or her tax basis, since it was a gift? The tax basis is the same as it was in your hands when you made the gift.

Keep in mind that to avoid income taxes, a gift has to be really a gift. The tax law is littered with cases of people who claimed something was a gift, but who got stuck with income taxes. With gifts not being subject to income taxes, it can seem tempting to try to characterize money or property you receive as gifts. But be careful: the IRS hears this ‘it was a gift’ excuse a lot.

And the IRS is unlikely to be persuaded unless you can document it. Plus, the IRS will expect a gift to occur in a normal gift-like setting. For example, if an employer or former employer gives a loyal employee $10,000 is that a gift? No, it is a bonus, treated as wages. Even trying to document it as a gift may not change that result.

True gifts may not trigger any income taxes, but there could be gift taxes involved. If you give crypto to a friend or family member —to anyone really— ask how much it is worth. If the gift is worth more than $15,000, it requires you to file a gift tax return. For 2018, $15,000 is the amount of so-called “annual exclusion.” You can give gifts up to this amount each year to any number of people with no reporting required.

Any gifts over that $15,000 amount require a gift tax return, even though you may not have to pay any gift tax. Rather than paying it, you normally would use up a small portion of your lifetime exclusion from gift and estate tax. For 2018, that number went up dramatically. The amount you can transfer tax-free during your life or on death just went up to $11.2 mln per person. That is $22.4 mln per married couple.
 
With so much FUD, what are some of yall trusted sources of crypto info & news?

I need to research & educate myself without getting lost in the rabbit hole
 
gene cisco said:
Found this.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tax-free-ways-to-transfer-bitcoin-and-other-crypto-expert-take

Despite recent corrections in crypto markets, you might have some big gains in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But taxes are an ever-present danger, and it is clear that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is looking for reporting. With all the worry about so-called 1031 tax-free exchanges that can no longer be used for cryptocurrency, are there any other ways to transfer your crypto without triggering taxes? Here are some ideas, each way has pluses and minuses.

Contributing to a corporation or partnership
How about contributing your cryptocurrency to a corporation or partnership that you will control? In general, transferring property into a corporation in exchange for its stock is a taxable event.

That is, the transaction is treated as if you sold the property to the corporation in return for cash. The difference between the stock value you received, and the tax basis in the property you transferred to the corporation, will result in a gain or loss. That means taxes. Of course, you generally don’t want this sale treatment.

Fortunately, Section 351 of the tax code generally allows people to transfer property to a corporation in exchange for stock without trigger tax, even if the property is appreciated. The corporation can be either an S corporation (basically taxed as a flow-through) or a C corporation (that itself pays taxes). The corporation can be newly organized or already existing.

Of course, some requirements must be met. But if you meet them, some gains on an exchange of property for stock can be delayed. The IRS can tax it later when the shareholder eventually sells the stock received in the exchange. No gain or loss is triggered as long as you receive only stock in exchange for your property and you are in control of the corporation immediately after the exchange.

The control means the ownership of stock possessing at least 80 percent of the total combined voting power of all classes of stock entitled to vote and at least 80 percent of the total number of outstanding shares of all other classes of stock of the corporation. If you, along with others, transfer property into a corporation, you can do this as a group. So you don’t have to have control personally.

The same kind of thing can work for partnership or LLC. Contributions of property or money in exchange for partnership interest are usually non-recognition events. In a way that is similar to the rule for corporations, the contributions can be tax-free, both to the contributing partner and to the partnership.

For partnerships, this non-recognition rule is contained in Section 721(a) of the Tax Code. It generally applies regardless of whether the contribution is made on the formation of the partnership or after it has been in existence and operating for some time. But there are some potential traps, more so with partnerships than with corporations. For example, this non-recognition rule does not apply to transactions between the partnership and a partner acting outside his capacity as a partner, or when the purported contribution is a disguised sale.

Moreover, under Section 721(b), the no tax rule also does not apply to gain realized upon a contribution of property to a partnership “investment company,” where the contribution results in the diversification of the transferor’s assets. All of these issues that can trigger taxes can be hard to spot.

How about gifts?
You can give crypto as a gift, and it doesn’t trigger income taxes. That’s right, no income tax to you as the donor, and no income tax to the recipient. Of course, when the recipient transfers or sells it, there would be income taxes then.

And at that point, the donee would need to calculate gain or loss. What is his or her tax basis, since it was a gift? The tax basis is the same as it was in your hands when you made the gift.

Keep in mind that to avoid income taxes, a gift has to be really a gift. The tax law is littered with cases of people who claimed something was a gift, but who got stuck with income taxes. With gifts not being subject to income taxes, it can seem tempting to try to characterize money or property you receive as gifts. But be careful: the IRS hears this ‘it was a gift’ excuse a lot.

And the IRS is unlikely to be persuaded unless you can document it. Plus, the IRS will expect a gift to occur in a normal gift-like setting. For example, if an employer or former employer gives a loyal employee $10,000 is that a gift? No, it is a bonus, treated as wages. Even trying to document it as a gift may not change that result.

True gifts may not trigger any income taxes, but there could be gift taxes involved. If you give crypto to a friend or family member —to anyone really— ask how much it is worth. If the gift is worth more than $15,000, it requires you to file a gift tax return. For 2018, $15,000 is the amount of so-called “annual exclusion.” You can give gifts up to this amount each year to any number of people with no reporting required.

Any gifts over that $15,000 amount require a gift tax return, even though you may not have to pay any gift tax. Rather than paying it, you normally would use up a small portion of your lifetime exclusion from gift and estate tax. For 2018, that number went up dramatically. The amount you can transfer tax-free during your life or on death just went up to $11.2 mln per person. That is $22.4 mln per married couple.
Click to expand...

I'm no accountant, but the way this reads, it seems like whether or not you can get away with it depends on the IRS' mood that day.
 
Confucius said:
Man this shit is demoralizing...everything continues to plummet
Click to expand...

thats the game son, Im just forgetting about what I am holding till next year..

once the govt and goldman sach got involved you had to expect a lot of fud and fuckery..

it will prevail, it will just make the ride up more enjoyable...

if you want to sell now go ahead, Im prepared to hold on for a few years if I have to..
 
Mrfreddygoodbud said:
thats the game son, Im just forgetting about what I am holding till next year..

once the govt and goldman sach got involved you had to expect a lot of fud and fuckery..

it will prevail, it will just make the ride up more enjoyable...

if you want to sell now go ahead, Im prepared to hold on for a few years if I have to..
Click to expand...

Have to hold. You basically 'old' money in the game right now if you got solid alts. Game is soon all about accredited investors feasting, but folks who got in early and didn't panic will still eat. Game is just getting much harder.

But posts on BGOL predicted the shit. Stay a few steps ahead.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top