FTX

• -          Among the Top 5 CEXs, Bitget had the second-highest increase in market shares, growing by 1.81% to reach 8.7%.
• -          BGB token became the best-performing CEX token in 2023 with an 80% surge in trading volume, outperforming BTC year-to-date;
  -          Bitget was the only CEX to increase its futures trading volume in 2023 following the FTX collapse.
• According to the TokenInsight Crypto Exchange Report 2023 Q2 , Bitget ranked among the Top 4 exchanges, collectively accounting for over 85% of the total market.
• In the spot market, Bitget doubled its market share to 6% in Q2.

• ByBarter provides an independent route for on and off ramping directly from self-custody wallets; the only tool used to access the Decentralized crypto and DeFi space.
• With over $45 billion in Total Value Locked in the decentralized crypto space, the ByBarter Team made up of some ex-Twitter and Amazon developers are optimistic that decentralized crypto requires independence from centralized systems in order to foster growth.
• “It is senseless for decentralized crypto enthusiasts to depend absolutely on Centralized exchanges for funding and withdrawals from self-custody wallets.
• Over 1 billion unbanked adults can now seamlessly access crypto using their self-custody wallets on ByBarter.

• Though the statistics are inexact, some surveys suggest as many as 21% of Australian adults now own crypto assets (and that a further 8% have owned them in the past).
• If you managed to make gains in the past year, you may need to pay extra tax.
• This isn’t based just on when you convert your crypto assets into Australian dollars.

How the tax office treats crypto assets

• The Australian Tax Office treats cryptocurrency holdings like other investment assets, such as company shares or real estate.
• But for individuals – “mum and dad” investors – the key point is that capital gains tax is effectively the same as income tax.
• A capital gain is added to your assessable income, and therefore to the income tax you owe.

How do I record my gains (or losses)

• The big exception to this is if you use cryptocurrency as actual currency, to buy goods for personal use – such as a meal, concert ticket or white goods for your home.
• If you use crypto to buy a personal use asset for less than A$10,000, you can usually disregard the capital gain.
• The longer you’ve held crypto, the more likely the tax office is to regard it as an investment, and deny the exemption.

Calculating the capital gain

• That transaction wouldn’t have involved Australian dollars – but the tax office still expects you to report the capital gain as if it had.
• So what was the capital gain on that hypothetical transaction?

Do I pay tax on all my capital gain?

• For any asset held longer than 12 months, you only have to pay tax on half the capital gain – what the tax office describes as a 50% discount.
• You input this information into the tax return by answering key questions set out in Question 18 of the individual tax return.

Can crypto tax software help?

• These are particularly useful if you transact often, or have a number of crypto wallets.
• But you will still need to double-check the results before relying on them to complete your tax return.
• You may need to add information manually – and it is your responsibility to ensure you are reporting to the tax office correctly.

What if I don’t declare?

• The tax office has ways to match data from sources such as digital exchanges to identify possible tax evasion.
• It is not intended as professional, legal or tax advice, for this you should consult a suitably qualified accountant or other professional.
• The tax law and Australian Tax Office position is subject to both prospective and retrospective changes.

• Because of these factors, and other concerns over cryptocurrencies’ carbon emissions, these assets lost US$2 trillion in value (£1.5 trillion) in 2022.
• Hundreds of years ago, workers in Wales were often paid with alternative currencies instead of money.
• These currencies were physical tokens that represented and were linked to the value of real money.

Currency crisis

• But living in towns required money, and the ability to pay wages was impossible for businesses without small change.
• With an influx of new workers using money, new shops were opened to meet demand, creating more jobs that required payment in coins.
• The first great era of token production during the first Industrial Revolution began in 1787 with the issue of the Parys Mining Company token.
• It briefly produced more copper than any other mine in the world during the Industrial Revolution.
• The workers, given the limited places they could spend scrips, had little choice but to purchase goods at company-owned stores.