Congress’s infrastructure bill may not be great for the U.S. crypto sector, but that there’s a tax provision at all shows lawmakers recognize the industry’s permanence.
The U.S. Congress has been talking about crypto for years, and we’re finally getting a sense of what sort of regulations lawmakers might enforce. The biggest issue is a controversial tax provision in the Senate’s infrastructure bill.
Infrastructure Week
The narrative
What a week. Seven days ago, the biggest thing on my radar was a trio of congressional hearings on crypto. By Thursday, we had two massive bills seeking to enforce regulations on the industry in different ways. The first bill, the Senate’s trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure effort, would broaden the definition of a “broker” to capture all sorts of entities for the purposes of crypto tax collection. The second, by Rep. Don Beyer (D.-Va.), is much more of a long shot, but is the most comprehensive effort to regulate crypto yet.
Why it matters
The infrastructure bill has sparked controversy in the crypto world because of just how broad its definition of a “broker” originally was. A revised version, and the one that’s in the actual bill introduced late Sunday, tones the definition down a tiny bit in that it no longer explicitly includes decentralized exchanges as brokers. But it doesn’t explicitly exclude crypto miners or node operators, either.
The main takeaway is that crypto has gotten on lawmakers’ radar as an industry that is permanent enough to help fund the government.
Breaking it down
Okay, so the plus side for the crypto industry is that the attention lawmakers are giving it is a recognition that crypto is not just a casino that’s going to disappear when traders get bored. Congress clearly expects this industry to stick around long enough to generate at least $28 billion in tax revenue for the infrastructure bill. It’s arguably the most concrete recognition of crypto from Congress, and yes, I’m including all of the hearings Congress has hosted in recent months.
source of news:coindesk
