Bitcoin Businesses Push for Relaxed Startup Rules in California
A group of bitcoin businesses have drafted a letter to members of California's Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee following the state's most recent update of its proposed regulation for bitcoin and digital currencies. Signed by BitGo, Bitnet, Blockstream, Chain, Gem, Mirror and Xapo, the letter praises the Senate for its most recent changes to AB 1326, particularly its elimination of certain redundant licensing and modification of its definition of "virtual currency business". Perhaps most notably, however, the startups called on California to go a step further before the....
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Thailand has relaxed tax rules for cryptocurrency investors, scrapping its planned 15% withholding tax. “The revenue department did a lot of homework and reached out to crypto operators as well to get feedback … It is much more friendly to both investors and the industry,” said the CEO of a crypto exchange.
Thailand’s New Crypto Tax Rules
Thailand has scrapped its plan to impose a 15% withholding tax on cryptocurrency transactions after facing pushback from the crypto industry. The Thai Revenue Department has also published a manual outlining the new....
The ongoing debate about the role of governments in regulating digital currencies isn't going away anytime soon. While the dustup over New York's BitLicense program continues, another front has opened up in California where a member of the state assembly has introduced a bill to regulate California's digital currencies businesses. The Washington, D. C. -based Coin Center and the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) each have lobbied hard against the New York Department of Financial Services attempts to regulate New York businesses with its controversial BitLicense....
There are many ways for an establishment in corporate industry to prevent new market competitors. The most common way in current Western culture is through "influencing" local or federal legislators to craft laws that would make creating innovations, new competitors, and small businesses less than feasible. Make the paperwork and regulation so time-consuming and onerous to process that new businesses will exhaust all their resources. Or you can make the costs involved in entering a market so large that only the established corporations can participate. Regulators in The State of California....
California’s AB 786, a piece of legislation that will make doing in-state business easier for Bitcoin startups, passed in early September. This amends California Money Transmission Act with a couple of key points: Businesses that pay their employees’ salaries in Bitcoin might qualify for a payroll exemption. Minimum capital requirements are reduced for a Bitcoin startup that operates in the payments or remittance markets. The MTA initially imposed strict requirements on California-based business classified as money transmitters, and these are enforced by the Department of Business....
The state of California is once again moving forward with legislation that would update its money transmitter rules to capture businesses engaged in digital currency activities. Deemed inactive last September, Assembly Bill 1326 was re-introduced by the legislature this week and has since been read and amended. Given the discussion that surrounded earlier versions of the bill, the update is already being scrutinized, though signs suggest pros and cons remain. Most notably, the bill no longer proposes to license businesses engaged in financial applications of the technology, but would....