How Israeli VCs Are Doubling Down on DeFi Startups

The Bitcoin community in Israel has made considerable waves over the past year. A meetup group that, one year ago, had less than twenty people attending every month, now has over sixty people attending every two weeks, with a record of over three hundred in April. The Israeli Bitcoin Facebook group recently grew to over 800 members, an impressive amount for a country of only eight million. Tel Aviv, a city of 410,000, has no less than three Bitcoin-accepting restaurants - a higher density than even that of Berlin. Finally, perhaps most importantly of all, Israel is know worldwide for being....

Israeli lawmakers have proposed in a draft new law to treat bitcoin as a currency instead of an asset for tax purposes, local media reported. According to a report from Globes, four legislators from the Yisrael Beiteinu political party presented the Income Tax Ordinance (Taxation of the Sale of Digital Currencies) bill in the Israeli parliament Knesset on September 22. The bill by the four – MK Oded Forer, Yevgeny Soba, Yulia Malinovsky, and Alex Kushnir – proposes several changes to crypto taxation, including the amendment of the existing tax law to exempt digital assets like....

Digital asset manager Grayscale has launched a new DeFi fund with CoinDesk Indexes, according to a press release. The Grayscale Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Fund will offer its clients exposure to some of the major tokens in the sector. The fund will track the CoinDesk DeFi Index, created on May 10, 2021, to “measure the investable […]

Israeli business newspaper Globes is reporting that the Israeli government is mulling the possibility of imposing a tax on profits from Bitcoin. The article states that the Israel Tax Authority is considering the move based on the idea that anyone who makes profits from Bitcoin owes taxes. It was unclear how exactly a tax on Bitcoin profits would be levied, though, as Israel has yet to even recognize Bitcoin as an official currency. Israeli Bitcoin exchange Bits of Gold’s CEO, Jonathan Rouach, suggests the tax authority is not prepared for the necessary paradigm shift to even know where to....

The number of fintech and cryptocurrency startups in Israel have increased in the past few years, strengthing the country's position in the sector. Israel has been one of the fastest growing startup hubs for a while, now the country is also making a place for itself in the financial technology map. The majority of startups in the Israeli startup ecosystem are now focused on fintech and blockchain technology. According to reports, the number of startups in the fintech sector has increased fourfold from 90 to 430 within a span of 7 years. The cryptocurrency industry has already seen a....