Indonesia's Ministry of Finance has reported that the total tax revenue from cryptocurrency in 2023 was $31.7 million. However, the country's tax revenue fell by 62% last year compared to the partial collection period in 2022, when the tax regime was introduced. Crypto transactions in Indonesia are subject to dual taxation, which includes a 0.1% income tax and a 0.11% value-added tax, while local crypto exchanges must contribute around 0.04% tax to the national crypto bourse. Despite bitcoin's 159% increase in 2023, Indonesia's crypto tax revenue experienced a downturn, paralleling a 51% decrease in the country's crypto transaction volumes during the same period. Local exchanges have protested the high tax rates and suggested that crypto transactions should only be subject to income tax, not VAT.

Since 2020, MicroStrategy has primarily been a Bitcoin holding company. Yes, they engage in other activities, but the bulk of their business value stems from the Bitcoins they possess. During this period, MicroStrategy's stock (MSTR) has frequently outperformed Bitcoin (BTC).

One question that I often get when discussing consumer app ideas leveraging crypto is “does this really have to be in web3”? This often leads to an exposition on how building a web2 counterpart would be substantially difficult or simply not work. The intention of this post is to provide a comprehensive analysis on game theory and its applications in web3. Game theory is a more generalized approach and covers governance, token models, decentralization et al. I believe this new framework can be leveraged to build powerful applications. The right incentives can propel the society in a good direction.

Imagine a billionaire kidnapped a random person and said:  Here is a camera, banana, bicycle, sundress, and porcupine; you have one day to make a funny video using them all. I’ll upload it to YouTube, and if it gets “enough” views in the first day, I’ll give you $10B. If not, I’ll kill you and your closest twenty relatives. No, I’m not going to tell you my “enough” threshold. Go.

In crypto, there’s often what Toby Shorin, Laura Lotti, and Sam Hart from Other Internet calls a “regression to the code”.

Crypto has found a vast majority of its product-market fit by $ value from being alternative or speculative store-of-value. This is why BTC is still dominant, 15 years in. ETH has also found monetary properties circa 2020. Both combined command over 75% of the market excluding stablecoins, and even higher in terms of liquidity. Tokens such as XRP and ADA have also found not-insignificant lasting demand.

At the end of every year we come together and discuss some of the biggest changes we’re expecting in the year ahead. For the first time, we’re publishing these ideas. Please feel free to reach out to any of us to discuss these ideas further.

A court battle between a novel bank that wants to do business in crypto and the Federal Reserve Board is coming to a head. Zoom in: The central question in this case is whether a politically motivated Fed intervened in a process conducted by one of the reserve banks it oversees, wrongfully denying Custodia Bank a Fed master account.

Crypto's animating purpose was to develop incorruptible institutions. However, various attempts to embed these structures in a broader social fabric, from DAOs to crypto-network states, have largely failed. We draw from Lawrence Lessig's legal theories to explain why. Protocol designers work with markets and code but frequently ignore the vital institutional functions served by social norms and the law itself. The absence of these regulatory functions considerably limits the forms of pro-social behavior that can be fostered or enforced.

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index has dropped to a "neutral" reading for the first time in three months, following the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The index has a rating of 52 over the past 24 hours, its lowest since October 19, 2023, when Bitcoin traded at a daily average of $31,000. Despite the ETF announcement, Bitcoin has been down 2.9% over the past week and is currently trading at the $42,500 level. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index tracks investor sentiment toward crypto markets and may signal buy opportunities just as excess greed levels could foreshadow impending price corrections. However, there is uncertainty around the impact of Bitcoin ETFs, and the long-term effects of increased institutional crypto access remain unclear.