Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are constantly making the media for their outrageous price fluctuations, but underneath the coins there is a solid and revolutionary technology that can change the way we do business forever. Recent surveys have shown that experts think transformations are on the way, and most want to be on board and reap the benefits.

Blockchain is a public digital ledger of transactions. New transactions are encrypted and recorded on blocks. Computing power is required to solve the equations and crack the algorithm of the block (known as mining). Once the equations are cracked, the block is added to the chain, and a permanent record made.

It might sound complicated, but the blockchain is basically a digital record of transactions which is validated and stored in a decentralised way. You send a Bitcoin, it’s recorded on the blockchain. You receive a Bitcoin, it’s also recorded on the blockchain.

In a recent survey of 279 tech specialists, commissioned by the BTL Group, 87% of respondents felt that the blockchain could change the way they do business, and could offer solutions for privacy and security. This is important given that 29% of respondents considered data privacy to be their highest priority.

[Read more…]

So you’ve followed the top personalities in crypto, started buying and selling some Bitcoin, then bought some Ether, and perhaps even ventured further to buy some Dash and Litecoin. After some time, seeing that you’re profiting massively, you decide to sell some of your tokens. Sometime later, you decide to buy a new token that you believe will revolutionize the world.

The problem is, of course, keeping track of all these purchases and sales. You want to keep track of whether you’re actually turning a profit or not, plus you need to present your results to the taxman come end of year.

So what are your options? Surprisingly few, I discovered.

Here are the three best online cryptocurrency portfolio trackers:

Cointracker

Cointracker is the most complete portfolio tracker on the market. They have automatic import from exchanges built-in, and the interface is very clean. Their support is fantastic, and best of all, everything is free for those with few transactions. This is the system I would have built if I had to build a tracker myself.

If you’re a power user then there are several well-priced tiers that are completely affordable.

The main reason I see is that Cointracker calculates the taxes every year for you. Given that it’s still so hard to find competent accountants who understand crypto, it’s well worth it to pay for a tool like this that prepares everything for you. At any point, you can review your tax summary, and download the reports you need to file your taxes. Cointracker is seamlessly integrated with TurboTax and your accountant’s software. Full support is offered in US, UK, Canada, Australia, and partial support for every other country.

You can not only connect it to your exchanges to pull in all the data about trades you’ve made, but you can also mark transfers to your Ledger Nano or other cold wallets so that they are not deducted from your overall balance.

In terms of exchanges, they practically support every exchange out there, including my favorites Kraken and Binance. You can import your data automatically via API or upload a CSV of all your trades. Cointracker uses read-only access to your exchange accounts to protect your funds. That is very very important as it means that Cointracker will never have any permission to operate with your crypto.

Sign up to Cointracker and get 10% off your first tax plan

Cryptocompare

Cryptocompare has a clean interface, and while it doesn’t have any exchange integrations (meaning you have to enter all trades manually), it does give you a very clear idea of how your portfolio is performing. You can also add more than one portfolio.

The big issue and deal-breaker is when you need to sell some crypto. There is no way to just enter the crypto you sold and select which cost basis to use.

Let’s sidetrack for a minute and talk about cost basis. Since Bitcoin is taxed as personal property, like shares of stock, investors theoretically have the option to sell their assets on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis, a last-in-first-out (LIFO) basis, or to sell those specific tax lots that are most efficient under the “specific share identification” method used for stocks.

Going back to Cryptocompare, imagine you made 60 purchases of varying amounts of Bitcoin, but always less than 1 Bitcoin. At a future point in time, you decide to dispose of 30 Bitcoin at one go. You would imagine that you would be able to open up your portfolio and enter the sale of 30 Bitcoin as a single transaction and have the tracker calculate your gains or losses based on all the other smaller previous purchases. But alas, this is not the case. The Cryptocompare portfolio expects you to select the original purchase transactions, and for each of those transactions record a corresponding sale. This gets very messy, very quickly. I was very disappointed by this situation, as I had spent a significant amount of time entering all the purchase trades manually, only to be stopped in my tracks by this issue when I made a sale.

I am still hoping that the Cryptocompare guys fix this issue by allowing us to select which cost basis to use, then enter sales trades separately from the original purchases. Until this is fixed, I wouldn’t recommend using Cryptocompare to track your portfolio, unless you are exclusively buying cryptos and not selling.

Altpocket

This is a social platform mixed with a portfolio tracker. I don’t really care about the social elements, but the interface is very nice. It’s a very new tool that is currently free but will have a price attached in the near future. The biggest issue I have with it is that it doesn’t do automatic imports from Kraken, only Bittrex and Poloniex.

Cointracking

This is the oldest and most complete portfolio tracker. It has a bunch of features and is also available in several languages. Unfortunately, it also looks very old and is nowhere as slick as the other two options above. Its import facilities are unparalleled, however, so if you can forgive the ugly interface, it’s a usable option.

Have you used any other portfolio solutions to track your cryptocurrency? Let me know if you have found something ideal.

Cryptocurrency Portfolio Trackers on iOS and Android

Delta and Blockfolio are currently the best cryptocurrency portfolio trackers for smartphones. Delta seems particularly promising, and they should be releasing a desktop app later this year.

Implementing a Coin Tracker on Your WordPress Site

If you have your own website and want to display the price of certain cryptocurrencies you can use the excellent CryptoWP plugin. I use it myself on my cryptocurrency news aggregator CryptoHeadlines.com.

Have you thought about trading crypto?

n these volatile times, there is a big opportunity to make some money just trading Bitcoin. The idea is to buy when the price is suppressed and sell when it is rallying.

If you’re not confident doing that yourself, you can make use of a service like CopyTrading from eToro.

With CopyTrading, trades will be automatically copied to your account allowing you to manage your portfolio in a simple and transparent way. With over 3 million traders to choose from, you can interact with and copy multiple traders.

To get started, create your free eToro account. All information you submit is protected by the latest encryption technology and will not be shared with third parties. Once your account is created, select one of the available payment methods to fund it.

Use the eToro People page to find eToro’s best traders. Make sure to check the traders’  portfolios and trading stats. To base your copy trading portfolio on specific markets (i.e. crypto), use the eToro Markets page to see which investors are trading in the market of your choice.

Once you’ve found the crypto traders you want to copy, simply click on Copy to start copying their positions. You will be asked to specify the percentage of your funds you want to allocate for copying. The amounts for the copied trades will be calculated accordingly.

The trades made by those you’ve chosen will be automatically recreated in your account. You retain full control of your account and can take the trade over, or stop copying a trader altogether, at any time. Finally, always be on the lookout for new trading stars to add to your copy trading portfolio!

Disclaimer

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. 

Cryptoassets are volatile instruments that can fluctuate widely in a very short timeframe and therefore are not appropriate for all investors. Other than via CFDs, trading crypto assets is unregulated and therefore is not supervised by any EU regulatory framework. Your capital is at risk.

Hope you found this post useful. Be sure to check out my list of cryptocurrency resources for more resources on learning more about this asset class.

I became interested in Bitcoin and crypto assets in 2016 and after having spent a ton of my time learning how they work and what their investment case might be, I made up my mind that they were a good bet and purchased some cryptos.

I have maintained my position throughout the subsequent bull run of 2017 and the big fall of 2018. The following year, 2019, was a quiet one in terms of media mentions and public discussion of Bitcoin, although cryptos made a steady from the previous year’s fall. Indeed, if we look at Bitcoin’s performance compared to the S&P 500 and Gold in these early months of 2020, we can see that Bitcoin is outperforming the other assets.

However, I don’t really look at charts anyway, the basis for my investment is a philosophical one based on my belief that Bitcoin solves a need as a totally independent store of value that is not at the mercy of any government or company. I am happy to invest some of my net worth in cryptos for this reason, and I know that I’ll be happy about my decision in the future whether prices rise or fall, as it is based on that reasoning and not just speculation.

What is the place of crypto in an investor’s portfolio?

As we have seen during the Coronavirus scare, Bitcoin is not inversely correlated to the equity market, and will not rise every time the market falls.

I do think though that Bitcoin can be thought of as a hedge asset, so let’s explore what we would be hedging against.

Cryptoassets offer a hedge primarily against two things:

1. Large monetary disarrangements: currency debasement, rampant price inflation, central bank and fiscal policies gone awry, etc.
2. Geopolitical risks that could lead to government actors seizing, freezing, or egregiously taxing citizens’ assets.

As this article from Barron’s argues, it is not a hedge against everything.

For instance, the late February 2020 pullback in the equity markets was driven by concerns that the coronavirus outbreak would disrupt supply chains and cause a severe shortfall in corporate profits. Bitcoin doesn’t have much to say about that. There’s nothing about Bitcoin that smooths the flow of goods around the world, or buoys corporate bottom lines in times of stress. Why would it rally in the face of those challenges?

See also: Is this the right time to buy Bitcoin?

While crypto is a hedge, it’s specific types of risks that motivate investors to turn to Bitcoin. Knowing that can help one make sense of its moves.

Crypto assets have so far shown to be uncorrelated with other assets, making them a perfect hedge and in my opinion, deserving a place in investors’ portfolios as a diversification tool.

How to buy cryptocurrencies

To buy cryptocurrencies you will need to first transfer fiat money into an exchange, and then purchase whichever crypto you want.

Some of my favorite exchanges are:

• Kraken
• Coinbase
• Binance
• Bitwala
• Bitpanda
• eToro

Here are some cryptos you can look at as a long-term investment:

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Dash
• Litecoin
• Monero

There are various strategies you can use to invest in cryptos, just choose the one that most suits your profile.

Out of all cryptocurrencies, I think Bitcoin remains the number one asset for long-term investing. It is possibly the only investment asset with a Sharpe ratio higher than one, so the returns are actually higher than its volatility.

How to Transfer Fiat Currency to a Crypto Exchange

In order to be able to buy cryptocurrencies on an exchange, you need to first transfer some Euro, USD, or other fiat currency. Many major commercial banks have unfortunately decided to make things difficult for people and businesses who want to buy cryptos from big exchanges such as Kraken and Binance.

Digital banks such as N26, Revolut, and TransferWise, which are otherwise great choices for your day to day needs, all impose restrictions on transfers to crypto exchanges, although Revolut lets you buy crypto assets directly from within the app. So that’s one option to keep in mind if you’re absolutely stuck not being able to transfer fiat to an exchange.

See also: Cryptocurrencies vs Fiat Currencies

The key thing to understand is that many of the local banks block transfers to a particular bank account. So if your favorite exchange has several bank accounts you can transfer into, try them all and see if the bank accepts any of them. You can also try a different exchange altogether. Just look at the exchanges I mentioned earlier, at least one of them will work for you. Banks typically only block transfers to the most famous and biggest exchanges.

The best exchange to try if you’re having problems with sending fiat, is without a doubt Binance. They’re the exchange that has the most options for transferring fiat currencies, and I can almost guarantee that you will manage to transfer money to them in order to buy a cryptocurrency.

I hope that helps all those of you who are stuck dealing with their banks. I don’t think it’s an insurmountable issue as cryptocurrencies are becoming more mainstream and exchanges are more regulated nowadays, so the financial sector is less concerned about these things.

How to Store your Bitcoin and other Crypto-assets

If you’re investing in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether and Monero, you are probably using an online exchange like Bitpanda or eToro to buy them in exchange for fiat currency.

Many people make the mistake of stopping there and keeping all their newly bought cryptos on the exchange itself. This is a classic newbie mistake and you might pay for it dearly if you don’t follow the advice in this post.

So what’s the problem with keeping your cryptocurrencies on the exchange? Well, you’re basically keeping your money in someone else’s wallet. So if a hacker gains access to that wallet (and all main exchanges are primary hacker targets) that hacker will gain access to your assets. This is not something hypothetical, it’s something that happened time and again. The most famous such case was the case of Mt Gox where thousands of people lost their investments when the site got hacked (allegedly).

Never keep your purchased cryptocurrency on the exchange. If the exchange is hacked, you might lose all your crypto. This has happened in the past and will most probably happen again in the future as no system is hack-proof.

Here are a number of ways people have lost bitcoin:

• User’s computer is hacked and web wallet password is stolen
• Web wallet server gets hacked and bitcoins are stolen
• Web wallet company goes bankrupt
• FBI or other enforcement agency confiscates coins
• Web wallet provider points to ToS violation and takes coins
• Owners of web wallet company run away with coins
• Bug in web wallet software leads to loss of coins
• Your computer or cell phone is stolen while you are logged in and thieves then steal your coins

Exchanges are designed for the trading of Bitcoin. They expect people to be depositing very large amounts of money, and want to ensure that gets handled properly. Withdrawing money from exchanges is not very convenient, because they assume people won’t be doing it very often and they want it to be safe and secure. Trying to make an online purchase using Bitcoin from your Kraken account won’t be as easy as using an actual wallet, and using it to make an in-person purchase at a store would be even worse!

The solution is to take your cryptocurrencies off the exchange and store them offline for maximum security. Note the keyword offline, which means that your private key must be stored in a format or container that is not connected to the Internet and thus can’t be electronically hacked.

The most convenient offline hardware wallets are those manufactured by a company called Ledger. They have two main products:

• Ledger Nano S – €59
• Ledger Nano X – €119

The Ledger Nano X is the newest product and has some cooler features when compared to the Nano S. Considering the difference in price, I would recommend the Ledger Nano S to most people. If you see anything in Ledger Nano X’s feature list that you absolutely can’t do without and the Ledger Nano S doesn’t have it, consider going for the Ledger Nano X.

Also, if you have big cryptocurrency investments, then perhaps the price of the Ledger Nano X is dwarfed in comparison to the investment and the added convenience of this device. The bottom line is you can’t go wrong whichever you choose. I have the Ledger Nano S and am happy with it.

Now, having a hardware wallet like the Ledger Nano S is all well and good, but you might be wondering what happens if you lose this tiny device. Would all your crypto be gone?

Nope, you can rest safely as long as you are in possession of the seed phrase. When you first set up your wallet on the Ledger devices, the device will ask you to write down a 24-word seed phrase that you should keep safe. In the packaging, you will find a card that is made specifically for you to write down the seed phrase on it. You then take this card and store it somewhere super safe. For example, you can store it in a bank security box. I would recommend making two copies of the seed phrase really, it’s too risky to rely on just one copy.

An alternative to the Ledger is the Trezor.

With your 24-word seed phrase can recover your wallet from any wallet supporting 24-word passphrases, compatible with:

• BIP39 wordlist,
• BIP32 (Hierarchical Deterministic wallets specifying a generic key derivation method)
• and BIP44 (specifying how the keys are derived) standards.

For maximum safety, I would recommend that you buy another Ledger Nano or Trezor offline hardware wallet compatible with the 24-word seed phrase and restore to that device.

It is important to store the 24-word seed phrase securely, not running around on a piece of paper and definitely not stored on your computer. One good way to do it is using the Billfodl.

What about paper wallets?

Paper wallets were the standard method of cold storage before hardware wallets were built. Paper wallets are private keys printed out on a piece of paper. If generated and printed with a secure, offline computer, paper wallets are secure cold storage.

The main problem with paper wallets is it can be inconvenient to create and print a new wallet each time you send funds to cold storage. However, it’s possible to bulk print paper wallets to save time and eliminate address reuse. Our cold storage guide explains step-by-step how to create a secure paper wallet.

What are hot wallets?

Hot wallets refer to Bitcoin wallets used on internet-connected devices like phones, computers, or tablets. Because hot wallets run on internet-connected devices there is always a risk of theft. Think of hot wallets like your wallet today. You shouldn’t store any significant amount of bitcoins in a hot wallet, just as you would not walk around with your savings account as cash.

If only used with small amounts, hot wallets should be used for your everyday Bitcoin needs. One may, for example, want to keep $200 worth of bitcoins in a hot wallet for spending, with $10,000 locked away in cold storage.

If it were me, I’d at least use a hot wallet I controlled like Mycelium for Android or Breadwallet for iOS. You could always look into hardware wallets like Trezor if you are trading large amounts.

Hot wallets on smartphones:

• BreadWallet
• Edge
• Copay
• GreenAddress

Bitcoin desktop wallets:

• Jaxx
• Bitcoin Core
• Electrum
• MultiBit HD
• If you are dealing with large amounts of bitcoins you will need a secure wallet. Hardware wallets and secure offline wallets like Armory are good options.
• Use combinations. Use a mobile wallet as your checking account, and a hardware or secure offline wallet as your savings account. Mix and match to find a combination that provides both security and accessibility.

Again, the best way to store your precious cryptocurrency is to buy a hardware wallet, thus having your crypto stored offline away from any danger of getting hacked.

My favorite hardware wallet is the Ledger Nano X.

Another option is to use Ballet crypto wallet. You can use the coupon code 5PERCENT to get 5% off the sale price of the Ballet wallet.

Bitcoin Security

Keeping your crypto safe can be a long and complex topic, and it’s an area where we will be seeing a lot of improvements in the coming years. There are custody solutions which I listed in my cryptocurrency resources article, but there are also some other guides that I would recommend reading right away:

• Wealth security protocal by Casa

Best Crypto Debit Cards

Crypto debit cards are one of the most important elements needed for the crypto space to continue growing. With such cards, you don’t need to worry about holding fiat currencies, you can just hold cryptos and whenever you’re at a shop you can just swipe your crypto debit card and the corresponding part of your crypto will be converted to the fiat currency that the merchant uses in order to make your payment and get your goods or services.

Here are the best crypto debit cards we can use at the moment:

• Wirex

Binance have also announced that they will soon launch their own debit card, which should be a huge push to the sector.

What is Bitcoin’s value proposition?

Bitcoin is:

• Unconfiscatable
• Uncensorable
• Uninflatable

If you don’t understand why it is important for your stored value to be unconfiscatable, please read about what happened to people who had deposits in Cypriot banks. Governments and financial institutions are no longer able to decide who gets to make money transfers and who can’t, or to whom donations and payments can flow (read about the wikileaks part in Bitcoin’s history). Bitcoin is also uninflatable, as there is a fixed money supply of 21 million bitcoin that can never be increased, unlike the government habits of printing money, with all its negative consequences.

Charts for Looking into Bitcoin

I really like this site for analysing Bitcoin stats, and of course Cryptowatch is excellent if you are trading or know how to use charting techniques.

Best Custody Solutions for Bitcoin

If you own a significant amount of crypto, the biggest problem you need to solve is how to solve it securely. Having your own cold storage devices is fine for some, but others want third party solutions that are even more bulletproof, although there is also the trusted third party risk to consider.

Here are a few solutions that you should check out:

• Unchained Capital
• Swiss Crypto Vault by Bitcoin Suisse
• Casa
• BitGo
• Gemini
• Xapo
• Ledger Vault

Are Cryptocurrencies a fraud and a scam?

Many have pronounced Bitcoin dead over the years, while others have said that it’s a scam or a fraud. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, famously also took aim at bitcoin, calling the cryptocurrency “a fraud” and “worse than tulip bulbs.”

Understandably, this came as a bit of a shock to the lay people who don’t really understand the fundamentals of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. As I said, this is by no means the first time that someone has pronounced Bitcoin dead or denounced cryptocurrencies, but unfortunately, statements from such prominent people always make the news.

Let’s be clear, Dimon’s firm is one of the chief architects of the global financial crisis that led to the interest in a somewhat arcane cryptocurrency in the first place. There would be no bitcoin without Jamie Dimon — and in some ways he’s right to fear its rise.

As a Vanity Fair piece revealed, JPMorgan Chase paid out $13 billion (with a “b”) to the U.S. government because of its role in the financial crisis and the mortgage security fiasco that almost destroyed the U.S. economy.

This goes to show that you need to be very careful where you’re getting your news and information from. There’s a lot of purely ridiculous stuff out there, especially in new spaces such as cryptocurrencies.

It is normal and actually recommended to approach Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies with a criticial mind. They are obviously highly speculative investments and have no intrinsic value. However, they are also a whole new type of asset. To try and compare them to tulip bulbs is just naive, as I discussed in a previous post. There is really no direct comparison to Bitcoin and cryptos throughout history, and that is what makes it so exciting.

Unlike fiat currency, Bitcoin is fully transparent and controlled. We know exactly how many Bitcoins will exist in 5, 10 or 50 years. If you take a look at history and the ways that fiat currency has been manipulated and how many people’s lives were instantly ruined during periods of hyperinflation, amongst other government triggered actions, you would be hard-pressed to name Bitcoin as a fraud and not fiat currencies.

The Biggest Hurdles that Bitcoin Faces

While I firmly believe that Bitcoin is here to stay and that we will see a massive increase in price over the coming years, there are still some big and important hurdles for this new technology to overcome before it can really go mainstream.

These are the big problems that need to be tackled by Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for hyperbitcoinization to have a real chance at happening.

Safe and Easy Storage Solutions

Cryptos can easily be lost or stolen by inexperienced users; this is one of the biggest problems I see as most people simply find it too technical or daunting to buy and store cryptocurrencies.

For those investors who are technical enough and have the resources to invest heavily, on the other hand, there is the significant headache of storing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth (or even millions) of crypto. Thankfully, we are seeing new crypto custody solutions popping up, but it’s still early days.

Peer-to-Peer Payments are Still Hard to Do

Most banks have implemented systems that allow P2P payments between friends in a really easy fashion. Although Bitcoin was invented to enabled such peer to peer transactions of value of any size, there is still some way to go until we can say that the average person knows how to do that via his smartphone. Transaction prices are still high for lower transfer values (but the lightning network promises to change that).

Bitcoin Payment Acceptance is Low

There was a time where many online sellers and even brick-and-mortar stores were adopting Bitcoin as a method of payment, but I see less of them these days.

The tax implications of paying for small items with Bitcoin can be big, as in many countries every sale of Bitcoin is a taxable event. So you need to keep track of every item you purchase with Bitcoin during the year (including coffees and other low-value purchases) and calculate the capital gains tax at the end of the year. Few people want to bother with that yet.

Even if we ignore the tax consequences, paying with Bitcoin is still not easy from an app point of view.

In many countries, Bitcoin is not legal tender and cannot be used to purchase big items like a house, car or even pay your taxes. Some states in the US and some countries allow it, but we’re still a long way off.

2017 ICO and Crypto Bubble

Many people still have the 2017 ICO and crypto bubble in their recent memory, where cryptos rose very quickly in value only to come crashing down again a few months later. A lot of people jumped on the bandwagon when the price was rising without knowing what they were getting into, and then logically got burned when the prices declined sharply.

These people are more likely to have written off Bitcoin as they try to stave off the painful memories of losing money. Those who invested in ICOs fared even worse as many ICOs were outright scams.

It’s Not Easy to Get Hold of Crypto

While in some of the more developed countries it is easy to get hold of crypto by purchasing them from an exchange like Kraken or Binance or in a peer to peer transaction, in a lot of countries it’s very hard to get an onramp and offramp to start working with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Many banks are still blocking transactions to and from Bitcoin exchanges, and without a way to get their fiat currencies onto an exchange people are thus blocked from getting hold of Bitcoin. The alternative would be to exchange services for Bitcoin, but I personally don’t know anyone who would be ready to pay for services in Bitcoin, so it’s hard to get hold of Bitcoin in this way.

Unclear Legislation

Many countries still have not clearly stated their position with regard to cryptocurrencies, while others have outright banned cryptos. It is important for people to know the following from their governments:

• Whether the buying and selling of cryptos implies a VAT-able transaction.
• Whether there are any capital gains taxes when selling at a profit.
• Whether the holding and usage of crypto is legal or not.

The answers to those questions mostly lies in what financial instrument it considers cryptocurrencies to be. Some treat them as currencies while others treat them as intangible assets; those are the two major categories we’ve seen so far. ICOs, for example, fell into a grey area as what a lot of the companies were selling were actually securities, and they needed to be classified as such.

Some governments also opt not to tax long term capital gains, while others due, implying a huge difference in the ultimate tax bill for investors.

China has banned crypto exchanges from operating in the country while India has announced a ban on the purchase and sale of crypto currencies.

To conclude, while it’s anyone’s guess where the value of Bitcoin will be in a few years time, or whether it will still be the leading cryptocurrency, there’s little doubt that blockchain technology is here to stay, and even institutions like banks and governments are investing huge amounts of money and resources into this technology.

If you’re interested in entering the space of cryptocurrency, make sure you educate yourself and follow news from reputable resources. I’ve already compiled a list of great cryptocurrency resources that you can use to start off.

You can also listen to my interview with Mitchell Callahan (Bitcoin expert), and you can find that Mastermind.fm podcast episode here.

Important note: I am not a financial advisor and cryptocurrencies are considered to be very high-risk investments. Only risk money you can afford to lose.

Here’s a collection of my favorite resources from the world of cryptocurrency, ICOs, tokens and blockchains.

If you’re new to the world of crypto and you’re feeling overwhelmed, I’ll start out with a section that’s just for you.

Learning about Crypto

If you’re new to crypto and you don’t know who to trust in this vast field that features many charlatans, here are my top go-to people:

• Andreas Antonopoulos
  • Youtube
  • Twitter
• Trace Mayer’s Bitcoin Knowledge podcast
• Andrea Antonopoulos
• Trace Mayer
• Jimmy Song
• Naval Ravikant

Crypto Twitter

• Matt D’Souza
• PlanB

Mining Pools

• F2Pool

Books

• Digital Gold
• The Bitcoin Standard
• Mastering Bitcoin
• The Internet of Money
• Cryptoassets
• Blockchain Bubble or Revolution
• Mastering Ethereum
• Programming Bitcoin
• The Little Bitcoin Book

Important Websites

• Bitcoin.org
• Ethereum Project
• Nakamoto Institute

Resource Websites

• Coin.dance
• Hand-illustrated guides to crypto

Cryptocurrency Funds

• Bitwise index fund
• Crypto fund costs

Crypto Tax Calculators

• Cointracker
• Cryptotrader
• Taxbit

News Sites

• Coindesk
• Cointelegraph
• Crypto Headlines

News Sites (Spanish)

• El Bitcoin

Newsletters

• Bravenewcoin
• Cryptocompare

Portfolio Managers

• Cointracker
• Excel sheet

Run Your Own Node

• Nodl

Exchanges

• Kraken
• Coinbase
• Binance
• Localbitcoins
• Bitpanda
• Bitwala
• Exmo
• Comparison of many platforms

Decentralized Exchanges

• Bisq

APIs

• Nomics

Price Predictions

• Nomics

Wallets

• Mobile wallet – MyCelium (Android)
• Mobile wallet – Jaxx (iOS)
• Hardware wallet – Ledger Nano X
• Hardware wallet – Trezor Model T
• How to make a paper wallet
• For Monero specifically: Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3

Price Alerts

• TargetMoon (10 free alerts)
• Coindera (free for email alert, paid for SMS alerts)
• Coinmarketalert
• Coinwink
• Cryptoloom

ICOs

• ICO Stats and performance
• ICO Calendar
• Valuing crypto tokens
• Useless Ethereum Token

Earn Bitcoin

• Microlancer

Stats and Analytics

• Clarkmoody’s dashboard
• Bytetree Terminal
• Santiment
• Currencies used to trade Bitcoin
• Barchart Crypto
• Bitinfocharts Crypto
• Intotheblock

Accepting Bitcoin Payments

• BTCPay
• Bitpay
• GoCrypto

Debit Cards

• Wirex
• Cryptopay
• Uquid
• Spectro

Charts

• Moonstats
• Cryptowatch
• Bitcoincharts
• Tradingview
• Wallminer
• Tradinglite
• Metatrader

Bitcoin ATMs

• FindBitcoinATM

Domain Registrars

• Unstoppable domains
• Ethereum Name Service

Trading Platforms

• Bitfinex
• Exmo

Crypto Trading

• Technical analysis for crypto

Courses

• Technical Analysis for Cryptocurrencies
• Entries and Exits

Forums

• BitcoinTalk
• Reddit
• Forobits (Spanish)

Podcasts

• What Bitcoin Did
• The Pomp
• Stephan Livera Podcast
• The Flippening
• Let’s Talk Bitcoin
• Epicenter
• The Bitcoin Game
• Bitcoin Knowledge Podcast
• The Gift of Bitcoin – excellent for beginners
• Tim Ferris Show feat. Nick Szabo – The Quiet Master of Cryptocurrency
• Kevin Rose and Andreas Antonopoulos on Bitcoin’s true potential
• Mastermind.fm – Bitcoin and Cryptos with Mitchell Callahan
• Mastermind.fm – Bitcoin and Cryptos with Mitchell Callahan – one year later

Videos on YouTube

• Andreas Antonopoulos
• BiteSizeBitcoin
• DataDash
• Off Chain with Jimmy Song

Articles

• What is Cryptocurrency?
• Money, Blockchains and Social Scalability by Nick Szabo
• A Beginner’s Guide to Ethereum
• What is Ethereum? A step-by-step guide
• Fat Protocols
• Why Bitcoin Matters
• Privacy coins; how they work and why they’re needed
• Why HODL not HOLD

White Papers

• Bitcoin white paper
• Ethereum white paper
• Dash white paper

Trading Bots and Automation

• Coinrule
• Shrimpy
• 3Commas
• Zenbot
• Gekko
• Kryll
• Gunbot
• Cryptohopper
• Tradesanta
• Zignaly
• Mudrex
• ExchangeValet

Privacy

• Hodl Privacy FAQ
• Bitcoin-only

WordPress Plugins

• CryptoWP

More Resource Lists

• Jameson Lopp’s list
• GitHub List

Any other resources I forgot to mention?

Cryptocurrencies as an asset class are a very new thing in general, having only existed for a few years. Governments around the world are still learning about them and subsequently enacting regulations and laws governing them.

One big question that many cryptocurrency investors are sure to have is this: How will my cryptocurrency holdings be taxed?

This is the question I’ll be tackling in this article. If you would like to read more about Bitcoin before, check out my guide to investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as well as my list of crypto resources.

If you already know how your country taxes Bitcoin and you just want to find a way to quickly prepare your taxes, I strongly suggest you take a look at Cointracker. This is a service that only tracks your crypto portfolio across various exchanges and cold storage devices, but can also prepare your taxes for you in a few minutes. If you do any trading or use bitcoin for payments this is an essential tool as you will have many transactions to record for tax purposes, and you can’t afford the possible mistakes that come from the tedious manual work of calculations.

Calculate your taxes with Cointracker

Cointracker is the service I use and recommend, I’m sure it will serve you well. Another alternative is Cryptotrader. Now let’s carry on with the explanations.

Cryptos only exist in a digital, virtual form and do not have any physical form. They can be used to make payments for goods and services, although no government has so far actively encouraged their use as an alternative currency. They are also popular as a store of value and for speculation, lending and trading purposes.

Cryptocurrencies are initially ‘mined’ but could subsequently be bought, exchanged, awarded, or granted. They do clearly meet the definition of an asset.

For tax purposes, the mining of cryptocurrencies is usually taxed in a similar way to the production of any other service. But what about when cryptos are bought and held as an investment? Where and how are they recorded on a company’s balance sheet?

Cryptos do not meet the accounting definition of cash as they are not legal tender, having not been issued or backed by any government or state.

Cash equivalents are short-term highly liquid investments that are readily convertible to known amounts of cash and which are subject to an insignificant risk of changes in value. Cryptos do not fall under this category either, as their value tends to vary widely from one day to the next. Moreover, there is only one party to a cryptocurrency, while investments that fall under this category involve two parties by their contractual nature.

Properties, Plant and Equipment or Investment Properties refer to physical assets, so we can eliminate cryptos immediately from this categorisation.

Inventories are assets that are held for sale in the ordinary course of business or used in the process of production for such sale. Cryptos can’t easily be put into this category unless perhaps if the holding of cryptos is purely for the regular trading of said assets.

Intangible assets are identifiable non-monetary assets without physical substance. They have three properties:

1. identifiable
2. non-monetary
3. without physical form.

This category acts as a catch-all category for all non-financial assets without physical form, and therefore is the most suitable categorization for cryptoassets, at least until a better category is invented and agreed upon within international accounting standards.

Therefore, the general principle that many countries seem to be moving towards is that of treating cryptocurrencies as “intangible property.” Investors and traders holding cryptocurrency as a capital asset should, therefore, use capital gain or loss tax treatment on sales and exchanges, with the realization method.

For example, if you buy Bitcoins with U.S. dollars and later sell them for U.S. dollars, a capital gain or loss needs to be reported on that transaction.

1. For tax purposes, cryptocurrency is property, not currency.
2. Unless you are in the business of selling cryptocurrency, the gain or loss from any sale of cryptocurrency is capital gain or loss, similar to stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

This means that using Bitcoin and other cryptos for payments makes it a huge hassle to deal with come tax time. Whenever you use Bitcoin to buy something online or offline, you are essentially making a trade. It doesn’t matter whether you receive fiat currencies in return or goods and services.

If you bought 1 Bitcoin at $100 and then you used that same Bitcoin to buy a car when the value of Bitcoin was $2500, you will need to declare a gain of $2400 to your government.

This might not seem too bad, but consider if you are using Bitcoin for daily transactions like groceries, Amazon purchases etc.

See also: The best cryptocurrency portfolio trackers

By the end of the year, you might have hundreds or thousands of small purchases, and you will need to calculate the gain or loss on each of those “trades”.

Another important question to tackle is how is bitcoin taxed when it is used as a means of receiving payments. Let’s say you are a consultant and clients pay you in bitcoin.

What you need to do in this case is to keep a note of the exchange rate on the day you received the payment, between bitcoin and your working currency. So if you received one bitcoin and the exchange rate on the day was 1 bitcoin = 5,000 euro, you will declare an income of 5,000 euro to your country’s tax authority.

Intangible assets are recognized initially at cost. Amortization is accounted for unless the intangible asset is deemed to have an infinite lifespan. Cryptocurrencies do have indefinite useful lives and would therefore not be amortized. After the initial purchase, an entity can choose to subsequently measure them at cost or at fair value. If the entity was a Bitcoin trader it would make more sense to subsequently measure its Bitcoin at fair value through profit or loss. In most other cases they’d be measured at cost less any impairment.

However the Bitcoin is accounted for, the entity would be prudent to make appropriate disclosures if its holdings were material or if it had a significant volume of Bitcoin-denominated transactions. It would also be prudent to contact the tax entity of the country of incorporation to seek clarification.

Until further clarification and guidance from governments, cryptocurrencies/cryptoassets appear to meet the definition of an intangible asset: identifiable as can be sold, exchanged or transferred individually; not cash and non-monetary asset; have no physical form.

Here are some links to countries that have taken an official stand on the classification and taxation of cryptocurrencies:

United States of America

• Read: IRS Notice 2014-21

The IRS guidance considers bitcoin as property and not a currency.

That’s good news for taxpayers with huge gains on using, investing or trading bitcoin. Since it receives capital gains treatment, if they held it over one year, the lower long-term capital gains tax rate applies.

Conversely, it’s bad news for those with large losses. According to the IRS guidance, bitcoin does not receive Section 988 ordinary loss treatment, which is unlimited; instead, it’s capital-loss treatment is limited to $3,000 per year.

The IRS guidance stresses a point — widely overlooked by many taxpayers — that using bitcoin to purchase an item or service triggers capital gain or loss recognition reflecting appreciation or depreciation of bitcoin. Compare the market price on the date bitcoin is used to make a purchase vs. the market price on the date you acquired that bitcoin, and the difference is a capital gain or loss on property.

Use FIFO when calculating profits or losses. This is the most conservative method, as FIFO is generally the least pro-Taxpayer of the methods. It’s hard to see the IRS issuing future guidance that would be less advantageous than FIFO.

United Kingdom

• Read: Brief 9 (2014)

In its formal Revenue & Customs Brief, published on Monday, the HMRC pointed out that for VAT purposes bitcoin and other digital currencies will be treated as follows.

1. Income received from bitcoin mining activities will generally be outside the scope of VAT. This is due to the fact that mining does not constitute an economic activity for VAT purposes, as there is an insufficient link between any services provided and any consideration received.
2. Income received by miners for other activities, such as for the provision of services in connection with the verification of specific transactions for which specific charges are made, will be exempt from VAT under Article 135(1)(d) of the EU VAT Directive as falling within the definition of ‘transactions, including negotiation, concerning deposit and current accounts, payments, transfers, debts, cheques and other negotiable instruments.’
3. When bitcoin is exchanged for Sterling or for foreign currencies, such as Euros or Dollars, no VAT will be due on the value of the bitcoins themselves.
4. Charges (in whatever form) made over and above the value of the Bitcoin for arranging or carrying out any transactions in Bitcoin will be exempt from VAT under Article 135(1)(d) as outlined at 2 above.

With VAT out of the way, the HMRC turned to Corporation Tax, Income Tax and Capital gains Tax. It is important to note that there is no clear rule that applies to all activities and organisations. The brief explains:

“Each case will be considered on the basis of its own individual facts and circumstances. The relevant legislation and case law will be applied to determine the correct tax treatment. Therefore, depending on the facts, a transaction may be so highly speculative that it is not taxable or any losses relievable.”

Businesses which accept payment in bitcoins will see no change in the way revenue is recognised and how taxable profits are calculated:

• Corporation Tax: The profits or losses on exchange movements between currencies are taxable. For the tax treatment of virtual currencies, the general rules on foreign exchange and loan relationships apply. We have not at this stage identified any need to consider bespoke rules.
• For companies, exchange movements are determined between the company’s functional currency (usually the currency in which the accounts are prepared) and the other currency in question. If there is an exchange rate between Bitcoin and the functional currency then this analysis applies. Therefore no special tax rules for Bitcoin transactions are required. The profits and losses of a company entering into transactions involving Bitcoin would be reflected in accounts and taxable under normal Corporation Tax rules.
• Income Tax: The profits and losses of a non-incorporated business on Bitcoin transactions must be reflected in their accounts and will be taxable on normal income tax rules.
• Chargeable gains – Corporation Tax and Capital Gains Tax: If a profit or loss on a currency contract is not within trading profits or otherwise within the loan relationship rules, it would normally be taxable as a chargeable gain or allowable as a loss for Corporation Tax or Capital Gains Tax purposes. Gains and losses incurred on Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies are chargeable or allowable for Capital Gains Tax if they accrue to an individual or, for Corporation Tax on chargeable gains if they accrue to a company.

Further resource: Excellent PDF about all aspects of cryptocurrency and its treatment in the UK.

European Interpretation

In Europe, at least for the moment, the treatment of cryptocurrencies for regulatory and tax purposes has largely been determined by a decision of the European Court of Justice.

In October 2015, ECJ stated that bitcoin represents a means of payment and its exchange should therefore be exempted from VAT. According to the ruling in the Skatteverket v Hedqvist Case C-264/14, the exchange of bitcoin falls within the exemption in Article 135(1)(e) of EU’s VAT Directive, which covers transactions concerning currency, bank notes, and coins used as legal tender.

Malta

The Blockchain Island, a.k.a. Malta, has enabled a regulatory platform for distributed ledger technologies (DLT) with the objective of providing investors and users with some form of stability. On 1st November 2018, Malta buttressed this platform with three sets of fiscal guidelines, bringing clarifications and with them certainty, as to the tax implications of using Malta as a DLT base.

The tax treatment of transactions involving coins like Bitcoin would be identical to the tax treatment of transactions involving fiat or conventional currency. As such, coins fall outside the scope of income tax and duty, and gains on isolated transfers will not be taxed in Malta.

Conversely, where the Coins are transferred as part of a coin exchange business or trade, profits realised from such business would be taxed at the standard Maltese corporate income tax rate of 35%. By the application of structuring options which are available under the Maltese full imputation system, the effective tax rate on such trading income could be reduced to between 5% and nil. The exchange of coins for other cryptocurrencies or for fiat money where such exchange constitutes a supply of services for consideration will not be liable to VAT. Mining would also fall outside of scope of VAT, unless it is carried out against payment of transaction fees.

With respect to the determination of a coin’s value, the guidelines provide that this should be established by reference to the rate published by the relevant Maltese authorities, and where such is not available be reference to the average quoted price on three reputable exchanges, on the date of the relevant transaction or event, or such other methodology to the satisfaction of the Commissioner for Revenue.

Read:

• Innovative Technology Arrangements and Services Act, 2018 (ACT No. XXXIII of 2018)
• Virtual Financial Assets Act (ACT No. XXXIII of 2018)

Portugal

The Portuguese Tax Authority (PTA) has officially announced that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will not be taxed in Portugal.

This means that individuals won’t have to pay capital gain taxes or VAT, when buying or selling crypto.

Portuguese tax agents elaborate that income generated by trading can fall in three different categories – capital gains (G), capital income (E) and corporate or professional income (B). Category G covers the sale of securities, financial derivatives, certificates whose holders can receive value from an underlying asset, and some other instruments. However, as legislators have chosen to adopt a closed definition, tax can be levied only on the items mentioned in the law, and cryptocurrencies are not in the list. Digital coins do not fall in category E, either, which pertains only to income generated from capital investments.

If applicable, category B prevails over the other two. Income in this category is taxed based on the exercise of an activity and not according to its source. Portugal’s tax code states that if this is an activity oriented toward profit making, the taxpayer is obliged to issue invoices whenever they sell a product or provide a service. The tax agency then draws the conclusion that the sale of cryptocurrency is not taxable under the current tax legislation unless it constitutes a taxpayer’s professional or business activity, in which case it will be taxed in category B.

Portugal does not tax the increase of value of any currency nor the gain on the sale of any currency. Obviously, any currency losses may not be offset against any gains either.

Read:

Spain

There is no VAT applicable to Bitcoin transactions. That means that the purchase of Bitcoin is treated differently from the purchase of normal products. If the seller is handing over Bitcoin to me in return for cash, he does not need to charge VAT on that sale.

As a side note, keep in mind that the European Union (and hence Spain) considers cryptos like Bitcoin as a method of payment. In Spain this has been officialised in 2015. Therefore, if you are purchasing something from a shop (say a laptop) and you are making the payment in Bitcoin, VAT would still be applied. In practice, if the laptop costs 1,000 euro and the VAT due is 200 euro, what you would do is take the sum of 1,200 euro and convert that to the equivalent in Bitcoin at the time of payment. That will be the amount of Bitcoin you transfer to the shop in return for the laptop. As you can see, VAT has been paid because it is a normal transaction, with the only difference that Bitcoin is being used instead of Euro.

Trading in cryptocurrencies is considered in the same way as forex trading or binary options. The same principles will apply come tax time. The savings tax rates are applied (on a scale between 19% and 23%).

You might read on some websites and forums that if you buy and sell bitcoin within a one year span then the gains would fall under the normal tax brackets for general income, whereas if you wait more than a year before you sell, they will fall under the savings rates (typically more beneficial as they are much lower). This was correct only for 2015 and previous years. Since 2016 all capital gains are taxed equal regardless of the generation period of them.

Article 37.2 of the Personal Income Tax Law, establishes the FIFO method (First In, First Out) for calculating gains on cryptocurrencies.

An interesting question arises if you trade a cryptocurrency to/from bitcoin without transferring to Euro at any point; would that still be a taxable event? In theory yes, as you are changing assets and Spanish Tax Law only allows the change of specific financial assets without taxation in certain cases expressly established by law (certain investment funds). But in practice, at least for now, it is impossible for the Tax Administration to determine a taxable capital gain when there is only trading with cryptocurrencies. Also, in the absence of any specific criteria established by the tax administration, it can be interpreted that the capital gain is effected when the cryptocurrency is sold into a FIAT one. There are also other interpretations regarding, for example, this trade between cryptocurrencies must be taxable as permute of assets (article 37.1h Tax Income Act – Capital gains would be Taxed between the difference of the market value of each asset). The videos below describe why it makes sense to pay tax on the transfer from one crypto token to another.

You can compensate your yearly profits by the losses of that year and the past 4 years. If it’s the first time you are making a loss, you can offset that loss (up to 20% of it) with returns from real estate capital investments. If that’s not enough, you can offset it with profits made in the next for years.

When you receive an airdrop, as in the case of Bitcoin Cash, the theory is that you need to pay tax on the gains from that event. Say you receive an airdrop of 10 Bitcoin Cash, then you will take the value of the Bitcoin Cash at the date of the airdrop, and pay tax on that value, since you went from 0 to the total value of that airdropped Bitcoin Cash.

In practice, I’m pretty sure the vast majority of most holders will not declare these airdrops. The main reason will not be because they actively want to evade taxation, but purely a question of not even knowing that they have airdropped tokens that they can access. In fact, there are dozens of airdrops that happen very frequently, so it would be close to impossible to understand how many tokens you have, when you received them, etc etc. We need to keep in mind the fact that what people hold are the private keys, which in turn give them access to funds on the different blockchains out there. It’s quite different from other financial instruments which are typically closely tied to your name, say bank accounts of shares held at a broker.

What most people will undoubtedly do is to treat the airdrop as a value of 0 and only declare capital gains if they eventually obtain that airdropped crypto and actually sell it. This is the option that makes most sense in my opinion.

Capital gains tax in Spain is established within the following parameters:

• Up to €6,000 = 19%
• €6,000 – €50,000 = 21%
• €50,000 upwards = 23%

As for wealth tax, cryptocurrencies have to be declared as you would declare any other asset that you own. The minimum amount below which you don’t need to pay any wealth tax varies from one autonomous region to another. Aragon sets a lower exempt limit of €400,000 while others set a higher limit of €700,000, and Madrid has an effective wealth tax of 0%. You need to declare the value of your crypto tokens on the 31st of December of the previous year. You can use a reference site like CoinMarketCap to get the value of the crypto tokens on the 31st of December at 00:00.

As for the modelo 720 (declaration of foreign assets), the categories of assets that should be included in the 720 do not specifically name cryptocurrencies, nor assets that could be assimilated, thus there is space to defend that cryptos, as they are not explicitly included in the 720, should not be declared. In any case, if you reside in Spain and hold your cryptocurrencies in an offline wallet, you would not need to declare them on this form under no circumstance as they are not located outside of Spain. Indeed, even if they were held at a broker, Bitcoin does not lend itself to the concept of geographical location, so it would be hard to prove that they are actually held in some country, hence modelo 720 declarations would probably still not need to be made. We await an official verdict from the tax department on this matter, but in the meantime this is what most accounting firms and tax consultants are saying.

Check these very informative videos on the treatment of Bitcoin within the Spanish tax law (in Spanish only):

Taxation of Crypto mining:

General info on taxation of crypto profits:

More info and dealing with certain questions:

Info on airdrops like Bitcoin Cash:

Germany

Bitcoin transactions in Germany have been made exempt from capital gains tax after one year. In Germany, assets such as stocks and bonds are subject to a 25% capital gains tax (plus a solidarity surcharge) and a state-dependant church tax. With the new decision, bitcoins having been held for more than a year will not be subject to these charges.

If a private trader sells their bitcoin more than a year after its purchase, the profit is exempt from capital gains tax. The same applies to annual profits of less than €600. That means keeping digital coins in Germany will actually save you money. And regardless of how much profit you make when you sell the cryptocurrency after hodling for over a year, you don’t owe the state any tax on your gains.

According to German news site Die Welt, financial expert Frank Schaeffler stated: “It is good that investment in bitcoins is finally [a] legal certainty. Private profits from the sale of bitcoins are tax-free after one year”.

It is also worth noting that the German capital gains tax does not apply to mining bitcoins. It only applies to stocks, bonds, etc, that have been purchased with the intention of market speculation. Since mining bitcoins is essentially creating value, normal income tax would be applied.

France

In 2018 the Council of State, the national government’s body charged with providing the executive branch with legal counsel and acts as the supreme court for administrative matters, was approached by various taxpayers disputing the instituted regimen relating to cryptocurrency tax rates.

Under the former cryptocurrency regulation that dates back to July 2014, all gains from the sale of the digital currencies were considered to be commercial and industrial profits, and, as such, taxpayers were liable for a capital gains tax of 45%.

On April 26th, the High Administrative Court decided to support the group of taxpayers who had petitioned their grievances and lobbied against the tax plan earlier this year. Following the verdict, the Council of State was forced to reconsider the way in which profits from the sale of cryptocurrency are regulated, French media house Le Monde reported.

Now, profits made through the sale of digital currencies are classified under the moveable property category, so traders will be taxed at a flat rate of 19%. The new order does not entertain other social taxes.

The Council of State added, however, that if profits are generated from any other activity apart from the sale of cryptocurrency, such as mining, the transaction will remain subject to the first tax regulation. The 19% rate is designed explicitly for investment gains.

General Good Practice

Here are some good tips on how you should go about investing in cryptocurrencies from a tax perspective:

• Keep records of all your cryptocurrency activity.
• Periodically download your trading history from any exchanges you use.
• Export transaction logs from any wallets you have.
• Ensure you have records for each time you spend any cryptocurrencies.

Further Reading

The BitcoinTaxes FAQ, common questions and blog are among the best resources that deal directly with this topic. Most of the information is US-centered but a lot of it is also applicable to other countries.

Keep in mind that all this information was obtained through my personal research and discussions with friends and professionals in this space. This does in no way constitute official advice and you should always consult with a legal professional before taking any decisions with regard to tax declarations.