On this Friday morning we are looking at Bitcoin trading below 110,000 while E is hovering right below the 4000 level.
Now the Senate Finance Committee will be holding a hearing next week on crypto taxation, and the VP for crypto taxation from Coinbase Global will testify at the meeting.
And stablecoin is sure Tether is trying for a $500 billion valuation.
Tether's latest private placement would make the company's. worth more than Warren Buffett and Morgan Stanley will launch crypto trading services next year through E-Trade.
Well joining me on this Friday morning is Gareth Jenkinson, head of multimedia at Point Telegraph.
Gareth, great to have you back.
Thank you so much for joining me.
A lot going on in the world of crypto.
So first, the Senate Finance Committee holding a hearing on crypto tax next Wednesday.
So what do you think the industry is looking for specifically?
Uh, it's pretty simple.
The industry is looking for some clarity on um how uh cryptocurrencies will be taxed.
Um, it's, it's no secret to American taxpayers of what they need to do when it comes to declaring taxes in the United States.
It's, it's really dependent on, uh, What cryptocurrencies you buy, how long you hold them, if you sell them, they're very similar, similarly taxed to stocks and shares in the United States.
So you know, if you bought some Bitcoin 5 years ago and you sold it, you're probably going to have to pay some tax capital gains.
I think one of the most important parts of this conversation will be looking at the de minimis tax payments that Uh, cryptocurrency users will have to pay going forward, and I think the industry would love to see this kind of legislation put forward and put in place.
What that would mean for the end user, um, if you use Bitcoin or Ethereum or Sola or XRP, whatever your cryptocurrency is of choice, uh, to pay for a cup of coffee, you won't have to pay capital gains or very specific, um, you know, uh, uh, tax on these smaller.
Purchases and I think if um if the US in general can get these kind of legislations in place, it will really help the proliferation and the use of cryptocurrencies in the United States because at the moment, most people are pretty hesitant to spend crypto like they would their dollars, knowing that it's going to be pretty complicated when tax season comes around and you need to account for every cup of coffee that you paid with some stats or some ether with.
And Gareth, while I have you here, I do want to ask you about Tether.
So the company's CEO saying his company is not looking to IPO, but take us through the $15 to $20 billion fundraising round that values the company at half a trillion dollars.
Yeah, sure thing.
Obviously Paulo Arduino gave a little bit more detail on X earlier this week, once the story came out and essentially saying that Tether is looking to raise between $15.20 billion dollars from a select group of private investors.
According to the initial report that came out from Bloomberg, they're looking at a 3% private stake or private.
And the crazy thing about this is that it would value tether at around $500 billion which puts it in the same ballpark, um, you know, as the owners of Chat GPT and SpaceX, you know, a $500 billion company that has well, well under 100 employees to its name is quite staggering to think and It really just goes to show that Tether has built probably the best business in the cryptocurrency industry, and there's a huge amount of interest from investors to get involved there.
The real reason behind that, you know, Tether has largely taken the dollars that it's holding, that it holds in reserve for the USDT tokens that it issues, and it puts those into US Treasury bills and obviously earns a lot of. every month.
Uh, how much interest?
About $5 billion a quarter.
That's, that's on average what they've been earning through 2025.
So really profitable business and to me it's not really surprising that this sort of uh valuation is on the cards and I'm surprised that they're not looking to raise more money because I'm sure a lot more people might be interested in investing in what Paolo Arduino calls a once in a century company.
So, uh, quite a crazy story, to be honest.
Yeah, Gareth, not a shabby price tag, is it?
So thank you so much for joining me on this Friday and as always, thank you so much for all of your insights and perspective.
Always a pleasure.
Thank you very much.
