Riding The Wave News Summary 118
Tax strategies allow crypto investors to offset losses, FBI seizes $100K in NFTs from scammer following ZachXBT investigation, & more.
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FBI seizes $100K in NFTs from scammer following ZachXBT investigation
YouTuber baits MMA fighter into secretly shilling fake NFTs for $1K
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Tax strategies allow crypto investors to offset losses
Lisa Greene-Lewis, a certified public accountant at TurboTax, told Cointelegraph that while crypto investors made huge gains in 2021, this changed drastically in 2022. “We have seen a crypto winter occur, and TurboTax wants to help investors cope with their losses,” she said. According to Greene-Lewis, tax-loss harvesting is the most important notion to keep in mind when it comes to saving money when filing taxes.
While the last day for tax-loss selling for 2022 passed on Dec. 30, Greene-Lewis reiterated that crypto investors can still perform this action since those losses roll forward.
Lubka further pointed out that tax-loss harvesting is beneficial because there is currently no “wash sale rule” applied to crypto, which would prevent the tax break if an investor bought that same asset 30 calendar days before or after the sale. “This means that crypto investors can sell their assets and then instantly buy those back while locking in the loss on their taxes.” While this is certainly advantageous, Lubka believes that this process will likely change in the near future.
Donating to charity is another way for crypto investors to reduce their taxable income, which can be a good strategy during a bull market. Alex Wilson, co-founder of The Giving Block — a crypto donation platform — told Cointelegraph that donating cryptocurrency is tax efficient because it allows investors to avoid capital gains tax. He said:
“If an investor bought Bitcoin at $1 and sold it at current market prices, that would normally be taxed. But if you donate the Bitcoin to a nonprofit, it becomes tax deductible. These deductions are even higher when donated to a 501(c)(3) charity.”
Individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, are yet another way for crypto investors to reduce their taxable income. Similar to a 401(k), assets held in traditional IRAs will grow tax-deferred, meaning investors won’t have to pay income tax until assets are taken out.
Pat White, the CEO of Bitwave — a crypto tax, accounting and compliance platform — further told Cointelegraph that crypto investors should be concerned that the IRS might impose wash trading rules in the future. However, he noted that there are still options for tax-loss harvesting in the case of this scenario. “Investors could find ways to exit their coin positions into different assets. For example, Bitcoin could go into wrapped Bitcoin, which could satisfy the wash trading rules but would also harvest a loss,” he explained.
FBI seizes $100K in NFTs from scammer following ZachXBT investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has seized 86.5 Ether and two nonfungible tokens (NFTs) worth more than $100,000 from a reported phishing scammer.
The alleged scammer in question, Chase Senecal — known as Horror (HZ) online — was initially exposed via a lengthy investigation by independent blockchain sleuth ZachXBT posted back in September 2022.
The FBI’s official notification on Feb. 3 outlined that Seneca’s property — including an Audemars Piguet royal oak watch worth $41,000 — was “seized for federal forfeiture for violation of federal law.”
The FBI’s notification did not detail much other information on the ordeal apart from noting that all of the property was seized on Oct. 24, 2022. The seized NFTs included Bored Ape Yacht Club#9658 and Doodle #3114, valued at $95,495 and $9,361 respectively, at the time of seizure.
The 86.5 ETH was valued at $116,433 at the time of seizure but is now worth $144,000.
While the FBI has not come out with an official tip of the hat to ZachXBT, the on-chain sleuth noted via Twitter on Feb. 3 that the property seizure did “come as a result” of his investigation.
In a medium post from Sept. 2, 2022, ZachXBT explained that after seeing HZ brag about the new watch on social media, he asked “around a few mutual friends who sell watches” and eventually managed to get in contact with the person who sold that specific AP watch to Senecal.
“The address HZ used to pay the watch seller $47.5k was DIRECTLY funded by multiple addresses used to scam people with hacked Twitter accounts such as @deekaymotion, @Zeneca_33, @ezu_xyz, [and] @JRNYclub,” ZachXBT wrote.
YouTuber baits MMA fighter into secretly shilling fake NFTs for $1K
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