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I agree. It's suspect because the numbers don't add up. From the article: " [...]Tom Lee notes that U.S. households owe an estimated twenty five billion dollar
by Mtinie 9y ago
I agree. It's suspect because the numbers don't add up. From the article:
" [...]Tom Lee notes that U.S. households owe an estimated twenty five billion dollars in capital gains taxes due to crypto gains."
Total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies, as of 12:18PM EST on April 6, 2018 is $248,821,531,204.
According to Mr. Lee, each $1 taken from the market will result in a $22.50 decrease in aggregated market value (avg. of his estimated range, "$20 - $25").
25B * $22.50 = $562.5B
He's suggesting that the price impact on cryptocurrencies required to pay for capital gains is going to be double the current market capitalization? Am I misinterpreting the statement he made?
The alternative explanation I can come up with is if the statement was poorly formed and what he was really talking about was $25B in investment income will need to be reported and the appropriate short-term or long-term tax rates would need to be applied.
Rough, back of napkin estimation, assuming an even distribution between short-term and long-term capital gains tax rates--which isn't going to be accurate, but I don't have a better way to estimate for this analysis--would be:
Short-term: $12.5B * 28%[1] = $3.5B
Long-term: $12.5B * 15%[2] = $1.875B
Total Estimated Taxes Due: $5.375B
Estimated impact on total market capitalization:
5.375B * $22.50 = $121B
That would leave $127B in the market, or if evenly distributed over all tokens, all prices would be half of their current values after April 15 (e.g. today's $6.6k BTC would be $3.3k BTC).
That doesn't sound right, either. Am I totally off-base for both interpretations?
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[1] Making an educated guess about the "typical" cryptocurrency investors' income bracket, but without actual numbers I'm open to this estimate being higher than reality.
[2] https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/11/long-term-capital-gains-tax-rates-in-2017.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/11/long-term-capital...
- abbieseide 9y agoI think Lee is predicting a 50% market adjustment because each fiat dollar added into the cryptocurrency market increases market cap by $22.50 because of speculation and other factors. It doesn't seem too crazy if you consider the volatile swings cryptos have had. Along with that, we dont know what to expect with this much money in potential sell offs because you can't expect investors to use other cash to pay taxes. They will just sell more crypto.