Bitcoin Daily: S Korea Eyes New Crypto Income Tax; Less Network Traffic Causes Drop In Bitcoin Fees

Bitcoin transaction fees are simmering back down to ordinary levels after a heavy wave of them in early May, reports suggest.

The transaction fees are now around 80 BTC paid to miners on Tuesday (May 26). Earlier in the month, they had hit a high of around 201 BTC on May 21, reports from blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode say.

Miner revenue fee percentages hit a 28-month high on May 20, when they were at 21 percent. As of Wednesday (May 27), they had pulled back nine percent from that peak.

Users pay fees to miners for transactions on the blockchain, and miners also receive a fixed amount of BTC for each block mined, which halves every four years.

The last halving was on May 11, 2020. The mining difficulty, which shows how hard it is to mine blocks, was lowered 6 percent to 15.14 terahashes per second after the hashrate fell after the halving. The hashrate is the mining power for completing the mining tasks.

Halving also doubled the cost of mining, which saw inefficient miners ceasing operation.

South Korea is pondering a modification to its tax law which could place taxes on cryptocurrencies.

Though not much information is currently available, the new rules could impose restrictions on profitable sales of cryptocurrency and revenues gleaned from national crypto-mining projects, according to Cointelegraph.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance issued a simple statement that it would be “considering capital gains tax or other income tax on profits made by domestic and foreign investors in the transfer of virtual assets.”

South Korea attempted to impose taxation on cryptocurrency early in 2020. But individuals’ profits from virtual currency is not listed as income, they don’t end up falling under income taxes. It’s still murky as to whether the earnings in those transactions are similar to how stocks or real estate work in the eyes of the government.

Decenter reported that the country’s legislation would be brought before Parliament in September 2020.

As cryptocurrency has crept into the mainstream, more and more governmental bodies have attempted to impose regulations.