The Elephant in the Dark: A New Framework for Cryptocurrency Taxation and Exchange Platform Regulation in the US

Koray Caliskan
Additional contact information
Koray Caliskan: Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York, NY 10011, USA

JRFM, 2022, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-18

Abstract: The proliferation of cryptocurrencies and the remarkable expansion of novel economic practices associated with them pose an unprecedented challenge to established norms of taxation and market regulation. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, surveys, as well as big data analysis of the most valuable 100 cryptocurrencies’ white papers and the terms of service agreements of all cryptocurrency exchange platforms, this paper proposes an evidence-based framework to design a novel regulation and taxation approach to cryptocurrencies and their markets by using the US as case study. This new framework calls for approaching cryptocurrencies as data money. Drawing on the material political economy of new digital financial practices, the paper locates the universe of taxable events and invisible/vague regulation areas by approaching exchange platforms as stacked economization processes. We need to make sense of these new economic spaces in order to imagine more effective regulative instruments addressing questions of economic actor protection and efficiency. The paper concludes by proposing a new instrument of taxation (Data Money Tax) and a dynamic regulative approach to cryptocurrency exchange platforms (Stack Regulation).

Keywords: cryptocurrency; markets; exchange; platform; taxation; regulation; US (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C E F2 F3 G (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/3/118/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/15/3/118/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:15:y:2022:i:3:p:118-:d:763807

Access Statistics for this article

JRFM is currently edited by Ms. Chelthy Cheng

More articles in JRFM from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().