【bitcoin】以太幣曾升越3500美元、比特幣報55000 著名投資人：比特幣是黃金但以太幣是白銀

【bitcoin】以太幣曾升越3500美元、比特幣報55000 著名投資人：比特幣是黃金但以太幣是白銀

拍賣龍頭「蘇富比」首試比特幣、以太幣支付，Banksy 反戰名作 5/12 拍賣會開放

繼在 NFT 市場嘗到甜頭後，知名國際拍賣公司蘇富比近日宣布重大消息，將在 12 日舉行的拍賣會開放加密貨幣支付，成為首次開放加密貨幣支付的頂級奢侈品拍賣。此次合作方 Coinbase 也在官方 Twitter 發文慶賀，期待下週拍賣順利成功。

國際拍賣巨頭蘇富比（Sotheby’s）日前釋出重磅消息，將在 12 日拍賣英國知名塗鴉藝術家 Banksy 反戰名作〈Love is in the air〉，官方預計標得 300 萬到 500 萬美元，並開放加密貨幣支付。消息一出，立刻引起藝術界和幣圈轟動。

▲ Banksy 名作〈Love is in the air〉。（Source：蘇富比）

蘇富比拍賣會是由 4 月才剛風光在那斯達克（Nasdaq）上市的北美最大交易所 Coinbase 旗下 Coinbase Commerece 協助。Coinbase 也在官方平台表示，這是將加密貨幣帶進主流市場的又一里程碑。

In another step bringing the utility of cryptocurrency mainstream, @Sothebys announced their collaboration with Coinbase Commerce to allow bitcoin and ethereum as payment for the purchase of a Banksy image at their May 12th evening auction. https://t.co/qpUMybBa6L — Coinbase News (@CoinbaseNews) May 4, 2021

值得注意的是，這次蘇富比拍賣開放接受的加密貨幣，僅主流比特幣（BTC）及以太幣（ETH），競標者還是能以傳統法幣支付。若得標者選擇加密貨幣支付，須在官方核可的 Coinbase、Gemini、Paxos 或 Fidelity 加密貨幣帳戶，選擇一項為轉帳帳戶。

蘇富比投身加密市場

對這次開放加密貨幣支付，蘇富比執行長 Charles F. Stewart 於外媒《CNBC》訪談表達看法。

蘇富比對開放加密貨幣支付期待已久，也對這次拍賣感到相當興奮。

就在 4 月，蘇富比才剛進行首次 NFT 拍賣，與新銳現代藝術家 Pak 合作〈The Fungible〉在 NFT 交易平台 Nifty Gateway 共拍得 1,680 萬美元。

▲ Pak 作品〈Cube〉。（Source：Nifty Gateway）

外媒《The Block》報導，NFT 拍賣超過 3,000 位得標者中，多數得標者皆為首次參與拍賣市場的新血，也讓蘇富比意識到加密貨幣市場的開發潛力。

蘇富比技術長 Stefan Pepe 也提到公司對加密市場和 NFT 領域的想法，並指出公司未來很可能和 Coinbase 長期合作，永久開放加密貨幣支付選項。

隨著新興數位藝術與 NFT 盛行，蘇富比觀察到收藏家對這領域的興趣，加密貨幣支付也是最迫切的需求之一。為了增進客戶拍賣體驗，同時也吸引更多新客群，蘇富比很榮幸能與 Coinbase 這值得信賴的夥伴合作。

（本文由 動區動趨 授權轉載；首圖來源：shutterstock）

延伸閱讀：

Bitcoin will eventually hit ‘$1 million a coin,’ CoinDesk editor predicts

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – Jeff Bezos has an ex-wife, a girlfriend, four children and billions of reasons to watch whether Joe Biden’s tax overhaul wins congressional approval.The Amazon.com Inc. founder’s heirs may have to pay more than $36 billion if the president succeeds in closing a loophole that helps the rich transfer much of their fortunes tax-free at death.Under current rules, whoever inherits the Amazon shares Bezos bought in 1994 for $10,000, worth $180 billion today, will receive a so-called step-up in basis, wiping out any capital gains tax liability. Biden’s plan would close that loophole and apply the top capital gains tax immediately when assets transfer to wealthy heirs. If the rate increases – it’s 20% for holdings like Bezos’s, and Biden has called for boosting it to 39.6% – the eventual tax bill would too.For Bill and Melinda Gates, who announced on Monday that they would be divorcing, a change in the step-up rule might be less costly. The Gates fortune, valued at $145.8 billion, is older, and they’ve already sold or donated much of their stake in Microsoft Corp. But $26 billion of Microsoft shares remain, and it isn’t clear how the couple will manage their assets in a split.Congress estimates that stepping up the tax basis of inherited assets costs the government about $43 billion a year. Ending that practice and raising the rate would amount to the biggest curb on dynastic wealth in decades, altering an American economic landscape dominated by a few wealthy families. An Amazon spokesman didn’t respond to emailed questions about Bezos’s shares.Read More: How the ‘Step Up’ in Inheritance Taxes Would Work: QuickTakeThe proposals are far from becoming law, even though Democrats control both houses of Congress, as they threaten wealthy donors to both political parties who have lobbied against them. But proponents say getting rid of the step-up rule, known to estate planners as the Angel of Death loophole, is crucial to achieving Biden’s vision of tax fairness. Otherwise, economists project that the proposed increase in the top capital gains tax rate would further encourage holding assets until death, decreasing revenue for the Treasury.The step-up rule allows investors to pass on assets to heirs virtually tax-free, raising the taxable value of a property to its fair market value at the time it is inherited. A beneficiary who inherits a house worth $1 million purchased for $100,000 two decades earlier would have no capital gains. If she later sells for $1.5 million, she only pays tax on $500,000. The rule also applies to Amazon shares, which have risen more than 200,000% since a 1997 public offering, as well as other appreciated assets.The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, estimates that untaxed capital gains on inherited assets run into the hundreds of billions of dollars a year. About half of unrealized gains belong to the wealthiest 1%, according to an analysis of data in the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances. And unrealized and accrued capital gains account for about 40% of the wealth of the top 1%, the Fed data show.The step-up rule has been criticized as a government-subsidized engine for amassing dynastic fortunes and a cause for widening economic inequality. Even some prominent estate planners say the provision – enacted a century ago to avoid double taxation at a time when the estate tax had few exemptions – has outlived that original purpose.Billionaires’ lawyers have developed sophisticated strategies to avoid the estate tax, making the step-up allowance an unalloyed boon. “It’s an enormous loophole,” said Jonathan Blattmachr, a trusts and estates lawyer and senior adviser at Pioneer Wealth Partners, a financial advisory firm for high-net-worth clients and family offices.Republicans and some business organizations have criticized the Biden proposal. A study by Ernst & Young commissioned by the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition predicted that eliminating the step-up rule could cost tens of thousands of jobs a year and cut $10 billion from annual gross domestic product.Opponents of the plan say the burden would largely be avoided by the ultra-wealthy, who can afford sophisticated estate planning, and fall instead on small businesses and family farms, which might have to be sold to pay tax bills.“Repealing step-up could have a dramatic impact on small manufacturers across the country, potentially requiring families to liquidate businesses, leverage assets, or lay off employees to cover the tax hit,” said Chris Netram, vice president of tax and domestic economic policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, which supported President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.Biden’s plan addressed some of those concerns by sparing the first $1 million in inherited appreciated assets from capital gains taxes and by exempting family farms and small businesses in cases where heirs continue to operate them.The plan has been cheered by progressives, who have long called for an end to the preferential treatment given to capital gains. Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, an advocacy group allied with labor unions, said the gap between taxes on labor and capital is fundamentally unfair and the administration’s plan simply seeks to “tax wealth like work.”“Our two-tier tax code, with one code for working-class Americans, and another full of special breaks for the people at the very top, has destroyed public confidence in our tax structure that must be fixed,” said New Jersey Democrat Bill Pascrell, chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight. “This loophole is one of the chief causes of a broken system.”A version of Biden’s plan was floated by President Barack Obama in 2015, but it died in a Republican-controlled Congress.Any substantial change to the step-up rule could upend financial planning for America’s richest families, including the techniques they use to avoid incurring capital gains for decades.“To the extent to which there is ability to work around the policy, that’s in large part a policy choice,” said Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of the Tax Law Center at New York University School of Law. “There are ways to draft and implement it so it doesn’t allow for large, inefficient tax shelters.”Currently, wealthy people who need cash can take out loans using stock as collateral, rather than selling shares, which would trigger a tax bill. The technique allows billionaires to fund their lifestyles, then pass their assets to their heirs without ever realizing capital gains.Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle Corp. who purchased Hawaii’s sixth-largest island in 2012, had $17.5 billion of stock pledged to such loans as of September, figures in a company disclosure show. The strategy has also been used by Elon Musk, the world’s second-richest person, and Sumner Redstone, the former chairman of Viacom Inc. who died in August. If the step-up rule changes, capital gains taxes on the assets of these billionaires would be triggered by death.When Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Jobs died in 2011, his $10 billion fortune was relatively paltry compared with today’s tech billionaires. But a step-up in basis proved valuable nonetheless.Jobs’ biggest holding was in Walt Disney Co., which gave him shares in connection with its 2006 purchase of Pixar, the animation studio Jobs had bought from filmmaker George Lucas two decades earlier. By the time Jobs died, his Disney shares were worth $4.5 billion, and his shares of Apple, stemming from a 2003 stock grant, were worth about $2.1 billion.Between the two holdings, there were at least $5 billion of untaxed capital gains at the time of his death, meaning the step-up in basis could have saved his family more than $750 million in taxes, a review of corporate filings shows. Jobs’ fortune passed to his wife Laurene Powell Jobs, whose wealth has since swelled to $22 billion, making her the world’s 80th richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.A spokesperson for Laurene Powell Jobs, who would have inherited any Apple shares at a stepped-up price, didn’t respond to a request for comment.The nation’s wealthiest families have spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress in recent years to blunt attempts to increase taxes on inherited wealth, and those efforts have often paid off.Members of the Mars family, who built an empire on candy and pet care, helped lead the fight against the estate tax during George W. Bush’s presidency and have lobbied against efforts to increase taxes on inherited wealth since, according to congressional records.When Forrest Mars Jr. died in 2016, he left his heirs a fortune worth more than $25 billion. Today, six family members are among the world’s 500 richest people, according to the Bloomberg index, sharing a combined fortune of more than $130 billion. A spokesperson for the Mars family declined to comment.Administration officials say retaining the step-up rule would undermine the effort to raise more revenue from the wealthy through higher taxes on investment income.An estimate released by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan fiscal policy research group at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, last week found that raising the top capital gains rate to 39.6% would raise $113 billion in new revenue over the next decade – but only if the step-up in basis is severely restricted. If the policy remains unchanged, raising the capital gains rate would motivate more wealthy people to avoid selling assets before their deaths, costing the Treasury $33 billion in lost revenue over 10 years, the study found.Another study published in January by the National Bureau of Economic Research says an increase in the top capital gains rate could generate more revenue than Congress estimates because asset owners have less flexibility on when to realize gains. Eliminating step-up in basis would further decrease flexibility, the study said.“You’re telling me that if I effectively doubled the rate and make death a realization event that you’re not going to get much money from it?” said Owen Zidar, a professor of economics and public policy at Princeton University and one of the study’s authors. “I find that hard to believe.”But even if Biden’s plan is adopted, tax lawyers and accountants will likely find ways to increase flexibility by using charitable donations and novel estate planning strategies.“The story of taxing rich people throughout history is that they will always find ways to sidestep taxes,” said John Ricco, author of the Wharton study. “This will certainly narrow the avoidance opportunities –- perhaps not as much as the proponents of the Biden proposal hope, but it will have some bite to it.”(Adds comment from Representative Bill Pascrell in 16th paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.