TL;DR: Welcome to In Case You Missed It (ICYMI), a daily crypto news update. US Congress to discuss bill exempting small crypto transactions from being taxed. COSS allegedly sending user funds to Binance. Lightning Network fees can get up to $0.5. Tezos Foundation launches Tezos Faucet. South Korea may impose 20% tax on crypto earnings, and Binance P2P adds support for Vietnamese dong.

US Congress Plans to Exempt Small Crypto Transactions From Taxation

The US Congress introduced a bill proposing elimination of taxes for cryptocurrency transactions where the revenue from differences in the exchange rate is less than 200 dollars. The bill, titled The Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2020, was created by Washington and Arizona Congress members Suzan Delbene and David Schweikert. The IRS has been pushing for a more clarity in their effort to collect taxes from cryptocurrency traders who, for the most part, have been not declaring them.

Crypto Exchange COSS Allegedly Directing Users’ Funds to Binance

… into non-KYC'd Binance accounts. COSS wallets do not interact with Binance wallets like this historically. The fact a wallet sweep is being conducted right after their "platform upgrade" announcement, in a specific level of BTC, is damning. /4 — Rich Sanders [Jan/3➞₿🔑∎] (@Raindropactual) January 9, 2020

COSS, a Singapore based cryptocurrency exchange that closed its platform for an upgrade, leaving more than $2 million worth of users’ funds locked, is allegedly funneling those funds to Binance, according to Rich Sanders. Sanders, a cryptocurrency forensics investigator working at Cipherblade, a London based security firm, thinks COSS is consolidating users’ funds and sending them to non-KYC Binance accounts. Despite this, Satyarth Mishra, Binance Community Manager, stated, “You can pull up a few wallet addresses on any blockchain explorer and claim anyone you like is making those transactions.”

Lightning Network Fees Can Reach $0.5

Higher fees for new channels may change the way channels are made. If you need more outbound liquidity quickly, it can currently cost $0.50+. At the low end it encourages recycling. For example, instead of paying $0.50 to add $10 you could pay $0.21 to refill an existing channel. pic.twitter.com/tvmrwhNUAg — Alex Bosworth ☇ (@alexbosworth) April 3, 2019

The fees associated with the Lightning Network, a proposed second layer scaling solution to BCH, supposedly designed to enable cheap transactions, can get up to $0.5 if “you need more outbound liquidity quickly,” according to developer Alex Bosworth. “Routing fees are primarily about selling your inbound liquidity since that is the scarce resource in the network,” Bosworth explained, so that fees norming going to miners for securing the blockchain network go to “liquidity providers.” In this sense, he stated it’s possible the Lightning Network will not work out in the end, and called for poems to be written instead.

Tezos Foundation Opens Tezos Faucet

The faucet model was the first attempt at distributing bitcoin in the early days, and it has proven to be an effective way of spreading adoption. The Tezos Foundation opened a new Tezos-related faucet, reminding old Bitcoiners about those early times. The Foundation declared the faucet was established for development purposes, and it gives every user the chance of withdrawing 0.01 XTZ every 12 hours, just by solving a Google Recaptcha. 0.01 Tezos are worth about a penny, so don’t expect to make a fortune from it. Tezos also reserves the right to shut down the wallet whenever they like.

South Korea May Impose 20% Tax on Crypto Earnings

The government of South Korea may impose an income tax of 20% on cryptocurrency earnings, according to local sources. The move would be the result of the classification of these earnings as “other incomes,” and would put them in the same class as those of prizes, honorary income, and lottery winnings, income-sources that are considered high. “The finance ministry is yet to finalize its direction but it surely has become more likely for the income from virtual asset trading to be labeled as other income, not as gains from transfer of capitals like real estate properties,” a local government official declared.

Binance P2P Adds Support for Vietnamese Dong

Binance P2P, the decentralized function of the exchange giant, added support to make transactions with the Vietnamese dong, the country’s fiat currency. The platform now allows users to make purchases and sales in four major currencies (BTC, Ethereum, Tether, BNB) for Vietnamese dongs. This is the second fiat currency added to the P2P platform after the Chinese yuan. Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, stated they were “pleased to introduce fiat-to-crypto P2P trading services to Vietnamese users to flexibly trade cryptocurrency at low costs.”

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