Why Late Amendment to US Infrastructure Bill is Disastrous For Crypto Defi Market?

The crypto taxation proposal in the US Infrastructure Bill has met with a huge uproar from the crypto community. A last-minute amendment proposed by Sen. Rob Portman and Mark Warner only exclude Proof-Of-Work validators and developers from the “impossible” crypto tax reporting measures. This could in turn prove disastrous for the Proof-Of-Stake cryptocurrencies and especially the Defi market.

The new proposal competes against the amendment proposed by Senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, and Pat Toomey that would exclude Bitcoin miners, wallet developers, crypto validators, and protocol developers. The amendment was proposed on Wednesday and is believed to be more inclusive than the Warner and Portman amendment.

The crypto tax proposal in the Infrastructure bill requires crypto brokers to report customer’s tax obligations to the IRS. The late amendment proposed by Senator Portman would make it impossible for the Defi industry to adhere to the regulations as it is quite difficult for them to keep track of the customers. This would make it impossible for them to report it to IRS, which might force closure of businesses.

The fate of the two crypto amendments will be decided through Senate voting that is expected to take place this Saturday. Pro-Bitcoin Senator Cynthia Lummis had called upon her followers to get in touch with their Senators and ask them to vote for the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment. She said,

“We NEED you. Pls, call your Senators. Pls, tweet. Pls, email. We are facing major headwinds on the Wyden-Lummis-Toomey amendment. Burying financial innovation in red tape & sending devs + miners on info collection wild goose chases for info they don’t know is horrible policy.”

Biden Administration Endorses Disastrous Crypto Amendment

The Biden administration has extended its support to the last-minute amendment proposal made by Warner-Portman.

The crypto community was up in arms against the proposal as they believe it would eventually give a free pass to the government over the crypto market. Many suggested the regressive proposal could bring doom to the booming crypto industry quite similar to the Chinese crackdown on crypto mining.