CRYPTO

Tax Guide, Anyone?

Results are in and according to our favorite bird app, industry professionals are thirsty for a crypto tax guide. 

To help, Reconcile Money CEO Jaimin Desai created a guide answering common questions around tax implications in the emerging crypto economy — from NFTs to yield farming and staking. 

P.S. The guide will be updated weekly. Sign up to receive it by clicking here. 

Why it Matters

• Cryptocurrency is a $2 trillion market that’s only going to grow with investors.
• To reach mass adoption, it’s critical for fintech professionals to bring more transparency to crypto, web3, and NFTs.
• If moving to a more crypto-friendly/less tax-heavy country is out of the question, then we have to educate ourselves and our users on crypto tax implications.
• Creators of NFTs are taxed in a different way compared to NFT investors.  

The Highlights

Want the TL;DR before snagging the guide → here are a few key points (the full guide gives way more detail): 

NFTs

NFT’s grew to a more than $40 billion market in 2021 as the space not only grabs the attention of investors but popular culture. 

Investing in NFTs trigger taxable events when:

1. An NFT is purchased using crypto such as ETH
2. An NFT is sold for crypto such as ETH, or swapped for another NFT
3. An NFT is sold for ETH and the ETH was converted to USD

Yield Farming and Staking

Since the IRS has not issued clear guidance on this area, finance pros and investors need to keep track of when you received crypto from yield farming and its value at the time you received it. 

Filing Personal vs Business

• Depending on the type (LLC vs. C-corp), you may be able to write off expenses. 
• If you’re a miner and you’re scammed out of coins, you can deduct that loss on your business return.
• Trading crypto inside of a C-corp will likely result in paying more taxes.

MARKETING

How Big Tech’s Privacy Changes Impact Fintech

Fintech is hot with interest that pushes marketing and content strategies to center stage for operators. 

When Apple and Google rolled out their data privacy initiatives — the tech giants definitely made some noise. 

Today, marketers are having to adjust given that email open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics won’t track as accurately as they once did. 

To help sort through the noise, I sat down with Mike Rinard, the head of lead generation at marketing fintech Snappy Kraken. 

Here’s what I learned👇🏽

Data Isn’t Everything

It’s not like there won’t be any data, it’ll just be less specific. 

Instead of worrying about having less data, double down on making your content more relatable, engaging, thought-provoking, and compelling. Make your marketing more like an ongoing flywheel instead of a one-time thing. Prioritize: 

Qualitative measurements: Social media comments and engagement or literally just talking to clients on a video chat to gather what your audience wants and their pain points. Then you can more accurately develop content. 

Digital content: Knowing where your audience hangs out is key. Refresh your digital content with a beginner’s mindset. Think smarter about the marketing platform that reaches your audience best and where you’re comfortable creating content.

Feedback loops: Figure out what’s working or not, then use that to improve the quality of your content and keep gathering insights over time as audiences change.

“You’re always going to get better insights from that direct first-party experience with your audience than you are by looking at some random third-party data that isn’t necessarily going to tell you what people really care about.”

On the Other Hand…

I went ahead and picked the brain of marketing guru Taylor Phillip to gather the 3 best ways for businesses to combat the changes brought about by tracking limitations.

1. Make sure to take advantage of your business’s 1st party data, such as existing customer lists. It’s important to always have some sort of email capture in order to build your audience.
2.  Don’t rely solely on in-platform data. Take a wider view of your business as a whole with tools like Google Analytics to get a more well-rounded view of performance.
3. Diversify your advertising mix and never put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure your business is appearing in as many places as your target audience will be in order to increase the chances of conversion.

TL;DR: Whether you’re a fintech using your marketing dollars for paid or organic, you’ll have to revamp your strategy, either way, to keep up with the evolving data privacy changes brought on by these tech giants. 

CAPITAL MARKETS

Meet the Latest All-Female Spac 

Athena Technology Acquisitions Corp. II, an entirely women-led special-purpose acquisition company, rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday morning. 

Not only is Athena entirely women-led, but it is also the first all-immigrant management team to go public at the NYSE. 

Can we get a hell ya?

Isabelle Freidheim, founder and chairman of the board, recently discussed the SPAC and why Athena was born (last March) out of necessity to increase the number of women in the capital markets. Here are the details:

• Raised over $2 billion in demand for its collective Athena SPACs. 
• The talent pool is unreal, made up of women board members from brands like Citigroup, Oracle, Comcast, EDA, Aetna, BlackRock, Johnson & Johnson, American Airlines, and many others.
• In late December, Athena announced a business combination with Heliogen that led to its public listing. 

TL;DR: Like fellow women-led fintech investment firm, Anthemis, Athena is laying the groundwork to have more women represented in tech. WTFintech? is here to support and cover these powerhouse women leaders and their stories every day. 

WTF ELSE?

• Yieldstreet Private Business Credit Closes 40 New Deals
• Concourse Financial Group Securities Taps SmartAsset for Prospecting
• Vietnam’s Leading Digital Bank Timo Secures $20 Million Fresh Funding
• Visual Collaboration Company Miro Valued at $17.5b
• Fintech Dave Announces Nasdaq Debut Following Spac Merger
• Venmo, PayPal, and Cash App Have to Report Transactions Totaling More Than $600 to the IRS