Microsoft’s BTC Review, Taxes in Europe and Kraken’s Entry into the L2 Market

Bitcoin, which started the week at 69 thousand dollars, closes the volatile week at close to 68 thousand dollars. If we look at spot Bitcoin ETFs, we closed the week with a positive inflow of nearly 1 billion dollars. Volatility on price action does not seem to have affected the buying appetite on the institutional side. In this article, in which I made an introduction with corporates, after briefly touching on America and Europe; I will talk about Kraken’s move on Ethereum.

Speaking of corporates; Let’s talk about the possibility of Microsoft investing in Bitcoin being among the issues to be closely followed. He brought up the topic of investing in Bitcoin at the shareholder meeting to be held on December 10. Although it is stated that the company’s board of directors recommends voting against the proposal, the final decision will be taken by the majority vote of the shareholders, not the board of directors. Therefore, it is one of the issues we need to monitor closely. After all, Microsoft; It is a more valuable institution than MicroStrategy and Tesla and has Bitcoin investments on its balance sheet, which will positively support Bitcoin on the market side.

We are approaching the presidential election in the USA. Cryptocurrency markets, which are also influenced by the leaders’ strategies for cryptocurrencies and their success in surveys, are now waiting for a more predictable (!) period. As a matter of fact, the positions opened after the election in the Bitcoin options markets appear to be much higher than the current position volumes.

On the European side, the prominent issue is taxation. Italy introduced a bill last week that plans to increase the capital gains tax on cryptocurrency gains to 42% from the current 26%. This week, a similar taxation proposal was made by Denmark, but the conditions are more severe. The bill, which has a similar tax rate of 42%, proposes to tax unrealized profits. We would like to underline that neither proposal has been approved yet, but with a possible approval, Denmark could be the first country to tax unrealized profits in cryptocurrency markets. Crypto adoption in Europe, which is lower than in the rest of the world, could be further slowed by such laws

Let’s come to the Kraken part; We call the chain development protocol OP Stack, which is compatible with the Optimism network itself, one of the Layer-2 solutions on Ethereum. The network between chains developed accordingly is called a superchain. Among these superchains, there is Uniswap, one of the world’s largest decentralized exchanges, which has recently joined. Coinbase, the largest of the centralized exchanges, also has the Base chain, which is its step into the decentralized world. Especially Base has left all layer 2 solutions behind with its great adaptation in the last year. Base appears ahead of all its competitors in various fields such as locked asset value, number of active users and transaction volume; It is a successful project that Coinbase is pursuing to grab a big share of the cake in the decentralized world.

Kraken exchange also added its name to the list of exchanges that no longer remain silent on this situation. Kraken, which has included its chain among Optimism’s superchains just like its rival, looks like its new chain called “Ink” will go live in the first quarter of 2025. Just last week, Kraken announced that the tokens, which can be translated into Turkish as wrapped Bitcoin and which represent Bitcoin on the Ethereum network, can be accessed with the assurance of Kraken. This is a widely preferred method to use Bitcoin owners’ capital efficiently, as there are no decentralized finance applications on the Bitcoin network yet. It is not a coincidence that these wrapped Bitcoins are offered on the Optimism network alongside Ethereum. Apparently, Kraken will try to grab a share of the decentralized world with its new chain Ink.

We are leaving another week behind with election expectations, crypto money strategies of politicians, adaptation of corporates and the race for a place in the decentralized world.

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