Kade Garrett
Kade Garrett is a crypto thought creator, writer/editor, podcaster, consultant, and enthusiast. He discovered bitcoin (BTC) in 2012. While covering everything from web3 to NFTs to blockchain-based social media, he is particularly passionate about the crypto ethos and the financial promise of P2P cash and DeFi protocols. He has owned crypto since the 2010s, with most of his current portfolio comprising top-50 projects (by market capitalization).
Stories by Kade Garrett
What Is Bluesky? Twitter's Decentralized Social Media Rival
Social media platform Bluesky is often touted as an alternative to Twitter, and viewed as a competitor to the tech giant. However, its underlying architecture is quite different—where Twitter is a single company with a siloed ecosystem, Bluesky is based on a decentralized infrastructure. Here’s how it works. What is Bluesky? Bluesky is a decentralized social media platform based on the authenticated transport (AT) protocol. The basic underlying idea behind decentralized social media platforms is...
Tips To Minimize Your Crypto Taxes
For U.S. citizens, there are really only two ways to not pay crypto taxes on profitable trades: renounce your citizenship or simply not pay them. Simply not paying them is a risky proposition that may lead to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) coming after you for unpaid taxes, late fees and fines, and in some instances may even lead to prison time. Renouncing your citizenship for tax purposes is fairly uncommon and can also lead to other issues (like the inability to get a visa to regain entry...
Understanding Taxes for DeFi, NFTs and GameFi
The crypto space is known for innovation, with novel applications of blockchain technology including decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Decentralized finance refers to an array of financial products that run on public smart contract blockchains such as Ethereum or Cosmos. These applications are permissionless, meaning they don't rely on third-party intermediaries. A whole ecosystem of DeFi "money Legos" has been built in the form of decentralized applications (dapps) th...
New Crypto Rules and Tax Guidelines for 2024
The crypto space is constantly innovating, and tax law is evolving to keep pace with it. With the Biden Administration claiming that updating the tax codes "to apply to crypto assets just like they apply to stocks and other securities" would recover $24 billion, it's clear that collecting taxes on crypto assets is a priority for the U.S. government—so it's wise to be up to speed with the latest developments in crypto tax. New tax rules and guidance are continually released. It’s up to you, or yo...
Understanding Crypto Tax Forms
For those who earn crypto or invest in the crypto market, you’ll have to fill out—and send—the requisite paperwork to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in order to be in compliance. There aren’t crypto-specific forms per se, but you’ll need to fill out both your crypto income and investments on forms that are likely already familiar to you. If you’re familiar with how your stock market portfolio is taxed based on capital gains tax rates, some of this information is likely already familiar to yo...
Getting Help Filing Your Crypto Taxes
Even some experienced and seasoned crypto investors can struggle with the details and nuances of filing crypto-related tax returns. First, you have to determine if crypto is income or an investment. You then have to calculate fair market value (FMV), determine your cost basis (and choose a cost basis method), and determine if transactions are taxable events or not. If it’s a taxable event, you then have to determine if a profitable sale will incur short-term or long-term capital gains. Beyond al...
Understanding Taxes for Crypto Mining, Staking, Forks and Airdrops
When it comes to the taxes that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collects, they are largely divided into two categories: income and investments. Income comes from employment or self employment. In addition, the IRS also classifies royalties, dividends, and interest as income—and not investments. Income taxes range from 10 – 37% and increase as one’s income increases. Investments that are profitably sold are subject to either short- or long-term capital gains taxes. Long-term capital gains tax...
Taxes for Businesses that Accept Crypto Payments
Merchants tend to give their customers a variety of payment options, such as cash, credit card, or a payment app like PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay. Cryptocurrency payments are becoming increasingly popular as an additional transaction option. These crypto payments can be denominated in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), stablecoins, or any number of other cryptos. For businesses, this increased adoption has created an incentive for them to receive—and send—crypto payments. C...
Crypto Earned Income Taxes: How Crypto Salaries Are Taxed
From the U.S. government’s perspective, earning a salary in crypto is different from investing and selling crypto. This is because tax rates for income and investments are treated in distinct ways. The U.S. uses a graduated income tax where your tax rate goes up as your income goes up (ranging from 10 – 37%). For long-term investments, you are taxed at a lower rate of 0%, 15%, or 20%; the long-term capital gains rate is also graduated and increases as your taxable income increases. How is a cryp...
Understanding Crypto Capital Gains and Losses
While there are numerous reasons to own crypto, many who have bought it did so simply in the hope that their investment would appreciate. Because crypto is more volatile than other investment options, this tends to mean that there is an asymmetric upside that could lead to a very profitable selling opportunity. On the other side of the investing coin, this also means that these volatile cryptocurrencies could incur heavy losses. For those who are considering whether to take profits, it’s helpful...
Crypto Taxes in the US 2024: Introduction
Love them, tolerate them, or hate them, taxes are a part of everyday life for nearly everyone in the modern world. In addition to the sales tax, property tax, and income tax, you also have to pay a tax on profitable investments—and this includes cryptocurrency. In this article (and the following ones in this series), we’re going to cover U.S. tax laws at the national level. If you’re buying and selling crypto in another tax jurisdiction, you’ll have to check your local laws on crypto taxes. Much...
How to Use Figment’s Institutional Staking App
Through the new Figment platform, you can stake crypto, track staking rewards, and access a whole host of tools and features. Let’s run through the initial process. On the Figment homepage, you’ll see a sign-up option. Image: Figment You can then sign up as either an organization or an individual. In your inbox, you’ll receive instructions for setting up a password and a supplementary authentication method for enhanced security. Image: Figment Once you’ve signed in, you’ll see the Figment das...
Figment and the Future of Institutional Staking
There are two primary parties involved in a staking transaction. A staking delegator entrusts—or delegates—their tokens with a validator in order to earn staking rewards. A validator is generally incentivized to accept a delegator’s tokens in order to increase their staking allotment as they typically earn a percentage of the gross staking rewards. With Figment and other non-custodial staking options, you can essentially be both parties in the arrangement; you function as both the delegator and...
A Look at Figment’s Institutional Staking Solutions
Founded in 2018, Figment provides a variety of staking services and infrastructure to institutions that want to stake crypto at scale. At time of writing, it is one of the largest non-custodial staking providers on Ethereum—accounting for nearly 5% of total ether (ETH) staked. In addition to staking infrastructure, Figment provides users with staking data, liquid staking options, developer tools, and a few other offerings that make them stand out from the wider institutional staking ecosystem. I...
Crypto Staking Considerations for Retail and Institutional Investors
Cryptocurrency staking is practiced by both retail and institutional users, with the two groups having distinct needs and issues to address. While some of these requirements are constant, some of them can also vary—or be ameliorated—by choosing a different staking solution. Crypto staking commonalities Before we get into the disparate staking groups and options, it’s worth diving deeper into some of the core staking requirements that retail and institutional users share. Let’s look at a few of t...
Getting Started With Crypto Staking
In the previous article in this series, we explored how proof of stake (PoS) blockchains are secured by users staking cryptocurrency, and how they receive cryptocurrency in exchange for staking with network validators. In this article, we’ll explore the mechanics of crypto staking, and how to get started with staking cryptocurrency on proof-of-stake blockchain networks. Crypto staking: getting started Crypto miners need specialized hardware and affordable electricity to profitably earn mining re...
Understanding Proof of Stake and Blockchain Security
Blockchain networks transmit enormous volumes of tokens over their networks on a continuous basis. For this reason, they need to be extremely secure in much the same way as banks, credit cards, and financial technology (fintech) apps. Without robust security, both centralized and decentralized networks can fall victim to hackers and thieves processing fraudulent transactions. Unlike the centralized networks found in traditional finance (TradFi), blockchain networks—with some exceptions—are decen...
Re-Running, Upscaling, Blending With Midjourney
While Imagine is the most popular prompt to use, there are several other basic prompts that allow you to create image variations, zoom/pan the image, or alter only a portion of an image. Let’s go through these prompts with some visual examples. Reshuffle the Prompt Called “Re-run” or “Re-roll” by Midjourney, you can hit the blue button with the white arrows to generate four new images using the original prompt. While Variation creates new images based on the image you select, Re-run is basicall...
Making Images with Midjourney
Once you’re signed up and on the Midjourney Discord, the process for making new images is incredibly simple. You don’t need to know AI, programming, or any other specialized information that isn’t commonplace. Midjourney has been praised for its simplicity. With a user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) that is already familiar to Discord users, you can use Discord to simply start creating images. Here’s how it's done: 1. In your direct messages, you should see the Midjourney Bo...
Signing Up for Midjourney
If you want to try to make your own images with Midjourney, it is relatively easy to get started creating. The ease of use is actually one area where Midjourney stands out when compared to its alternatives. Let’s start our Midjourney journey. 1. Midjourney requires users to have a Discord account. It is not only used to sign up, you also use it to generate image ideas, receive those images, and alter them. If you already have a Discord account, you can skip to step 2. If not, go to the Discord w...
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