The Thursday Recap #13

Did we mention that the tax reporting deadline is almost here? This week we’ve been reading about Kadena’s blockchain launch, Kraken’s latest acquisition, Ripple’s XRP, the development of a Crypto City and the man himself... Craig Wright. You can also find out what we’re working on and how we’re getting on with our plan for January...

JPMorgan launch spinoff startup Kadena’s public blockchain

In its effort to develop scalable, secure proof-of-work alternatives to the current leading cryptocurrencies ethereum and bitcoin, Kadena’s blockchain launched yesterday (14th January 2020). By March, it also hopes to have integrated its wallet Chainweaver with the Cosmos Network, which will allow different blockchains to interact.

Kraken Acquires Bit Trade

Australia’s oldest crypto exchange, founded 2013, Bit Trade is the latest acquisition for Kraken, who also acquired Circle Trade only last month. With the country seeing a massive growth in crypto recently Kraken say they “will focus on being the premier crypto service in Australia with the best AUD liquidity, trading experience, and support for both institutional and retail clients”.

Ripple’s XRP Still at Risk of Securities Classification

Ripple are battling an open-ended class-action lawsuit, which dates back to early 2018. The plaintiffs argue that XRP is a security and that Ripple, its subsidiary XRP II, Ripple’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and others broke the law by “issuing and selling XRP as an unregistered security.” Ripple filed a motion to dismiss in September 2019 to “seek dismissal of the Complaint with prejudice. As this doesn’t address the real question of whether XRP is a security it seems unlikely that the crypto community will ever receive clarification because unless the motion to dismiss is won it’s likely that the case will continue to drag out.

Gemini Now Has Its Own Insurance Company

The Winklevoss-Led exchange has created its own “captive” insurance company which will provide insurance for customers of Gemini Custody, the crypto cold storage service of Gemini Trust Company. Many large exchanges self-insure by holding a big stash of bitcoin, but a captive provides more formalised cover and broadens Gemini’s access to reinsurance markets so they potentially have more coverage and better rates. Although theirs is not the first of its type in the crypto space, it is possibly a record-breaker with a $200 million coverage limit.

Crypto City - Senegal 2025

On 13th January, singer AKON tweeted saying “Just finalized the agreement for AKON CITY in Senegal”. Set on a 2,000-acre parcel gifted by the Senegalese president, the project started construction in March 2019 and will be a 100% crypto-based city with the Akoin currency (set to launch its Beta this year) at its centre. If only we could fast forward 5 years for a look! Read more.

Craig Wright Claims to Receive Keys to $9.6B Bitcoin Fortune

In a new court filing Wright claims he received the necessary information and keys to unlock the Tulip Trust, worth 1.1M bitcoin. The Trust is currently at the centre of a bitter dispute between Wright and Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s deceased business partner Dave Kleiman. Read the CoinDesk article here. Read more.

UK Tax deadline - are you ready?

The tax return deadline is just over two weeks away. If you fail to file by the 11.59pm deadline on 31st January you could end up with a hefty fine.

Are you prepared? You must have received your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR), enrolled for the online service and activated your account using the code you received in the post. If your filing online for the first time, be aware that activation can take 10 days - so if your a bit behind you might want to get a move on!

Check the HMRC website or our UK Crypto Tax Guide for more guidance.

What we’re up to this month...

We mentioned our plan for January in our latest Thursday Recap, so here’s a quick update on where we are...

• Fixes - we've fixed a number of issues recently - check out our release notes.

• Exchanges - we’re currently testing the upcoming Bitfinex and BitMEX integrations and developing the Poloniex and Bittrex integrations.

• New tax years page - you might have noticed the new tax landing page has been implemented. You can now see a summary for all current and past tax reports that you have data for. Click a card to go to the tax report and downloadable reports for that year.

• Foreign currency support - this is in the final stages of testing and will be launched soon. We'll be adding guidance for updating your foreign currency deposits and withdrawals where necessary.

• Gifts to spouses - we'll be adding this soon after foreign currency support.

• Pricing method - we've implemented the server-side exchange rate features for this. We'll be adding the ability to change this in the app soon.

• Binance Jersey - Thanks to the users who reported an issue with the Binance Jersey API - currently this integration is not functional because their API has been changed to require upper-cased request headers. Chrome/Brave always lower-case request headers as they should be case-insensitive. We are working with their support team on this and will provide an update when available.

Send us some love on Product Hunt

Excitingly, we recently launched Recap on Product Hunt and achieved a place in their Top 10 meaning that we are now almost top of the list on their site when someone searches for a crypto tax product.

On launch day we reached an amazing #7 and would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who helped us get there. 😊 If you haven't already please send us some love by submitting a review here.

Stay updated

Keep your eyes on our social media and also don’t forget to join our Telegram group or leave a message via chat on the website or in app.