Cryptoassets and tax

With apologies to Gloria Estefan for the title…

My computing knowledge is pretty much limited to a wasted youth of playing Championship Manager and more recently getting beaten by the kids at Mario Kart.

So it was not until around 2015 or 2016 that cryptoassets properly hit my radar. This was after reading the book American Kingpin by Nick Bilton. The book was about Ross Ulbricht the creator of the infamous Silk Road which could perhaps be described as a dark web version of Amazon.

This story started as a ‘libertarian’ venture but ended in serious criminality and a double life sentence (plus 40 years) for money laundering hacking and drugs offences. Of course some people still see crypto and such nefarious activities as synonymous.

By the time Ulbricht was scuppered by the US justice system Bitcoin had already...