TAXING FORKS: The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has published fresh guidance for calculating taxes owed on cryptocurrency holdings. As expected, it addresses the tax liabilities created by cryptocurrency forks, the acceptable methods for valuing cryptocurrency received as income and how to calculate taxable gains when selling cryptocurrencies. But certified accountant Kirk Phillips said he was surprised the guidance largely addresses forks and not other scenarios. Full story SEC SAYS NO: The U.S. SEC has rejected the latest attempt at creating a bitcoin ETF. The regulator announced Wednesday that the proposal, filed by Bitwise Asset Management in conjunction with NYSE Arca, did not meet legal requirements to prevent market manipulation or other illicit activities. The SEC placed the burden on NYSE Arca, rather than Bitwise’s proposal itself. To date, the SEC has rejected all bitcoin ETF proposals, citing market manipulation and fraudulent activity concerns. Full story HAVEN PRODUCT: Crypto liquidity and OTC provider B2C2 has launched a gold derivative that trades against bitcoin, in what the firm says is an important evolution in the safe-haven asset trading space. Clients of B2C2 can physically settle synthetic trades with bitcoin, which correspond to physical gold stored in vaults. Full story RIPPLE REMITS: Samsung Pay now has an international remittance feature, making use of a platform owned by Finablr, a London-listed Ripple partner. Branded as Money Transfer, the service is currently available only in the United States – with the exception of Oklahoma – and will be rolled out to other countries next year. Finablr said the cooperation with Samsung Electronics America involves a new in-app feature that allows for the remittance of funds to foreign recipients. Full story ETHEREUM GRANTS: Venture studio ConsenSys is granting $175,000 to seven open-source software projects on the ethereum network. Announced Thursday, the projects include an oracle network for off-chain data called Tellor, and a mobile decentralized app-builder called Alice, among others. So far, the ConsenSys grants program, which launched in February, has received more than 150 applications. Of those, 15 projects have been funded to the tune of $330,000 so far. Full story MOST INFLUENTIAL: Libra. DeFi. Quadriga. Hodlonaut. Bakkt. 2019 has been full of big announcements, deep innovation, and not a little tragedy, comedy, and mystery. Who made the biggest contributions this year? Who was most notorious? CoinDesk launched its "Most Influential" poll asking readers to nominate their heroes (and villains) of crypto in 2019. Full story here. | 