Crypto “investing”

Portfolio graph on Coinbase showing one day movement as default period
Default portfolio graph on Coinbase

The portfolio screen in the Coinbase app always opens on the “1 day” view. For all the talk of Crypto as an investment asset class, this one design choice exposes the reality.

Investors don’t look at a one day trend, or intra day lows and highs. Traders do.

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Should we use multi-year, moving-average of income to calculate tax & benefit payments?

Income tax rates are based on current/last year’s income. This makes them easy to calculate and implement.

This immediacy of taxes also makes them painful, and makes the tax slab thresholds as artificial barriers to income mobility. An example of this is when we get a raise which pushes us from near the top end of one tax rate bracket, to the bottom end of a higher tax rate bracket. This frequently means that even though the employer is paying us more after the raise, we are actually taking home less money due to a higher tax rate.

Government benefits work similarly. For example, the unemployment benefit / social support payments cut off (or reduce dramatically) when we start working. However, after accounting for taxes and loss of benefits, the take home income from pay is often lower than the unemployment benefits.

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