r/ethtrader

TLDR; My tax bill literally DOUBLES under proposed CGT changes.

Hi everyone, I just wanted to take a moment to share my research regarding the upcoming CGT changes that have been floated in the media over the last week.

Please keep in mind that these changes aren’t finalised so it’s speculative but still a MUST READ for early Bitcoiners or even shitcoiners who’ve had large wins.

According to Nine news papers; The current preferred CGT reform will be based around the Pre-1999 Howard era CGT system which adjusts the value of the COST BASIS for inflation and does away with the 50% capital gains tax discount we currently enjoy.

Let me elaborate with examples.

Under the current system, I can sell a Bitcoin I bought 15 years ago at $1 for $100,001 giving me a $100,000 profit. I apply the 50% discount and I’m left with $50,000 which gets taxed at my nominal tax rate (in my case) 47%

In total, I’m taxed about $23,500 in tax for $100,000 in Bitcoin I sell.

Under the Pre 1999 system (The system currently favored as the system most likely to be reintroduced) I’d sell my $1 Bitcoin for $101,000 and then I’d adjust the cost basis for inflation. It would be about $1.56 at 3% per year (compound adjusted)

That would mean I’d be getting taxed on a profit of $99,998.44 and would pay a total tax bill of $46999.27 for every $100,000 of Bitcoin I sell.

My tax bill literally DOUBLES under the proposed new system.

Now look, I want to be VERY clear that I’m not making and judgments on weather or not I think the current system is fairer that the other or not. That’s not what this post is about, the point of this post is simply to share the research I’ve done with people in a similar position to me so that you can begin to start war gaming the best way forward from here.

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

Use this space to discuss anything about DeFi, crypto, macroeconomics, and all things Ethereum.

Please follow the subreddit rules when posting in this thread. Keep discussions constructive, relevant, and free of spam.

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It doesn't matter if you're here to learn, chill, debate, or talk about the world of Ethereum - this thread is open to everyone.

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The “$10B total hacks in DeFi” headline sounds extremely bearish at first glance

But looking deeper, the response mechanisms seem very different from a few years ago

For example:

• Volo Protocol (Sui) exploit (~$3.5M) → team froze part of the funds, protected $28M TVL, and covered user losses themselves

• Arbitrum Security Council reportedly recovered ~$70M linked to the Kelp DAO situation and moved it to a recovery wallet

Two years ago, most exploits ended with funds gone and users left waiting

Now we’re seeing actual recovery, intervention, and accountability at the protocol level

At the same time, large players are still accumulating ETH aggressively, which suggests the market might be pricing risk differently than retail sentiment

So I’m starting to wonder:

Are we still in a “high-risk DeFi” phase…

Or is this slowly becoming a more resilient system than people think?

Curious how you guys see this

Was out at dinner with a friend last week and he tells me he sold all his ETH. Went all in on meme coins. Said it's not moving and holding is just a pure waste of time.

I didn't push back. Look at the chart, he's not wrong.

But that night it kept bugging me. Couldn't sleep, ended up doomscrolling through a bunch of crypto stuff.

TH ETFs pulled in over 12 billion this year alone. BlackRock is out here pushing staking products. And that's pretty much all institutional money, retail doesn't really buy through ETFs.

On chain doesn't look dead either. Exchange balances keep dropping, people are withdrawing and obviously not planning to dump. Checked Arkham and a few tagged institutional wallets have been adding.

Supply side might be the wildest part. More than half of all ETH is staked right now. Not a whole lot actually floating around. Supply locked up, demand trickling in, and the price just sits there.

Pulled up my contract data on bydfi and open interest has been creeping up while funding rate stays negative. Shorts are paying to hold their positions but price won't break down. Somebody is absorbing all of it on the other side.

Zoom out and it starts to look less random than people think. Retail sees the chart, says ETH is dead, and bounces. Institutions see the numbers, think it's cheap, and keep buying. Fear and greed is bottomed out but money keeps coming in.

Every time retail panics while institutions quietly stack, seems like we already know how that ends. I'd rather be wrong holding ETH than be right holding a meme coin that rugs next week.

A friend asked me this over the weekend and I can't get it out of my head.
We were just talking about life stuff (jobs, money, plans) and he just turns and goes "but like... if crypto never really moved again, would you even care?"
I had nothing.
Been in since 2020. Seen the cycles. And honestly right now feels like one of the weirder times to be asking this... tariffs everywhere, macro is a mess, Eth doing its thing but nobody really knows what that thing is. Everyone's watching but nobody wants to say out loud that they don't know what they're watching for anymore.
At some point I stopped being able to tell if I'm genuinely into this space or if I'm just hooked on the idea of number going up. Probably both if I'm honest.
A while back I moved part of my stack to neхo to earn some yield and stop obsessing over price. Small thing but it helped.
Flat market, no big moves, no real catalysts for 5 years, so why would you still be here?

Trying to decide if it’s even worth timing the market or just DCA and chill.

Welcome to r/ethtrader's Daily General Discussion thread!

Use this space to discuss anything about DeFi, crypto, macroeconomics, and all things Ethereum.

Please follow the subreddit rules when posting in this thread. Keep discussions constructive, relevant, and free of spam.

---

What are your moves?

Got a market insight? Share it. Making a bold trade? Let's hear it.

It doesn't matter if you're here to learn, chill, debate, or talk about the world of Ethereum - this thread is open to everyone.

---

Useful links:

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• Wiki
• FAQ

TL;DR: We made the difficult decision to sunset Donuts. As of today, you'll no longer see your balance on user flairs, nor earn any more Donuts on r/ethtrader.

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Introduction

Donuts have been one of the earliest and most unique experiments in SocialFi - they offered onchain rewards, tipping features, and governance - all of this directly within r/ethtrader.

Over the years, Donuts became a fully independent system - maintained by volunteers and contributors. None of this would've been possible without the community that built, used, and believed in them.

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Why sunset

After the sunset of Reddit's Community Points Beta and Special Memberships, the environment for operating Donuts became more restrictive over time.

Reddit kept implementing limitations that made it progressively harder for us to maintain and scale the project.

Over the past year, we had a full assessment of the project - we weighed its pros and cons. Ultimately, we concluded that we no longer have the resources needed to keep the project running.

To keep the project alive, we'd need to continue selling Donuts to cover operational costs - this would add constant sell pressure in a market with very limited demand. This created an unsustainable cycle.

Plus, over time, contributors stepped back or changed their focus to other projects, reducing our capacity to maintain and scale the ecosystem.

And so, after this one-year evaluation, it became clear to us that continuing under current conditions would not be viable long term. Instead of prolonging a dying project, we chose to end the project responsibly.

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More info and what we'll do

As of today:

• u/donut-bot will be shut down.
• All DONUT-related features on r/ethtrader will end.
• User flair balances will no longer display.
• Tipping commands will no longer work.
• There will be no more distributions.

To finalize the sunset:

• We've withdrawn our LP position on Arbitrum One.
• We'll burn all Donuts held in the treasury.
• We'll renounce contract ownership.

After this, Donuts will become hard capped and deflationary - their future will be entirely determined by the market, not by us.

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Thank you to everyone who participated in this journey.

All of you helped build one of the earliest real-world examples of SocialFi - a system where content, governance, and incentives came together in a meaningful way.

The experiment may be ending - but the lessons and impact will remain forever.

Yeah, $10B is a big number. No way around that. But the part that actually matters is how these situations are being handled now vs a couple years ago.

Example: the Volo Protocol exploit on Sui (~$3.5M). Team froze part of the funds, protected a much larger chunk of TVL, and said they’d cover the rest themselves. No rug, no months of silence, no users left holding the bag.

Then you’ve got the Arbitrum Security Council recovering ~$70M tied to the Kelp DAO situation and moving it on-chain to a recovery wallet. That kind of coordinated recovery barely existed not long ago.

So yeah — hacks are still happening. But the response layer is evolving fast: freezes, recoveries, teams actually stepping up. That’s a different environment than the “welp, it’s gone” era.

At the same time, you’ve got institutions quietly accumulating — like Bitmine stacking a huge amount of ETH in a short window. Feels like the market is pricing in hack frequency, while bigger players are looking at supply and long-term positioning.

Curious how people see this — are we still in “hacks = bearish” territory, or is the way protocols respond starting to matter more than the hacks themselves?