Yesterday, Michael Saylor posted on his X profile an apparent quote from Donald Trump regarding crypto taxes.
“They have them paying tax on crypto and I don’t think that’s right. #Bitcoin is money and you have to pay capital gains tax if you use it to buy a coffee? I was talking with a friend he said ‘it really shouldn’t be taxed’ and I agree.” – @realDonaldTrump
— Michael Saylor
(@saylor) October 30, 2024
Saylor did not verify the source of this quote, and so he also fell into the trap of propagandistic fake news.
The quote from Trump: Michael Saylor stumbles into false crypto news
In his tweet, Saylor shared an apparent quote explicitly stating that it was a declaration by Donald Trump.
According to this quote, the former president, currently running again, is said to have stated that he does not consider taxes on cryptocurrencies to be fair because he would consider Bitcoin a form of money.
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This reasoning indeed would have its own logic, so much so that it cannot be considered surely and completely wrong. However, the interpretation of the law is different, not only in the USA, and as of now Bitcoin is not considered a true currency like the dollar. Moreover, this argument may hold for Bitcoin, but certainly not for all the other criptovalute.
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Perhaps this is exactly what misled Michael Saylor, given that Donald Trump is a strong supporter of cryptocurrencies, and a similar quote aligns with his communication style.
Furthermore, Trump is in full election campaign mode, which is a period when he tends to make very strong statements, sometimes even exaggerated, so much so that the one about crypto taxation might not even seem among the worst.
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The problem
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So, what is the problem?
The problem is very simple: it seems that Donald Trump never said those things.
In fact, Saylor did not add a source verifiable by everyone for those statements, which most likely were either not made by Trump, or were even invented by someone.
Unfortunately, X has not yet added the Community Notes to that tweet, and this could mislead those who use them to get more information about the reliability of the tweets. It should be remembered that the Community Notes are the only feature that X offers to add information to a tweet from the outside in order to contextualize it, because the comments on the tweet can contain anything of no value.
It is worth noting, however, that Trump has indeed made some statements regarding taxes.
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Trump and the tasse
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One of his strongest propaganda statements in the current election campaign is that he is supposedly studying a way to completely eliminate income taxes.
This is obviously just a propagandistic statement made only of words, and very likely not supported by any facts, even though there is indeed the possibility at least to try to understand if such a measure is feasible or not. However, if it were feasible, it would obviously require replacing that tax revenue with other tax revenue of another type.
However, Trump so far does not seem to have ever declared that he wants to remove the taxation on capital gains from sales of cryptocurrencies. It is not to be excluded that he might do so now.
There are indeed some countries in the world that do not have taxation on capital gains from the sale of financial assets, such as Switzerland. The USA might actually want to compete with these countries to attract more crypto capital to their territory.
However, this does not change the fact that Saylor was deceived by the electoral propaganda, which is mostly made up of lies, something that often happens to anyone involved in electoral propaganda.
Trump in any case has nothing to do with this specific bull.
The crypto fake news on X: Michael Saylor victim of Trump’s false statement
The source of this fake news, which Saylor might have been inspired by, seems to be the X profile of the unknown karbon, who has about 74,000 followers. Saylor has 3.6 million, and Trump 92 million.
Karbon three days ago had published a tweet in which it cited apparent statements on crypto taxes made by Trump during an interview.
Trump is flirting with the idea of making crypto tax free
From a recent interview:
“They have them paying tax on crypto and I don’t think that’s right. Bitcoin is money and you have to pay capital gains tax if you use it to buy a coffee? I was talking with a friend he said ‘it… pic.twitter.com/rMNonhqQ69— karbon
(@basedkarbon) October 28, 2024
In this case as well, he did not cite the source, so it was impossible to verify the accuracy of this information. In other words, the source of this news was Karbon himself, who, however, cannot be considered in any way as a reliable or authoritative source.
The fact is that, due to X’s reckless decision to disadvantage tweets that contain links to external sites, tweets that provide the sources of the information they report are now heavily penalized when such sources are external, and this results in an increase in views for tweets without sources.
Saylor in this case was probably a victim of this very problem, unfortunately known only to industry insiders and a few enthusiasts of the issue.
Due to this reckless decision, X has ceased to be a reliable source of news, because those without a source (which are often false) prevail over those that cite sources. Citing the source of a news item is the only way to allow readers to verify and judge its origin.
This is neither the first case, nor the last, of poorly done information because it lacks sources. Since on X this problem is now unsolvable, due to the fact that it is an absolutely intentional and conscious decision, it is necessary to look elsewhere for reliable information because on Elon Musk’s platform, fake news has greater success.