Trump's proposed capital gains tax cut and a look at which altcoins are actually performing
A solo presentation by Rob of Digital Asset News covering Trump's proposed capital gains tax reduction and an analysis of altcoin performance relative to Bitcoin.
Summary
Rob of Digital Asset News covers two main topics: President Trump's reported consideration of a capital gains tax cut — the first potential major reduction since 2003 — and a data-driven look at which altcoins are actually outperforming Bitcoin in the current market. Rob walks through current US capital gains tax brackets, illustrates the real-dollar impact on crypto investors (e.g., a California resident selling Bitcoin at a $940,000 gain could owe over $348,000 to federal and state governments combined), and expresses support for any reduction.
He then uses the 'Does It Bleed' tool on Into the Cryptoverse to show that BNB and Tron are among the few altcoins currently outperforming Bitcoin, while XRP and Solana are largely underperforming. He connects Tron's strength to its role as the cheapest and most widely used payment rail for stablecoins, particularly across Southeast Asia and parts of Europe, citing stablecoin card volume data from paymentcan.xyz showing monthly volumes growing from zero to roughly $1 billion, with one platform (RedotPay) alone processing $386 million in 30-day volume.
Rob then zooms out to the broader tokenization thesis — covering global payments, real estate, equities, bonds, and derivatives — and highlights a free price model tool he has added to the Dan Teaches Crypto website, which allows users to model potential crypto valuations based on each asset class's share of tokenized value and a speculation multiplier.
The episode also covers Bitcoin custody diversification: following the Coldcard situation, Rob advocates spreading holdings across multiple storage methods (hardware wallets, ETFs, custodians) rather than relying on any single solution. He notes that Bitwise is now offering in-kind Bitcoin ETF transfers for holdings of $1 million or more.
The episode closes with coverage of Harmony being hacked again for hundreds of millions of dollars — its second major exploit after the 2022 bridge hack — causing its token to drop 50%. On-chain investigator Zach XBT stated he would not assist, citing Harmony's failure to compensate those who helped during the first exploit. Rob also draws a broader parallel between most altcoins and junk websites from the early internet era, arguing that only those with demonstrable usage and utility will survive long-term.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Trump's Reported Capital Gains Tax Cut
Rob: Trump just potentially did a pretty good thing, and it all happens with taxes. I'm not a big fan of taxes, so if they're going to reduce or hopefully eliminate them, I'm all for it. What we have today is positivity as far as taxes go, as we potentially will see profits at some point. I know this has been a rather — I wouldn't say a brutal bear market, but more of a typical bear market for the digital asset space. I see big huge gains coming in the future, and for that we need a plan. Thankfully, it looks like President Trump is saying the same thing.
This is from the Kobeissi Letter. President Trump is weighing a cut to capital gains taxes ahead of the midterm elections. There has not been a major cut to capital gains in the US since 2003. I know that not all of you are from the United States, but this is actually a pretty good thing. Hopefully they can follow that up in other areas. I personally am in Puerto Rico, so it doesn't really apply to me per se, but it is something I'm concerned with, especially for the people watching this show who don't want to get slaughtered when they're actually paying those capital gains.
How US Capital Gains Tax Brackets Work
So, just to go over how this actually works here in the States. There is a 0% rate if you are single with taxable income up to $48,000. If you're filing jointly, that's up to $96,000. Anything below that, you're not paying a dime. That's pretty good. But I think some of you out there are actually doing quite well, and maybe as you start to sell these things off, you're in for a windfall — especially if we see, as people's price predictions go, Bitcoin at $150,000, $300,000, $400,000, a million dollars. We'll see if that actually happens. But it's not just Bitcoin — it's altcoins, which we are going to take a look at today.
Moving forward, there's also a 15% rate that applies to income above the 0% threshold up to $533,400. So between roughly $48,000 and half a million dollars, you're going to pay 15%. And a 20% rate applies to income exceeding the 15% upper threshold.
Just as a basic example: I have a Roth IRA and it's 0% capital gains. I just have to wait until I'm 59 and a half. Anything I make is zero. However, if I use an exchange and sell it off — if I bought at $10,000 and the value of Bitcoin goes to $60,000, that's $50,000 in gains, and that's $7,500 in capital gains over that threshold. Don't get too concerned with it. All I'm going to tell you is this: if you sell some crypto as time goes on, hopefully capital gains isn't raised by that point, because this is what President Trump is trying to address right now.
I don't know when you're going to turn 59 and a half. I don't know if you have a Roth IRA or something comparable in your country. But it seems like around the world, every government just likes to raise the rates as much as possible. So this is actually a big thing.
A Real-Dollar Example of Capital Gains Impact
Here's a scenario I thought was interesting. Let's say you came into $60,000 today and bought one Bitcoin for $60,000. The value of Bitcoin goes to $1 million. If you sold your Bitcoin, you'd have a capital gain of $940,000. Now, if you live in California, you have the federal tax rate, you have the California state tax rate, and you have this thing called the 3.8% net investment income tax. You're looking at 37% in capital gains. You just paid the government $348,740. Congratulations.
So when Trump comes out and says he wants to lower capital gains taxes, I support that. I'm all for it. We'll see if this actually goes through. We'll see if the government continues to raise taxes — hint, it probably will. But I see this as a step in the right direction.
Altcoin Performance: Which Ones Are Actually Winning
Now I wanted to shift gears and talk a little bit about altcoins, because I know we don't really talk about those as much. Everybody's waiting for Bitcoin to recover, and then typically the pattern is to talk about altcoins as things start to blow up. But I think we need to pay attention to the winners that are happening right now and why they're winners as we move into another timeframe. This isn't a very popular opinion, but I think it's important that you look forward.
There's a great website, Into the Cryptoverse, and there's a section called "Does It Bleed" that I want to take a look at. We talked about this yesterday — someone asked me how my bag was doing. As far as payments, I see the best altcoins as BNB, Ethereum, BNB — those are like my four big favorites. I was surprised that the altcoins are actually holding up pretty well right alongside Bitcoin.
Of course, if you had invested in AI plays or geoclouds, energy infrastructure, AI databases — those types of things — you'd be doing pretty good. But we're taking a look at crypto digital assets.
Let's take a look at Ethereum versus Bitcoin. What you're looking at is how much it's been bleeding. Ethereum is doing pretty good over the last one day, one week, one month, three months, and six months. But over one year, you're down 22% against Bitcoin. Two years, down 35%. Three years — you can read it — it's not looking too good for Ethereum. The standard is Bitcoin; the bleeder is Ethereum.
Now let's take a look at the top ten. BNB — there's a bit of a difference here. Over a day, you're actually down. But over one week, one month, three months, six months, one year, two years, and three years, you're actually up ahead of Bitcoin. Pretty crazy.
How about XRP? It's not in my bag, but there are a lot of XRP holders out there. Unfortunately, XRP holders, I'm sorry. Over a day, one week, one month, three months, six months, and one year, you are down big time. Over two years you're up, three years you're down, and everything else is pretty much red across the board. So XRP is what it is. Maybe it'll rally later.
How about Solana? Not really that great, honestly. Over a day you're down. Over one week you're up a little bit. One month and three months — it's kind of a mixed bag. But six months, one year, and two years, you should have just bought Bitcoin. That's pretty much the play.
So right now, as far as the best performers: BNB did pretty good, Ethereum is half and half, Solana is mixed. And now let's take a look at Tron. Don't laugh — I know people laugh because it's Justin Sun and they think he's just a big shill. But there's your information. That's how much you're bleeding. You're outperforming Bitcoin.
Why Tron Is Winning: Stablecoin Payment Rails
So what does this all mean? Well, it doesn't mean you should sell everything and buy Tron. Obviously not. That's a dumb statement — that was just sarcasm. But the thesis — and I see why people push back on it — is payments.
This is from paymentcan.xyz, which tracks monthly stablecoin card volumes. I'm not familiar with almost all of these platforms because I'm in America and we don't deal with this. But look at this: monthly stablecoin card volumes went from absolutely zero about two years ago all the way up to a billion dollars a month as of July and August. Going from zero to a billion a month isn't bad.
Looking at the card programs: Redotpay, EtherFi, Cast, Carta, Hyrix — never heard of them. Gnosis Pay I have heard of, but they've done a whopping $7.95 million. MetaMask at a whopping $3 million. Avalanche Card at $2.5 million. But the winner here is Redotpay with a 30-day volume of $386 million. What the heck is this?
I did a post on this and just said I found it interesting that Bitcoin is supposed to be for payments, yet these are the ones doing all the payments. So who is Redotpay? Redotpay is a licensed crypto payment platform out of Hong Kong that issues Visa cards funded directly by crypto and stablecoins. You spend crypto like cash without manually cashing out first.
Now, if you're in the United States, you're not getting any of these cards because they're not allowed over there — that's just the regulatory environment we're in. But here's the answer as to what rails these platforms use: multi-chain wallets across most of them. They use BNB, Ethereum, Solana, Tron, and also Bitcoin. They also use XRP and TON. Interesting. And Tether and USDC.
The reason Tron is doing so well — and something that escapes a lot of people — is that it's the cheapest and the most popular funding rail, especially in Hong Kong, China, across Southeast Asia, and across parts of Europe. That's why Tron is outperforming: payments.
The Bigger Picture: Tokenization of the World's Assets
Then I take a look at this and ask myself, okay, how much are you actually going to make in payments? Because I don't think it's really that much on its own. But then I remind myself — it's not just payments that these digital assets will be a part of as far as the rails go. It's everything.
This is all the world's money in one graphical representation. Currency and gold is roughly $18 trillion. Then you've got the S&P 500. You're going to have tokenization of equities or assets. You're also going to have the money supply tokenized — essentially on the rails — and that could be a heavy amount. Stocks, debt perhaps. My favorite: global real estate at $326 trillion that could be tokenized. Household wealth. And then derivatives — futures, forwards, warrants, swaps — those types of things, where the notional value is like $1 quadrillion. So taking a look at that, I thought to myself, you can't put everything on the blockchain. It's impossible. Well, maybe it is, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
The Price Model Tool on Dan Teaches Crypto
So I asked Claude — and I'd like you guys to go to the website and do this yourself. On the Dan Teaches Crypto website, 100% free, always will be free, I just added this morning a section called Tools. You can take a look at the four-year cycle, which is kind of interesting. You can take a look at price predictions — everybody who's put in their price prediction, you guys are beating all the experts so far. Good job.
And the last one is the price model. When you click on price model, you'll see what we just talked about. There's a slider to see: what if Solana takes over 2% of global payments? Not the payments themselves, but the fees — because that's what actually matters in terms of how much value accrues. So you've got global payments. How about real estate tokenization? Stock tokenization? Bond tokenization? Futures, derivatives, options? I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm just saying — let's say the Federal Reserve. Okay, I don't think the Federal Reserve is going to put Solana on there. And then there's also this thing called speculation. As we start to hear more and more stories, you'll see more and more speculation go up.
So just by putting in realistic numbers, this is how much it should be worth — and right now that's pretty low. You can do that with Solana, with Ethereum, and with Bitcoin. As a reminder, the valuation multiple — just like earnings per share for stocks — you can also adjust this slider because things get a little crazy as people start to speculate and it goes up. Yes, it is speculation, and I understand that. But as we move forward, you can see why it's not just payments — it's also a whole host of things. Play around with that slider and see where things go.
Bitcoin Custody: Diversifying Your Storage
To finish up on custody — ever since Coldcard pretty much tanked, a lot of the Bitcoin maximalists who were promoting it took a hit. You can't be perfect. This was a post from Simon, and it made a lot of sense, though I don't agree with Simon on everything. He's one of the smartest guys in crypto. He says: "Operation Strategy 2.0 — I know the next phase. Turn off the original Bitcoin community. Convince them running nodes no longer matters. Push them toward custody." And this is a big thing because of what happened with Coldcard. "Centralize the economic nodes. Are you falling for it?"
For the part about not running nodes — some people are, but I doubt very many. But the part where he says push them toward custody — I said, I think some Coldcard users wish they would have fallen for that, because they wouldn't have lost all their Bitcoin. Of course, on a post, you'll hear people say, "I lost it all. No big deal. I'd start from scratch." You can talk a good game. But I'm going to tell you right now, if I lost all my Bitcoin, I'd be pretty devastated.
Do whatever you want to do, because no one knows you better than you, and you have to do what's important for your family. Bitwise just offered up million-dollar in-kind transfers — so if you have a million dollars or more, you can send over your Bitcoin and they can custody it for you. Bitwise hit $600 million in Bitcoin ETF in-kind deals. They transfer Bitcoin into an ETF tax-free. These states will see over a billion coming in the years ahead.
Would I put every single one of my Bitcoin into that? Absolutely not. Just like you diversify your portfolio, I'd like you to consider diversifying your storage. I personally use iTrustCapital, I use Tangem, I use Ledger, and I just started up with Fidelity for ETFs. There will be those four sectors. If I lose on one, it doesn't screw me over in the other three. Hopefully they all take form and shape and I'm actually pretty good. But we'll see moving forward.
Harmony Hacked Again — Second Major Exploit
Lastly, because there's a lot of good news we just talked about, I need to balance it out with some bad news. Harmony just got hacked for hundreds of millions of dollars and their token just dropped by 50%. They say: "We're asking all exchanges to block and freeze funds that trace back to these four wallet addresses." Hopefully the exchanges do it for them. I know from personal experience that some exchanges totally disregarded freezing specific wallets that police and the FBI told them to freeze, and still let the hackers take all the money away — because they're exchanges and they suck.
And Zach XBT says: "I will not be tracking this incident, and I think no one should assist them for free." Harmony took advantage of people who assisted during the $100 million Harmony bridge exploit in 2022. This is their second hack. They rewarded zero dollars for significant freezes which led to law enforcement seizures, and simply said "good job." I'm not going to go down that route. I think everybody should pitch in as much as they can to get this money back. But I have to ask — who the hell is investing in Harmony?
Q&A
Rob: There was a good one here from a viewer. He says: "Rob, when you start charging for the new API integration, would you pay us the wrenches?" I will pay you guys when I kick this off, which is going to be a pretty big thing. If you're not familiar with this, I am charging $50,000 to $90,000 per month for an API integration into my live streams. I did this because it's a tip of the hat to President Trump, who just charged trading firms $60,000 to $100,000 per month for real-time access to posts from his Truth Social account. Some people will say, "That's just capitalism, Rob. Let him do that." And I look at that and go, "You've got to be kidding me. You're going to pay that much for Truth Social?" So I just put that out there. If anyone wants to pay me $50,000 to $90,000, it's heavily discounted compared to Truth Social, and I'll pay all the wrenches.
A viewer asks: "Does Congress have jurisdiction over this? After all, it is taxes." Well, they'll get input from the IRS and from institutions across the board, I'm sure. But it's up to them. There has to be a bill that actually comes through. The president can say everything he wants to, but it has to go through Congress. Now, he can do an executive order, but I don't think on that particular piece he actually can. But I would support it. If there's an ability to sign something into law — an executive order — that eliminates capital gains taxes, so much the better. And why are we even paying taxes? Why don't we just keep printing money? We just did it for Japan, for Pete's sake. And then we printed a bunch of money so we could buy our own debt. So why are we paying taxes? It doesn't make any sense to me.
Bitcoin Air says: "Hey Rob, any thoughts on if and when MicroStrategy might get into the S&P 500?" Well, first of all, we have to find the bottom and go from there. As a reminder, I think Strategy is down roughly 77%, maybe 80% this cycle. But as a reminder, last cycle they were down like 85 to 88%. So, doing pretty good for what they're doing. What a world it is when we say "I'm only down 77% — I'm doing great."
Joey says: "MoneyGram ramps launch on Solana, 11th of August. The global payment giant enables cash-to-crypto services." Another feather in the cap for Solana. Very true.
I'll leave with this from Steve: a lot of fun during the bear market makes matters worse. But huge traffic institutions like JP Morgan are adopting the uses of crypto like Ethereum and Solana. And one more thing about that — there were a lot of permissioned private blockchains, but even JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon figured out: "Oh wait, there's a whole trillion-plus dollars of liquidity on these other permissionless decentralized chains. You know what we're going to do? We're going to work with the other ones, because we are greedy." That's how it's going to be. You're going to have two types of chains. They're going to try to fill things in. People are going to figure out which one's better. Free market works.