Steve Tracy

NEW: Illinois Governor Pritzker has signed a 0.2% tax on crypto transactions into law including transfers between personal wallets, with the Crypto Council for Innovation calling it "the most punitive digital asset tax in the country."

🚨 ILLINOIS ENACTS MOST AGGRESSIVE BITCOIN TAX IN THE 🇺🇸 US Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed Illinois’ new Digital Asset Tax Act into law. Starting January 1, 2027, Illinois will impose a 0.20% tax on the gross value of digital assets exchanged, transferred, or stored for customers. In practice: • Buy Bitcoin? Pay the tax. • Transfer Bitcoin? Pay the tax. • Store BTC with a custodian? Pay the tax. Move $1 million through a bank wire, ACH transfer, brokerage account, or traditional custodian and Illinois takes nothing. Move that same $1 million as a digital asset and the state takes $2,000. The tax applies regardless of whether there is any profit, income, or capital gain. It is levied simply because a digital asset is being exchanged, transferred, or stored. Critics argue this creates a first-of-its-kind regime that singles out blockchain-based activity while leaving analogous banking, brokerage, custody, and payment services untouched. The law targets the service layer of the digital asset economy. While trading for one’s own account is excluded, businesses facilitating exchange, transfer, or custody for customers must collect and remit the tax, with customers ultimately liable if it is not collected. The Crypto Council for Innovation warned that Illinois is becoming a national outlier by adopting a transaction-based tax on digital assets that has no comparable equivalent for stocks, bonds, derivatives, bank deposits, or traditional financial transactions anywhere else in the country. Industry groups say the law is a powerful incentive for entrepreneurs, startups, and investment to leave Illinois for more competitive jurisdictions. Perhaps most surprising is the timing. Illinois only recently adopted the Digital Assets and Consumer Protection Act (DACPA), a framework many viewed as a constructive approach to blockchain innovation. This new tax represents a sharp reversal. The question now is whether other states follow Illinois’ lead, or whether this becomes a case study in how to drive an emerging industry elsewhere.

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🎥 WATCH: SAM BANKMAN-FRIED SPEAK FROM PRISON ON SEEKING A PRESIDENTIAL PARDON "It's one of the very few cases where the platform was overcollateralized and customers were made more than whole" "Yet there was not just an investigation but a prosecution and dozens of years of sentence”