Tax Compliance Issues in the Meme Coin Craze: A Review of the Oyster and Bitqyck Cases

With the popularity of meme coins, many people in the crypto industry have gained huge returns from them. However, as the previous ICO tax evasion cases have shown

Bitcoin will take center stage in the global financial arena in 2024, sparking a meme coin carnival. According to statistics, roughly 75% of meme coins were created this year. The trading volume of meme coins had surged by over 950% as of early December this year, and their total market capitalization had surpassed USD 140 billion. The meme coin craze has not only brought a new wave of enthusiasm to the crypto market but has also drawn an increasing number of ordinary investors to the realm of crypto assets.

The meme coin craze不禁brings to mind the ICO craze of around 2017. With the introduction of the ERC-20 standard in 2017, the cost of issuing tokens was significantly reduced, leading to the emergence of projects yielding returns of hundreds to thousands of times, and billions of dollars poured into the ICO craze; this year, a group of launch platforms like Pump.fun have made issuing tokens simpler and fairer, setting off a meme coin storm that continues to this day in the circle. Although there are numerous technological and logical distinctions between ICOs and the issuing of meme coins, the tax compliance risks faced by investors and project parties may be comparable. In the last round of ICO mania, there was no shortage of investors and project parties facing ICO-related tax troubles. Today, as the meme coin craze continues, tax compliance issues will once again become a core issue that crypto asset investors and meme coin issuers need to pay attention to. In this issue, FinTax will review the Oyster case and the Bitqyck case, taking these two ICO-related tax evasion cases as examples to provide crypto investors with a sober reflection on tax compliance during the meme coin craze.

1. Two typical cases of ICO tax evasion

1.1 Oyster case: Founder sentenced to four years in prison for failure to declare income from coin sales

The Oyster Protocol platform was launched by Bruno Block (real name Amir Bruno Elmaani) in September 2017 to provide decentralized data storage services. In October 2017, Oyster Protocol began its ICO, and the token issued was called Pearl (PRL). Oyster Protocol claims that the issuance of PRL is to create a win-win ecosystem, so that both websites and users can benefit from data storage, and realize value exchange and incentive mechanisms through PRL. At the same time, founder Bruno Block also publicly promised that after the ICO, the supply of PRL will not increase, and the smart contract that creates PRL will be "locked".

Through ICO, Oyster Protocol raised about $3 million in the early stage, and with this money, it launched the mainnet and officially launched data storage services, turning Oyster Protocol from an idea into a usable product. But the good times did not last long. In October 2018, founder Bruno Block took advantage of a loophole in the smart contract, privately minted a large number of new PRLs, and sold them on the market, causing the price of PRL to plummet, but Bruno Block personally made huge profits.

The plunge in PRL prices has attracted the attention of regulators. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other relevant departments have launched investigations. The SEC eventually filed a civil lawsuit against Bruno Block for defrauding investors, and the prosecution filed a criminal lawsuit against Bruno Block for tax evasion. On the issue of taxation, prosecutors believe that Bruno Block not only damaged the trust of investors but also violated the obligation to pay taxes on millions of dollars in cryptocurrency profits. Bruno Block only filed a tax return in 2017 between 2017 and 2018, stating that he only earned about $15,000 from the "patent design" business. In 2018, he did not file a tax return or report any income to the IRS, but spent at least $12 million on real estate, yachts, etc.

Eventually, Oyster founder Bruno Block confessed to his tax evasion in court and signed a plea agreement in April 2023, sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion and required to pay approximately $5.5 million in compensation to the tax department to make up for the tax losses.

1.2 Bitqyck case: ICO transfer income was not taxed, and the two initiators served a total of eight years in prison

Bitqyck is a cryptocurrency company founded by Bruce Bise and Samuel Mendez. The company first launched Bitqy coin, claiming to provide an alternative way to get rich for "those who missed Bitcoin", and conducted an ICO in 2016. At the same time, Bitqyck promised investors that each Bitqy coin came with 1/10 of a share of Bitqyck common stock. But in fact, the company's shares have always been held by founders Bise and Mendez, and the company