South of the border, the crypto world has been holding its collective breath hoping that amendments to crypto tax laws that are part of a broader Infrastructure Bill would officially pass. They did not. At the time of this writing, crypto prices are dipping as a result.

There is good news this week, however. The largest hack in the history of crypto isn’t going to cost anybody any money. That’s because the hacker that stole $610 million USD from project called Poly Network is willingly giving back all the money.

In other news, MicroStrategy continues to stock up on Bitcoin. So are many other publicly traded companies, including ones based right here in Canada.

All of that and more in this week’s edition of Netcoins weekly news.

The U.S. House of Representatives Strikes Down Amendments Related to Crypto Taxes

President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Bill looks to be passing through the United States House of Representatives without any amendments to the proposed crypto tax laws. The decision was made in the house on Tuesday and it’s a definitive setback for the crypto industry, which might explain why prices are down across the board at the time of this writing.

Essentially the crypto tax laws proposed in the bill look to raise $28 billion for Biden’s infrastructure plans by taxing crypto investors, developers, stakers, miners, and crypto-related businesses. Politicians opposing the bill – and of course the blockchain industry as a whole – petitioned to have amendments made so that the crypto laws written were more specific and not blanketed to cover every aspect of the industry.

It simply looks like that’s not going to happen now. It will be interesting to see if prices continue to slide across the broader market for the next little while.

Hacker Who Stole $610 Million USD From Poly Network Returns All of the Funds

Poly Network is ready to make their users whole again. A hacker who stole $610 million USD from the project is returning the remaining $141 million they stole. They have provided access to the funds by giving up the private key to Poly Network.

The anonymous hacker says they stole the funds “just for fun” and had always planned to return the crypto.

It appears that a major factor in the hacker’s decision to return the funds was a “Dear Hacker” letter posted by Poly Network on Twitter.

There is one hitch still left to be figured out. Some of the stolen funds were turned into Tether. Tether does have the ability to freeze the movement of funds. $33 million USD is therefore still frozen, but Poly Network is discussing the release of those funds so that users can be paid back.

The heist is the biggest in the history of cryptocurrency to date.

Public Companies Now Own More Than 1% of All 21 Million Bitcoins

216,692 bitcoins are owned by public companies. That means 1.032% of all bitcoins are in the pockets of corporations. 34 companies are listed on buybitcoinworldwide.com and 11 of those companies are Canadian including Netcoin’s parent company, BIGG Digital Assets.

That number will undoubtedly continue to grow in size as more and more companies look to add cryptocurrency to their cash reserves. Some will almost certainly get involved with mining. The bottom line is corporations are going to play a big role in mass crypto adoption and it won’t be just Bitcoin’s outstanding supply that gets smaller and smaller.

American technological consulting firm MicroStrategy is continuing to lead the charge. Recent records show the company made another $177 million USD purchase of Bitcoin. That’s another 3,907 coins at an average price of $26,769 USD each.

A Picture of a Rock Sells for 420 ETH, or More Than $1.6 Million

A project called ETHRock is selling JPEG files featuring a rock with the Ethereum logo painted on it for enormous amounts of ETH. The most recent rock sold for 420 ETH, or a whopping $1.66 million Canadian.

The price floor for the next rock being put up for auction is an unbelievable 730 ETH as of Thursday.

Although crypto prices have cooled off a little bit in light of stringent crypto tax laws passing through the House of Representatives in America, the NFT market isn’t slowing down.

Visa just entered the game. Not by launching its own NFT marketplace, but by purchasing a CryptoPunk for 150 ETH. It’s punk #7610.

That’s it, that’s all for this week’s edition of Netcoins crypto news. Remember to register for a free account today.

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