KPMG Canada has added Bitcoin and Ethereum to its corporate treasury as part of a commitment to emerging technologies and asset classes. The firm hasn’t revealed how much of the cryptocurrencies it purchased.

The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) offering investors exposure to the stocks of bitcoin miners, has received approval from Nasdaq to be listed on the exchange under the ticker “WGMI.”

Kazakhstan authorities are considering a 500% tax hike on electricity for cryptocurrency miners, from one tenge to five tenge ($0.0023 to $0.012). The country’s vice-minister of finance, Marat Sultangaziev, also suggested crypto miners could pay a monthly tax on equipment.

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Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• KPMG Canada Adds Bitcoin, Ethereum to Balance Sheet
• Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF Approved to Trade on Nasdaq
• Kazakhstan Proposes 500% Tax Hike on Bitcoin Miners
• What is Avalanche (AVAX)?
• Sponsored:  A Warm Welcome to Bybit - Worth up to $600 in Rewards

KPMG Canada Adds Bitcoin, Ethereum to Balance Sheet

KPMG Canada has added Bitcoin and Ethereum to its corporate treasury as part of a commitment to emerging technologies and asset classes. The firm hasn’t revealed how much of the cryptocurrencies it purchased.

The auditing, tax and advisory firm also added carbon offers to keep its environmental, social and governance (ESG) commitments. The cryptocurrency purchases were made through Gemini Trust Company’s execution and custody services.

It also established a governance committee to oversee and approve the treasury allocation. The committee reviewed tax and accounting implications while assessing risk. In a press release Kareem Sadek, an advisory partner of cyprotassets and blockchain services at KPMG Canada, said:

“We’ve invested in a strong cryptoassets practice and we will continue to enhance and build on our capabilities across Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and the Metaverse, to name a few. We expect to see a lot of growth in these areas in the years to come”

The allocation sees KPMG join the ranks of major companies holding digital assets on their balance sheet. These include software company Microstrategy and electric car giant Tesla.

Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF Approved to Trade on Nasdaq

The Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) offering investors exposure to the stocks of bitcoin miners, has received approval from Nasdaq to be listed on the exchange under the ticker “WGMI.”

The fund is expected to start trading today and will invest at least 80% of its net assets in companies that derive a minimum of 50% of their profit from bitcoin mining. The fund  has an expense ratio of 0.75%.

Valkyrie has noted that the energy the miners in the fund’s portfolio use is about 77% renewable, compared to an average renewable energy usage of 31% throughout the U.S.. Its top holdings include Argo Blockchain (ARBK), Bitfarms (BITF), Cleanspark (CLSK), Hive Blockchain (HIVE) and Stronghold Digital Mining (SDIG)

Kazakhstan Mull 500% Tax Hike on Bitcoin Miners

Kazakhstan authorities are considering a 500% tax hike on electricity for cryptocurrency miners, from one tenge to five tenge ($0.0023 to $0.012). The country’s vice-minister of finance, Marat Sultangaziev, also suggested crypto miners could pay a monthly tax on equipment.

The vice-minister compared the idea to a tax similar to the one casino operators pay on their machines. The equipment tax would be levied whether or not miners earn block rewards or even use their machines.

The move comes a day after Bagdat Musin, Kazakhstan’s minister of digital development, posted on his personal Facebook page criticism of unregistered “gray” miners for consuming 1 gigawatt of the country’s electricity.

For most of January, Kazakhstan cut off cryptocurrency miners’ electricity as the country faced widespread energy shortages and massive protests over rising fuel prices.

What is Avalanche (AVAX)?

Avalanche is an open-source blockchain for launching decentralized finance applications and deploying enterprise blockchains in an interoperable and highly scalable ecosystem. It allows anyone to launch or trade any form of asset and control it using smart contracts.

Avalanche’s mainnet was launched in September 2020 and developers claim it can process over 4,500 transactions per second while offering transaction finality in under one second. Its transaction throughput makes it stand out among other blockchains, while it offers security thresholds well above the 51% standard.

The cryptocurrency uses Snowball, a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm designed by Ava Labs that requires users to stake AVAX to become transaction validators, or to delegate their tokens to validators to participate.

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