Will criminal cases force the US Supreme Court to make a definitive ruling as to whether crypto should be treated the same as fiat?
The US Supreme Court mentioned bitcoin and cryptocurrency while issuing a ruling on a seemingly unrelated case.
On June 21[1], the Supreme Court issued its opinion on the case of Wisconsin Central LTD v. United States[2], which centered around the question of whether worker stock options should be taxed as compensation in the same way as actual money.
The case was previously brought before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, where it was ruled that stock options should be taxed the same as income. In his May 8 opinion[3], Judge Richard Posner had written, "Sheep may have once been a form of money; now stock is."
This ever-changing view of what qualifies as money was reiterated on Wednesday when the US Supreme Court overruled the circuit court's decision.
"The Court thinks it's clear enough that the term 'money' unambiguously excludes 'stock,'" Justice Gorsuch wrote in the court's ruling decision.
However, Justice Breyer, joined by justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, stated in the dissenting opinion that what society values as money is constantly changing. He wrote:
"What we view as money has changed over time. Cowrie shells once were such a medium but no longer are, our currency originally included gold coins and bullion, but, after 1934, gold could not be used as a medium of exchange, perhaps one day employees will be paid in Bitcoin or some other type of cryptocurrency."
The dissenting justices' opinion that cryptocurrency could one day be treated the same as fiat money aligns with the views expressed by many lower court judges.
