Ethereum, is the third cryptocurrency created after Bitcoin and Litecoin.
Ethereum is the cryptocurrency token you need to pay for any transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, this fee is called a transaction fees and sometimes refer to as gas.
The price of Ethereum has risen steadily in value from a few cents to thousands of dollars, and at one time was $4000.00 dollars USD per token.
So Ethereum is a valuable asset to own, but you need money to eat, so what options do have besides selling?
At this point your probably wondering How else can
Sometimes when I am wondering what the best choice is I ask myself, what would I do if I was rich and had the very best tax advisors? I would find a way to take cash out which didn't generate a taxable event and didn't involve losing the asset.
One very smart way to do this is to take out a loan on the asset.
Why? a loan, in general, is not considered income, therefore it is not taxable.
And while you do use the asset as security for the loan, unless you default on the loan, you aren't selling the asset.
And if structured as a business loan, the interest is actually tax deductible.
Wow... consider this
You get access to some of your gains, you don't pay taxes, you keep the asset and you generate tax dedductions to reduce your taxabvle income.
Sweet.
So do millionaires actually do this?
What do Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates have in common?
All three were billionaires, who became famous on some random year for not paying much in taxes.
And in each case they did this by applying this strategy or some variation of it, to fit their particular circumstance.
These billionaires are considered asset rich and cash poor. This is a quaint little English idiom, which unlike most idioms is quite literal in it's meaning.
These billionaires don't get paid much in cash, they get paid mostly in stock or stock options to be more precise.
Thus they have large Net Worths as in they are worth billions of dollars, but their net worth is mostly in what are called unrealized gains.
One example of Unrealized gains is an assets you own, which have gone up in value, and you have chosen not to sell them.
So just like the Bitcoin Millionaire who has 1000 Bitcoin worth 30,000 a piece, who bought it at 1 dollar, and has has unrealized gains of 29,000 per Bitcoin, on 1000 Bitcoin, these billionaires don't want to sell their stock, because the tax owed would be very great.
Instead these rich people take out loans to provide cash for their rich, luxurant lifestyles.
This is why you should never sell your Ethereum
Instead of selling it, and realizing all those unrealized gains, you take out a loan on it.
You get cash, you get tax deductions, and you get to keep your Ethereum.
What are the actual mechanics of this? Thats the content for my next article.
