From its humble beginnings trading for pennies to becoming legal tender in sovereign nations, from pizza purchases that made history to lost fortunes buried in landfills, Bitcoin has already had a journey that rivals the best Hollywood scripts.

Here are some fun facts about everyone’s favorite magical internet money.

Bitcoin factoids

Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator, owns around 1 million bitcoins (worth billions of dollars) but has never moved or spent them.¹ The FBI became the holder of (at the time) the largest Bitcoin wallet in the world after seizing 144,000 bitcoins from the Silk Road marketplace in 2013.² However, Satoshi Nakamoto is the largest Bitcoin holder.

There’s a limited number of bitcoins that will ever exist — 21 million. However, due to lost wallets and passwords, the actual number of usable bitcoins is significantly lower. Some estimates suggest up to 20% of all bitcoins are permanently lost.

For example, James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013.³ He repeatedly tried to get permission to excavate the Welsh landfill where it’s buried, even offering the local council a percentage of the recovered funds.

(Following a hearing, a High Court dismissed Howells’ claim for excavation in January 2025, ruling that it had no prospect of success.)

A few people have had QR codes of their Bitcoin wallet addresses tattooed on their bodies, allowing for quick transactions by scanning their skin.⁴

Bitcoin firsts, a timeline

The first Bitcoin whitepaper was published by Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31, 2008, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” which describes the original plan and protocol for Bitcoin.

The first Bitcoin block (the Genesis block) was mined on January 3, 2009.

The first Bitcoin transaction occurred on January 12, 2009, when Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney.

The first Bitcoin exchange, Bitcoin Market, was established in February 2010.

The first real-world Bitcoin transaction was on May 22, 2010 (also known as Bitcoin Pizza Day), when Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas (roughly $41 at the time, or $0.0041 per Bitcoin). The Bitcoin Pizza Index tracks how much that purchase would be worth in today’s Bitcoin: https://bitcoinpizzaindex.net/.

The first major company to accept Bitcoin payments was WordPress in November 2012.

The first Bitcoin ATM was installed at Waves Coffee Shop in Vancouver, Canada, on October 29, 2013. The first Bitcoin ATM in Europe was installed in Bratislava, Slovakia in December 2013. The first Bitcoin ATM installed in the United States went online on February 18, 2014, in a cigar bar in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but was removed 30 days later.

The first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender was El Salvador on September 7, 2021.

Tax season has officially kicked off and for many of us that means arriving at the office before the sun rises and leaving long after it sets. Working 12+ hours every day, six or seven days a week for three months straight is a hell of a grind. How do you get through it?

Here’s what works for me:

• Good snacks that change weekly (with a combination of healthy and some not-so-healthy);
• Mixed coffees and teas to break up the monotony of the same hot drinks;
• Keeping a good rice cooker in the kitchen so I can make a hot meal in an office environment;
• Keeping a pillow, blanket, and sleeping pad handy because there will inevitably be a couple of days where I just hit a wall and need to shut my eyes for an hour;
• Putting a weight machine in my spare office for a quick lunch-time workout (although, if I’m being honest, my consistency needs a lot of improvement); and
• Large-screen TV mounted in my office – When I’m alone at the end of the day, I’m kept company by my old friends, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

Lately, I’ve had a lot of tension in my neck, so I’m considering a massage chair. It’s depreciable, right?

Send your best tips (and massage chair recommendations if you have them) to mikeg@spidell.com.

Toward the end of 2024, a DOJ release floated across my desk: an individual in Seattle had been sentenced to 10 months in prison for failing to report as much as $6 million in income on his tax returns for 2016 through 2020.¹ Upon closer reading, I discovered this individual owned coffee carts in Seattle. I know Seattle loves its coffee… the world loves Seattle’s coffee.² But $6 million in income from coffee carts? The answer is yes, if they are bikini barista coffee carts, which these were.

Let us set aside the questionable (although apparently profitable) practice of selling coffee in a bikini in the winter in Seattle. The DOJ release also presents readers with a Helpful Comparison so we can wrap our pea brains around the magnitude of this fraud.

Not content to merely note that the coffee cart owner caused a tax loss of around $1.3 million, the prosecuting attorney offered that while the coffee cart owner had enriched himself from sales to his community, he felt “he did not need to pay his share of the costs that support that society. … For example, school lunches are provided by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. But for this prosecution, [his] tax fraud would have cost the government the equivalent of 462,000 school lunches.”

Oh, now I get it. Dollars mean nothing to me, but undercooked pizza and tater tots? How dare he.

In case you are still unclear as to what this all means, here are more Helpful Comparisons, using a standard 10 × 8 school lunch tray:³

• To circle the world with school lunch trays, you would need approximately 250 million trays.
• You could fit approximately 300,000 school lunch trays in an acre if stacked perfectly without any space between them.
• If you were to stack up 850,000 Styrofoam lunch trays that New York City schools used to throw away daily, the stack would be 8.5 times taller than the Empire State Building.
• Stacked end-to-end, it would take 2,178.5 school lunch trays to reach the height of the Emerald City’s CN Tower.

Which brings us back to Seattle, and bikini barista coffee carts, and a fraud worth the height of 212 CN Towers in school lunch trays. And he only got 10 months.

Already dreaming about a post-tax season European vacation? If you know you want to get away but can’t decide on the destination, there’s always the usual considerations: museums, architecture, gardens, a restaurant featured on Chef’s Table… beer taxes.

The Tax Foundation created a map of the beer taxes across Europe, with Finland being the highest at €0.597 per 330 mL bottle of beer. You can see the rest at:

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/eu/beer-taxes-europe/

This is it: the final issue of Spidell’s 2024 Tax Season Tribune. Hopefully we have provided you with some levity during this filing season, and maybe a few new jokes to tell at parties. Don’t forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram — you’ll get great information there, too.

We’ll continue to provide you with more analysis, seminars, and breaking tax news. Next Sunday, Spidell’s California Minute^® podcast returns for its ninth season, and Spidell’s Federal Tax Minute^® podcast will be back starting April 23.

The IRS is warning taxpayers of the inaccurate and misleading tax advice coming from social media, including TikTok among other sources. Before you roll your eyes at me, let me say up front that the IRS’s warning is less about Chinese disinformation and more about faux experts run amok.

Who would have thought that a group of people whose lives depend on “clicks” would provide anything but sound professional tax advice? To save you the time, I watched a TikTokker (wearing cut off jean shorts and a tank top) explain that all you have to do is start an LLC, and you can deduct all your cell phone, car, and other expenses against your other income — no actual business purposes needed. Why didn’t I think of that?!? Oh yeah, because it’s tax fraud, you dolt!

So, as I end my last Tribune article of this tax season, let’s raise a glass to TikTok tax influencers and artificial intelligence creators alike! They will give real professionals plenty of job security to last (… at least until I’m ready to retire).

Until next year!

In March 2023, the IRS issued new FAQs on their website addressing whether certain costs related to nutrition, wellness, and general health are classified as medical expenses under IRC §213.¹

The FAQs reminded individuals about the deductibility of expenses like smoking cessation programs, therapy, weight loss programs, and gym memberships.

However, it seems that people were taking the IRS’s advice too far because almost exactly a year later, the IRS issued an alert reminding taxpayers that personal expenses for general health and wellness are not considered medical expenses under the tax law.²

Specifically, general welfare expenses that are not specifically for the purpose of diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease are not deductible or reimbursable under health flexible spending arrangements, health savings accounts, health reimbursement arrangements, or medical savings accounts (FSAs, HSAs, HRAs, and MSAs).

The IRS noted that some companies were misrepresenting the circumstances under which food and wellness expenses can be paid or reimbursed under FSAs and other health spending plans. FSAs and other health spending plans that pay for, or reimburse, nonmedical expenses are not qualified plans. If the plan is not qualified, all payments made to taxpayers under the plan, even reimbursements for actual medical expenses, are includible in income.

We are excited to announce that in May, Spidell will begin to roll out a new look and feel for our brand! This includes a new logo and a fresh look for our marketing and subscription e-mails. But you can be sure that behind these visual upgrades, there will be the same high-quality tax analysis that you have come to trust and expect from Spidell.

Filing season can be hard on everyone, tax pros and taxpayers alike. But a recent poll by Cash App Taxes revealed that 25% of Gen Z taxpayers said they get so stressed during filing season, they need a therapist.¹ Further, 54% of that same group said that filing taxes has brought them to tears in past years or they expect it will this year.

This could open up a new advertising avenue for tax professionals: “No-More-Tears Tax Prep.”

(If Cash App Taxes sounds familiar to you, they were the ones involved in the logo dispute with H&R Block, which we covered in the March 5, 2023, issue of Spidell’s Tax Season Tribune.²)

AB 984 to the rescue

In an attempt to bolster the financial literacy of young people leaving high school, California’s AB 984 would require a one-semester course in economics that would include content in personal finance as a requirement to graduate.

According to the bill’s authors, “AB 984 guarantees access to a personal finance course to all high school students, instilling them with the skills and support they will need throughout their lives.” Problem solved.

Except the bill analysis admits that there have been numerous past attempts to mandate personal finance instruction in high school, but research into whether this instruction is actually effective has mixed results.³ Specifically:

“One author concludes that, ‘We have long noted with dismay that students who take a high school course in personal finance tend to do no better on our exam than those who do not. This finding has been a great disappointment to consumer educators and to those who support efforts to make courses in personal finance a requirement for high school graduation, and it points to the need for better materials and teacher training.’ (Mandell, 2006).”

Until personal finance finds its way into the curriculum, filing season might be a boon to therapists. And taxpayers will want to refer to the IRS’s FAQs to see whether those therapy costs are deductible medical expenses. But more on that next week.

You win some, you lose some. An Irish woman lost out on a payout worth more than $800,000 in U.S. dollars in an injury lawsuit after the judge dismissed her claim earlier this year because she won a tree-throwing competition just months after her supposed injury.

Kamila Grabska claimed that a 2017 car accident left her with pain in her back, neck, and spine, and she filed an insurance lawsuit in 2022 claiming she was unable to work for the previous five years.¹

In court proceedings in Limerick,² she was questioned about a photo published by a local newspaper the year after her injury that showed her heaving a Christmas tree through the air.³ Grabska said in court that she was only trying to “live a normal life.” Other evidence presented included video of her playing with a dog for up to an hour and a half.

Judge Carmel Stewart described the tree-throwing photo as “very graphic,” and dismissed Grabska’s lawsuit, saying “I’m afraid I cannot but conclude the claims were entirely exaggerated.”

As this tax season is winding down, here’s hoping you haven’t had to deal with a questionable return that may feel entirely exaggerated in its own way. After all, you can only trust a troublesome client as far as you can throw him, which is good news — unless, of course, you’re in Ireland and that client is a tree.

In a past Tribune issue, we covered the Banished Words List, which is released annually by Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The 2024 list contains the following words:

• Hack
• Impact
• At the end of the day
• Rizz
• Slay
• Iconic
• Cringe-worthy
• Obsessed
• Side hustle
• Wait for it

You can read about the selection committee’s reasoning at www.lssu.edu/traditions/banishedwords/.

The Banished Words List is not the only fun tradition held by LSSU. In 1971, a faculty member started the Unicorn Hunters club. The club disbanded when he retired in 1987, but you can still get a unicorn hunting license through the university’s Department of Natural Unicorns.

The university also welcomes spring to the Upper Peninsula each year by burning a 10- to 12-foot paper snowman at high noon on the first day of spring.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Cincinnati recently seized a shipment containing 90 fake championship rings that, if they had been real, would have been worth $2.71 million.¹

The shipment contained 40 2019 Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rings, 20 1969 Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rings, 15 1985 Kansas City Royals rings, and 15 2022 Kansas Jayhawks championship rings. All of the pieces were made with cheap materials and faux gemstones, and bore the registered trademarks of the NFL, NCAA, and MLB.

The shipment appeared to be a person-to-person transaction, a common counterfeiting technique where the shipment is sent to one person who then mails out smaller prepackaged parcels to U.S. addresses, bypassing scrutiny.

The Cincinnati package was flagged for a physical search after an X-ray examination yielded inconclusive results.

Don’t forget about use tax

However, counterfeiters may not only land in trouble with Customs and Border Protection. In a recent tax appeal in California, a counterfeiter was also slapped with use tax on the street value of the fake goods he was holding.

The taxpayer was in the business of selling counterfeit handbags, belts, wallets, and sunglasses in Los Angeles.² The taxpayer sold two counterfeit items to an investigator, and based on those purchases, the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) was able to determine the approximate markdown percentage of the counterfeit items as compared to what the items would have cost if they were legitimate. The two counterfeit items totaled $1,280, but the MSRP if they had not been counterfeit would have been $165,510. This resulted in a markdown percentage of 12,830.47%.

The CDTFA then applied the markdown percentage to the $13,059,470 MSRP of all of the confiscated goods. They determined that the taxpayer could have sold all of those goods for $100,998, and based the use tax owed on this amount.

The taxpayer was convicted of two counts of counterfeiting.³ Therefore, because he is a “convicted purchaser,” his purchases of counterfeit items for resale were subject to use tax because any purchase of counterfeit items he made prior to being convicted constitutes a taxable storage or use of those items.⁴

Before your blood starts to boil, I’m not talking about Communists, Republicans, or Buckeyes fans. This is something much more pervasive that affects all of us. Red dye #3.

If you’re old enough, you remember the disappearance of the original red M&M, which was discontinued in 1976 when the FDA removed red dye #2 from its safe list. We somehow survived red-M&M-less until 1987 when they returned using red dye #40 (except in Europe, where that dye is banned; this should probably be of some concern to us, but that’s a topic for another day).

However, red candies are again on the chopping block in California, following the passage of AB 418 in 2023,¹ which, beginning January 1, 2027, prohibits the sale of any food product containing any of the following: brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, and red dye #3.

Candies such as Skittles and Nerds contain red dye #3, as do pink and purple Peeps, certain chocolate milk products, and boxed cake mixes.² The Environmental Working Group’s Eat Well Guide returns a list of around 3,000 products containing the dye.³ M&Ms do not appear on the list; however, Mars didn’t use red dye #2 in its red M&Ms, either, but discontinued them anyway to avoid consumer confusion.

The future of the red M&M again hangs in the balance. And if it’s discontinued, maybe Mars will just replace it with more blue ones.

Thank you to everyone who sent in their tax jokes over the last several weeks. Here are a few final submissions from another Tribune reader, Tom K.:

Why did the accountant get into trouble at culinary school? He was cooking the books.

Why was the mullet being audited? Because he wasn’t up front with his business.

Why did the swimmer throw all his gear into the water? Because his accountant told him to pool all his resources.

We’ll wrap up our joke series on this April Fools’ Day Eve with a trip through the Tribune archives. Check out our 2021 article on a few tax-related pranks from years past.

It’s just a statue commemorating probably the most beloved Los Angeles Lakers basketball player ever, no big deal.

After the February unveiling of a new statue dedicated to Kobe Bryant at Crypto.com Arena, someone finally took the time to read the various inscriptions on the base of the statue. It probably would have been easier to mark any edits using a program like Microsoft Word than applying red pen to polished granite, but the Lakers have announced they’re working on correcting the following:¹

• Former NBA players José Calderón and Von Wafer’s names are misspelled Jose Calderson and Vom Wafer; and
• The phrase “DNP – Coach’s Decicion” appears directly under the correctly spelled “DNP – Coach’s Decision.”

It’s supposed to be like that

Another [less costly] option would be to claim that the errors were made on purpose. The 2017 unveiling of a statue on the USC campus included verses from Hamlet and the playwright’s name: Shakespear.

When pressed on the missing final e, the university said they did it on purpose, citing the various spellings of the Bard’s name throughout the centuries, for example Shakspeare, Shakspere, Shaksper, Shackspeare, and Shagspere. They had chosen an older spelling on purpose, even though it was less common. (Sure [wink].)²

At first, Marlene Engelhorn just had “family money”; you, know, the kind you have when you’re a descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, the man who started the German chemical company BASF. But when her grandmother passed away in 2022, she inherited €25 million.

Prior to the inheritance, she had already founded TaxMeNow, an initiative of wealthy people actively working for tax justice in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Frustrated that her inheritance wasn’t taxed (Austria eliminated its inheritance tax in 2008), she has chosen to give away the €25 million. A team of 50 individuals will decide what to do with the funds. The group was chosen through a statistical process to be representative of the overall Austrian population.

Engelhorn noted, “I’m just one brain, I’m just one person and so to me, this is a huge relief knowing that the process of redistribution is much more legitimate and thorough and democratic than I could ever do it. Nobody needs another foundation.”

Here are a few more bad tax jokes for this week. The first comes from a reader who remembers hearing it from former Spidell speaker Steve Honeyman at a seminar years ago.

Two IRS agents are looking up at a flagpole, trying to figure how tall it is. Just then, two accountants are walking by and see the agents wondering how to measure the flagpole. The accountants walk up to the flagpole, take it out of the ground, and lay it on the ground. They measure the pole. They walk over to the IRS agents and say, "It’s 46 and 1/2 feet." Then the accountants walk away.

At this point one IRS agent says to the other, “Isn’t that just like an accountant? They told us how long it was and not how tall it was."

Did you hear about the CPA from Dallas who took on 100 new clients this year? He’s deep in the heart of taxes.

Did you notice that when you put the words “the” and “IRS” together, it spells “theirs”?

Growing up in the Chicago area, I’ve always had fond memories of St. Patrick’s Day … and not all of them relate to the thousands of Irish bars that can be found in the Chicago area.

I remember working in an office that was located on the Chicago River and watching as the city “dyed” the river green for the day. However, to be honest, some years it was hard to tell the pre- and post-dye river apart. 

I also recall watching Jane Byrne, the city’s first female mayor, wearing a long green fur coat for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Although I must confess when I did a Google search to try to find a picture of the coat, all that came up were stories about how she moved into Cabrini Green (one of Chicago’s infamous housing projects) as a way to improve public safety and investment in the area. The woman had chutzpah … but I digress.

But enough about my memories.  Here are some fun facts about St. Patrick’s Day:¹

• St. Patrick wasn’t Irish (it is said he hailed from Wales or Scotland), although that doesn’t stop Ireland from declaring it a national holiday. Nor was St. Patrick’s name Patrick (he was born Maewyn Succat) and despite the stories, he didn’t banish snakes from Ireland as Ireland didn’t have snakes;
• 13 million pints of Guiness are consumed on March 17 across the world; and
• Two million people attend New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

And what’s St. Patrick’s Day without a few Irish jokes (the clean ones)?²

• How come you can never borrow a few quid from a leprechaun? Because they’re always a little short!
• What does an Irishman get after eating a load of Italian food? Gaelic breath.
• How come Irish golfers can’t finish their game on St. Patrick’s Day? Because they refuse to leave the green!

And lastly, one of my favorite Irish sayings:

“May your day be touched by a bit of Irish luck, brightened by a song in your heart and warmed by the smile of the people you love.”