Greece's parliament voted on November 5 for a 10% tax on crypto gains, starting on January 1, 2027, with a tax-free threshold of 500 euros in annual net gains. The same week, Paraguay's president resigned after the collapse of the digital bank Ueno Bank, and the US Treasury cut MEXC off from the American financial system.
Greece sets a 10% tax on crypto gains from January 1, 2027
Parliament passed the tax framework as part of a wider bill on loan supervision, debtor protection and regulation of the financial market. According to Oikonomikos Tachydromos, citing Cointelegraph, the 10% tax applies to gains from sales of crypto assets and does not apply to investors with annual gains of up to 500 euros. The Ministry of National Economy and Finance tabled the proposal in October.
The law also sets a 15% tax on income from staking, crypto lending and providing liquidity to decentralized protocols. Using crypto to buy goods or services can trigger capital gains tax, while swapping one crypto asset for another creates no taxable gain. For us this is the most important point in the framework: crypto-to-crypto trades are not treated as a taxable event.
Investors have 12 months to voluntarily declare gains that were not reported in the past. They must pay the resulting tax within 60 days of filing the declaration to avoid fines and interest.
We have a reservation here. Our crypto accountant Panagiotis told us the law has passed, but what will apply to previous years is still unclear. We share his view that one year is not enough for voluntary declarations. Anyone who entered the market in 2020, when a lot of people came in, has to explain more than five years of transactions to their accountant.
Paraguay's president resigns after Ueno Bank closes
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña announced his resignation on November 5. The central bank had placed Ueno Bank into resolution on November 3, after regulators found its solvency ratio had fallen below half of the legal minimum. The app, cards and transfers were shut down. The bank had about 2.9 million customers, more than 60% of the country's adults, and about $800 million in public-sector deposits, including pension and health insurance funds.
Minutes after the announcement, the lower house voted 78-0 to impeach Peña, sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, with Vice President Pedro Alliana preparing to take over. Peña previously held a stake in a company linked to Ueno's owners, which fed allegations of a conflict of interest. He denies any wrongdoing and says he sold the stake in March 2025.
The central bank calls the case isolated and has announced a deposit guarantee of up to 228.3 million guaraní per depositor, about $36,000. The first payments cover accounts of up to 10 million guaraní.
We are troubled that neither pensioners nor health funds can reach their money, and it is hard to see how such a large bank ends up here. The "Bitcoin fixes this" in Decrypt's headline has a simple explanation: whoever holds Bitcoin (BTC) in their own keys controls their money, while anything held in a bank or other central entity is controlled by it. The same source reminds readers that self-custody has its own risks, since someone who loses their keys has no one to turn to.
MEXC cut off from the US system over $16 billion in transactions
On November 6, the Treasury, through FinCEN, issued an order barring US financial institutions from processing transfers to or from MEXC Global. The measure takes effect 30 days after publication in the Federal Register. The Treasury alleges that MEXC facilitated at least $16 billion in illicit transactions linked to Iran, North Korea and Russia between May 2021 and May 2026. These are the US side's allegations, and the exchange has not been convicted of them.
According to FinCEN, nearly $1.5 billion is tied to the evasion of Russian sanctions, of which $232 million was direct transactions with sanctioned entities. MEXC allegedly traded with Garantex and its successor Grinex as late as June 2026, processed about $200 million involving the A7A5 stablecoin, and handled about $22 million for the benefit of Iran's central bank and the Revolutionary Guards. FinCEN designated it a "primary money laundering concern" for Russian illicit finance. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said you either back the Iranian regime or you have access to the American system.
The order rests on a provision of the Combating Russian Money Laundering Act rather than a formal sanctions designation. For us the takeaway is practical: be careful with exchanges like this, especially if you are a US citizen.
Zcash NU7 sends 60% of fees back as rewards from 2031
Zcash's (ZEC) NU7 upgrade went live on November 6 at block 3,543,405 and brings the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM). 60% of transaction fees are removed from circulation and will be gradually reissued through future block rewards, with the 21 million ZEC cap unchanged. Reissuance starts in 2031, spread along a smooth curve over the halving schedule.
The problem it addresses is one Zcash inherited from Bitcoin: whether fees will be enough to pay miners once rewards shrink. As we see it, a network without many miners or validators is centralized and loses its value, and the same question will occupy Bitcoin in the coming years.
NU7 cuts the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 and removes Sprout, the original private pool from 2016, leaving about $16 million worth of coins locked. In a test of 80 nodes across 11 regions, developers at Zakura measured an orphan block rate of 3.43% at 25 seconds versus 1.57% at 75, and expect it to stay below 1% on the live network. Shielded Labs' original proposal, which replaced halvings with a smooth curve, did not win support from coinholders, so an alternative that keeps them was adopted.
Next, the five organizations coordinating the coinholder vote set a deadline of November 8 for proposals on the future of the Zcash Community Grants. Polls run from November 16 to November 30, and if there is consensus, the NU 7.1 upgrade will follow.
In brief
Base Denim: Coinbase's Layer 2 activated the Denim upgrade on November 5. It produces a full block every 200 milliseconds, replaces Flashblocks and brings millisecond timestamps for smart contracts. That speed suits AI agents, but as a Layer 2 of Ethereum (ETH), Base waits for Ethereum's finality, and we think the network will only become truly fast when Ethereum shortens it, as it has promised.
The market
On November 7, Bitcoin is trading around $75,000 and holding firmly above our support. US jobs data came in at 165,000 new positions, against 29,000 the previous month and forecasts of 59,000.