Hi,
Suppose I'm a self employed web developer that occasionally works on crypto projects. Would I be able to buy Ethereum and deduct the purchase price entirely as a business expense? I imagine this wouldn't work for most businesses buying crypto but as a web developer, I can make the case that I need to buy Ethereum for marketing, educational purposes and as part of any work that requires deploying or interacting with smart contracts. It also makes sense that I would stock up on some to be able to provide consistent services during price volatility. I'm not buying Ethereum as a retail investor with the intention of selling it later for a profit, I'm buying for the business to work with it so it seems like this should be treated differently.
To make the case for marketing, the idea is that I would use the Ethereum to run validators to show that I'm actively involved in the Ethereum community and providing services to support the network. It also shows that the business is competent enough to be able to manage large amounts of cash locked up in our infrastructure so both would go a long way to establish credibility as a business that can provide crypto services. Also, since I'm managing the validator nodes instead of delegating the work to a 3rd party service, I can use these to host other web services for clients for free. It gives me the ability to offer hosting services that are resilient enough to remain operational even if there isn't any money in the bank which is kind of interesting.
The way I see it, what I'm doing isn't any different than mining but with a few extra perks that synergize with web development. If I ran an engineering business that mined bitcoin, I could deduct the cost of the rig, right? With staking, we're required to put up 32Eth as collateral to be able to gain access to the network so it seems like a pretty straight forward transaction that the IRS has been dealing with since the beginning of time and that the Eth should be treated the same any other security deposit and a necessary expense for any business that manages staking services.
