Tiny fee nets crypto trader a $310,000 windfall

A user of Taiwan’s MaiCoin bitcoin exchange won 10 million TWD (~$310,000) in the Uniform Invoices Lottery, after making a small trade on the platform with a fee of 2 TWD (~$0.06).

Who says retail users can’t profit from trading cryptos? Taiwan’s largest crypto exchange @MAX_exch announced some user made a tiny trade that paid $2 NTD ($0.06 USD) in fee on platform, the tax receipt ended up winning 10mil ($310k USD) in Taiwan govt’s invoice lottery!? pic.twitter.com/FSGXdKVW5J

— Paul Huang (@PaulHuangReport) October 5, 2023

“Who said retail users can’t profit from trading cryptocurrencies?” — wrote researcher Paul Huang.

To boost tax receipts in the early years of the state, Taiwan authorities introduced the Uniform Invoice Lottery. This is a type of receipt that merchants issue to customers when selling goods and services. The document is kept by both parties.

In 1951, the government launched the lottery for these receipts to encourage residents to request them for every purchase from enterprises with an average monthly turnover of at least 200 000 TWD (~$6,200).

Drawings are held every odd-numbered month live on air. The top prize goes to participants whose last eight digits of the invoice number match the drawn ones. Among these lucky winners was a MaiCoin user.

Earlier in August, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, received a residence permit in Taiwan.