Consensys was founded by Joseph Lubin, one of the co-founders of Etherium. He has commented quite frequently on the digital asset market and remains involved in its development.

In particular, at the end of winter, Joe named ETH’s main achievement at the current stage of the cryptocurrency niche collapse. According to him, the cryptocurrency has held up more than decently during the bearish trend. Accordingly, this sets the stage for further gains in ether after the trend reverses.

Lubin also assured that ETH will never be recognised as a security, as this could create a huge amount of problems – including outside of the coin industry. According to Joseph, such an idea is comparable to outlawing the Uber service.

What’s going on with MetaMask?

The confusion stemmed from section 4.2 in the document on the wallet’s terms and policies. The company’s representatives were really confusing in describing what they wanted to convey – here’s one sentence from the screenshot below, for example

We reserve the right to charge taxes where required.

A screenshot of a couple of big claims from prominent cryptocurrency fans on Twitter quickly went viral and received hundreds of angry comments from MetaMask users. They suggested that the company would forcibly collect a certain percentage of transfer fees, which in turn would go towards paying taxes.


In favour of such a strange scenario is partly due to the fact that MetaMask belongs to the category of hot wallets. Accordingly, the private keys to the cryptocurrency addresses are stored within the application itself.

Because of this, some digital asset owners have assumed that representatives of the wallet's team will allegedly gain access to users' coins and debit a certain percentage of them. Naturally, this is an erroneous assumption. Still, if any cryptocurrency wallet operator were to pry into its own users' money, it would almost instantly stop being used.


The fallacy of the rumours was eventually confirmed by ConsenSys themselves. They did so in the following quote.

The section on taxes in our terms and use policy refers to “fees and charges”, it refers exclusively to the products and fee plans offered by ConsenSys. The legal terminology can be complicated, but it is crucial to emphasise that this section does not apply to MetaMask or any other products which do not involve sales tax.

According to Cointelegraph’s sources, the tax section only refers to the company’s paid services, which is quite common practice. MetaMask does not charge any additional fees on transactions on the blockchain. Users pay fees to miners or validators on the cryptocurrency networks used, as before. And it is simply not possible to pay a certain percentage to other institutions, as the blockchain itself charges a transfer fee.

The inaccuracy was detected before ConsenSys made its official announcement. Here’s what a user under the nickname moneyprintergobrrr.eth wrote about it

Everyone is blindly tweeting about MetaMask’s tax clause in the terms of the agreement, but they don’t really even read it.

In addition, various cryptocurrency companies keep reminding us that users themselves are responsible for paying the required taxes. This is done in different jurisdictions, so the version with forced taxation from MetaMask developers is even harder to believe. And tax is generally paid on income, not on transaction amounts.

The panic escalated so quickly that some have even linked what’s happening to recent events within Ledger. As a reminder, last week saw the release of the new Ledger Recover feature, which sparked a huge wave of criticism from crypto fans.

Although as it became clear after some time, the French manufacturer’s devices still reliably protect their users’ digital assets. Well, the innovation is purely optional, meaning that its use requires both the consent of the device owner and certain actions on the hardware wallet.


This situation illustrates just how quickly untrue information can spread within the digital asset industry. As such, crypto investors and traders need to not only keep an eye on what's going on, but also assess news quickly. Still, they can sometimes force a wrong decision and lock in losses - including for nothing.


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