Bitcoin’s veil of privacy for 3 million Coinbase customers has been threatened. It may be torn down completely as a result of a summons authorized Wednesday by a federal judge. The Internal Revenue Service is seeking customer identity and 2014 to 2015 transaction records from Coinbase, the largest Bitcoin exchange in the U.S. The summons is characterized as “the largest single attempt to identify tax evaders using virtual currency to date,” reports Gizmodo.
The summons, called a “John Doe summons,” does not name specific individuals, but a class of taxpayers. The IRS argued that because of tax evasion cases involving two Coinbase customers and Bitcoin’s “relatively high level of anonymity,” there is a “reasonable basis” for concern that the other Coinbase customers may be evading taxes as well, according to an earlier article in The New York Times. – READ MORE
