Crypto users in the U.S. have taken to Twitter to express their confusion and frustration over the wording of a question about virtual currencies on this year’s tax return form. On Dec. 11, the IRS published a new Form 1040 return for the 2020 tax year which needs to be filed by all U.S. taxpayers. It contains the following question: “At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?” The virtual currency question is similar to one that first appeared on the 2019 form, but has this year …

As President-Elect Biden continues to round out his roster of appointees, he has tapped an Obama-era chair of the Federal Reserve to lead his administration's economic policy. According to a Wall Street Journal exclusive published on Nov. 23, the Biden team plans to nominate Janet Yellen to serve as Treasury Secretary. Obama originally appointed Yellen to the Fed in 2014, where she remained until early 2018. In a term that lined up with a massive expansion of public knowledge of cryptocurrencies and ended right after Bitcoin's dramatic 2017 bull run, Yellen was consistently critical of the space, calling Bitcoin "anything …

As a burgeoning industry less than 13 years old, cryptocurrency has seen its fair share of regulatory crackdowns and changes, especially in the United States. Jake Yocom-Piatt, co-founder of Decred, however, sees the nation as the most crypto-friendly. “Cryptocurrencies are treated as personal property in most jurisdictions, so their tax treatment is relatively uniform,” Yocom-Piatt said. He continued: “Cryptocurrency transactions are a form of speech, so states where free speech is protected are the least likely to restrict cryptocurrencies. While the U.S. currently suffers from many substantial sociopolitical problems, the combination of its freedom of speech with protections against forced …

The Tax Law Office of David W. Klasing, a boutique Californian tax firm, has issued a public release warning investors that the United States Internal Revenue Service is getting serious with Coinbase users. The firm’s dual-licensed tax lawyers and capital allowance specialists say they have been tracking an increase in IRS enforcement activity against Coinbase users who fail to comply with their tax and reporting requirements. Evaders can “end up facing serious civil and criminal trouble down the line,” the firm in its news release on Nov. 11, adding: “If you have failed to report holding Bitcoin or other virtual …

Crypto income taxation is a murky arena at present. It would seem that even the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, or IRS, has a tough time figuring out who owes what, according to Wendy Walker, solution principal at the tax compliance company Sovos. "In the typical tax system, the IRS uses 1099 reporting," Walker told Cointelegraph in an interview. "So, 1099, W2, that tax reporting, it's the primary tool that they use to enforce tax compliance," she added. When people fail to report their crypto activities, the IRS is left with a headache. In 2019, 10,000 crypto-involved people received warning letters …

American cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is partnering with tax compliance firm TaxBit to help its customers treport their crypto taxes with TaxBit’s Tax Center Suite solution. Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini exchange, said that TaxBit’s software will help reduce the “pain point of crypto tax,” enabling users to track the real-time tax impact on their crypto trades on Gemini. According to the announcement, the tool will also allow customers to potentially increase their tax refund and lower their tax liability, providing trade alerts when tax-saving opportunities are available. TaxBit’s Tax Center Suite solution is the first crypto tax-related tool that Gemini …

First announced in September, Monero developers today went live with a network update featuring a new version of its node software, codenamed 'Oxygen Orion.' The product of 30 contributors, the update promises significant improvement across nearly all aspects of the privacy-focused cryptocurrency’s performance. The highlight of the new update is the compact linkable spontaneous anonymous group (CLSAG) feature. According to the Monero blog, CLSAG will reduce transaction sizes by 25% and improve transaction times by 10% while maintaining transactional privacy. The developers wrote: "CLSAG enables smaller and faster transactions with rigorous security." In addition to CLSAG, the new update brings …

Antivirus software pioneer John McAfee, the founder of McAfee Associates — the company that released the first commercial antivirus software, McAfee VirusScan, in the late 1980s, contributing to the birth of multibillion-dollar industry — was indicted on five counts of tax evasion and five counts of willful failure to file a tax return, which could result in a maximum sentence of 30 years if convicted. He could also expect to pay U.S. taxes and penalties, according to the United States Department of Justice. The DOJ’s charges were announced shortly after the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission revealed it had brought civil …

Once viewed as one of the crypto industry's top privacy-focused assets, Dash (DASH) no longer operates under that classification, according to the Dash Core Group, the body overseeing the asset and its development. When asked if Dash should remain under the category of a privacy asset, Fernando Gutierrez, CMO for the Dash Core Group, told Cointelegraph: "No, Dash is a payments cryptocurrency, with a strong focus on usability, which includes speed, cost, ease of use, and user protection through optional privacy." Dash launched as a fork of Bitcoin in 2014. Originally called XCoin, before changing its name to Darkcoin, and …

Recently, the United States Internal Revenue Service caused a stir in the crypto community when it put a bounty on the head of anonymity-focused crypto-asset Monero (XMR), offering $625,000 to anyone who could effectively track the purportedly untraceable asset. As the crypto and blockchain industry values anonymity and privacy, questions arise on the result of the effort, not to mention its plausibility. “As of the current stage of cryptography science today, the Monero protocol is almost impossible to break with necessary certainty,” Pawel Kuskowski, CEO of Coinfirm — a blockchain analytics company — told Cointelegraph. “However, it does not mean …

In Sweden, cash in circulation represents only 1% of the country’s gross domestic product, and some experts predict the nation will go “totally cashless” by 2023. In China’s largest cities, over 90% of people use WeChat Pay and Alipay as their primary payment method, with cash a distant second. It may seem that the transition to a world without paper banknotes and metal coins is inevitable, but this week, a survey reminded us that reports of hard cash’s death may be greatly exaggerated. The study by Genesis Mining, titled “Perceptions and Understanding of Money 2020,” reports that 60% of Americans …

On Wednesday, the IRS awarded two $625,000 contracts looking for tracing tools for privacy token Monero and Layer 2 protocols. The winners were blockchain analytics firms Chainalysis and Integra FEC. The IRS initially publicized its quest for a privacy-busting analytics solution at the beginning of the month. An IRS representative told Cointelegraph that the agency had selected the two winning firms out of a field of 22 proposals received, though the only rationale the representative gave for the agency’s decision was “comparative analysis was used.” Chainalysis is among the leading firms in crypto analytics and routinely wins such contracts with …