IRS Effort to Access Coinbase Records Could Take Months
An effort by the US Internal Revenue Service to obtain user records from digital currency exchange Coinbase may take months to resolve. The IRS filed a petition last week in federal court, seeking court approval to subpoena data on customers who bought or sold bitcoin from Coinbase during the period between December 2013 and December 2015. Court filings indicate that no significant action is expected until mid-February. An initial case management conference has been scheduled for 16th February in San Francisco, with 26th January being the last day the two sides could meet to hammer out a....
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Coinbase, which faces an IRS subpoena to disclose records on all of its U.S. customers, wants customers to know that while the company has chosen to fight the IRS on releasing customer information, it remains committed to complying with tax reporting requirements. Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO and co-founder, clarified the company’s position in a recent Medium post in which he appealed to the IRS to work with Coinbase and suggested a tax reporting form that Charles Schwab and Fidelity use might be a solution. On December 1, a federal judge approved an IRS summons and demanded Coinbase....
On November 17, the IRS filled a “John Doe” summons targeting transaction records of prominent bitcoin company Coinbase’s bitcoiners registered between January 2013 and December 2015. At the time, the exchange argued it takes user privacy very seriously, and as such it would work towards protecting it. On December 1, a federal judge approved the IRS summons, and demanded Coinbase to reveal user transaction records. Soon, a Coinbase customer named Jeffrey K. Berns, who is also a lawyer, filed a motion to block the IRS’ efforts to access Coinbase users’ records. Since the IRS filed a John....
Coinbase officially entered the fray in a court case over its user records earlier this month – and now the IRS is fighting back. In a 25th January court filing, lawyers for the US government argued that the San Francisco-based startup has no standing to intervene in the so-called "John Doe" summons case, through which the IRS is seeking bitcoin user records in a bid to identify potential tax cheats. The case, which saw Coinbase customer Jeff Berns file his own intervention effort late last year, has drawn harsh criticism from digital currency advocates amid accusations of....
In an expected development, bitcoin exchange Coinbase has filed a motion [PDF] in a San Francisco federal court to block the Internal Revenue Service from accessing transaction records of bitcoin users. The IRS filed a civil petition on November 17, targeting transaction records of bitcoiners registered with the exchange between January 2013 and December 2015. On December 1, a federal judge approved the IRS summons demanding Coinbase to reveal the transaction records. An excerpt from the introduction of the motion filed by Coinbase in response to the IRS request reads: [B]ased on three....
Coinbase has launched its bitcoin wallet, exchange and merchant services in the UK. The UK is only the second country, after the US, to gain access to the San Francisco-based company's bitcoin trading platform - Coinbase Exchange. Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong said the decision to launch in the UK was partly influenced by his trip to London last year. "The interest in the UK is at a different level than it is elsewhere in Europe. We got the sense that the demand there was really high ... [and] London is a financial capital of the world, so it was a logical next step," he....