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IPFS News Link • Currencies

Coinbase Ordered to Turn Over Identities of 14,355 Cryptocurrency Traders to the IRS

• https://motherboard.vice.com

On Tuesday, a California federal court ordered the popular cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase to turn over records on thousands of customers to the Internal Revenue Service.

The requested records include the name, birthdate, address, and account activity for any user who bought, sold, sent, or received more than $20,000 worth of Bitcoin in their accounts between 2013 and 2015.

The order marks the end of a year-long court battle between the IRS and Coinbase that began last November when the IRS sought user records for all Coinbase customers. After meeting resistance from Coinbase and Coinbase customers, who argued that the order was overly broad, the IRS narrowed the scope of its request to only cover Coinbase customers who had trafficked in more than $20,000 worth of cryptocurrency in the specified time period.

Read the full court order here

According to an internal Coinbase audit from July, of the 14,000 affected users, 6,200 had bought, sold, sent or received less than $60,000 between 2013 and 2015, based on an internal Coinbase audit. This arguably makes them rather small fish.