In a statement to Bloomberg, an unnamed Treasury official said that the guidance won't grant blanket exemptions based on how firms identify - but would rather focus on the IRS's opinion of whether a firm's activities constitute brokerage activity under the tax code.

The guidance, which could be made public as soon as next week, is an attempt to address concerns in the cryptocurrency industry that the $550 billion infrastructure bill would require a host of companies with ties to digital assets to report data to the Internal Revenue Service that they don't have. The tax provision, estimated to raise $28 billion over a decade, was included in the legislation as a way to help pay for new investments in roads and bridges.

The Treasury's directive is crucial because lawmakers who want to revise the bill's language in the House are unlikely to succeed, since altering the crypto section could open up the whole legislation to additional revisions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she'll bring up the bill for a vote when President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion social spending and tax plan is also ready for consideration, which could be months from now. -Bloomberg

Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman, who drafted the cryptocurrency portion of the bill passed earlier this week by the Senate, said that he thinks the legislation is clear - and that miners, transaction validators, and software developers for digital wallets should be exempt from the new tax rules. 

Crypto traders who rode out the last several weeks may beg to differ with Portman, as industry players and advocates slammed the legislation for overly-broad language that could subject anyone "regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets" to reporting requirements.