A society without paper money might be a less equitable society. Those lacking digital connectivity would suffer. 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…
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The IRS has a strong interest in receiving information from informed whistleblowers about offshore crypto accounts and criminal crypto tax activity. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments worldwide to focus on bringing blockchain technology to their financial services, along with the needed regulatory upgrades to keep the burgeoning fintech industry clean. Related: Not like before:…
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Taking account of more aggressive crypto tracking measures and what they mean for future government adoption of blockchain. Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note One of the most persistent myths about Bitcoin is its supposed anonymity. More properly termed pseudonymity,…
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The United States IRS agency has announced a bounty of up to $625k to anyone who can crack Monero’s privacy. The United States Internal Revenue Services (IRS) has offered a bounty of up to $625,000 to anyone who can break purportedly untraceable privacy coins like Monero (XMR) as well as trace transactions on Bitcoin’s (BTC)…
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A new analytics firm scores a major contract with the U.S. tax agency, which has been upping its crypto engagement left and right. On Sept. 8, the IRS’s criminal investigation department signed a $249,900 contract with a blockchain analytics firm to expand its crypto tracing tools. The contract provides limited information, but it follows an overarching…
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The COVID-19 pandemic might help to further Qatar’s national strategy in the fintech and blockchain spaces to reduce the crisis’s impact. The nation of Qatar is a World Bank “high-income economy,” backed by the world’s third-largest natural gas and oil reserves. It has the third-highest GDP per capita in the world (by purchasing power parity),…
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Every American filing taxes for 2020 will have to tell the IRS whether they used crypto this year, according to new drafts from the tax agency. On Aug. 19, the IRS released drafts of its income tax forms for 2020, which will ask every American filing income for the year whether or not they used…
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Congressman Soto talks about the point where crypto education meets solid policy and what’s standing in the way. “I remember watching the hearings before the Energy and Commerce Committee with Mark Zuckerberg, and it was clear that a lot of my colleagues didn’t really know a lot about technology,” recalls U.S. Representative Darren Soto. When…
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New muscle from law enforcement investigating crypto suggests that government innovation may be slow but the government gets what it wants. Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note DeFi has stolen the show lately. Spectacular rises and falls of unaudited tokens…
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A proposed capital gains tax cut could be good news for crypto traders in the U.S. A proposed tax cut by U.S. President Donald Trump could be a big win — or a relatively insignificant win — for the crypto industry if it is passed. In a news conference at the White House earlier this…
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