First things first, I am not a tax expert and I am in no way giving advice for how you should be approaching this subject of taxes. All information I am presenting to you today is the result of my own research. I will be including links to official IRS tax guidelines and links to cryptocurrency tax experts. Those are the people you should be asking how to properly report your cryptocurrency gains or losses.

A couple days ago Coinbase was ordered to release the personal information of about 13,000 users to the IRS.

Considering that the IRS initially requested a sweeping “John Doe” summons for every single user of coinbase from the years 2013-2015, which would have included about 500,000 people, this is certainly a reduction. The reason these 13,000 individuals information was released to the IRS is because they had either bought, sold, sent or received a transaction valued at $20,000 in a single transaction in any given year between 2013-2015.

So what this means for those individuals is that their information has indeed been handed over, and if they are found to have improperly reported their gains, or failed to report them altogether, I’m going to go out on a limb and say they are probably anxiously awaiting a call from the IRS.

The reason the IRS began this in the first place is due to their suspicion that Coinbase users were not properly reporting their gains on their tax returns.
Right now, the IRS is handling cryptocurrencies like property so similar to transactions with properties, transactions with cryptos are applicable in the same way.
As many of you may be aware, new tax laws are dictating that any trade with any cryptocurrency is a taxable event.

A great way for you to get some peace of mind and answers to your questions is to seek out tax professionals who specialize in cryptocurrencies. If you’re wondering where you should start, please be sure to check out the links down below for some companies that I’ve found.

On a lighter, slightly humorous, slightly disturbing note, the SEC has found a way to scare some companies out of holding an ICO.

Literally, all they are doing is making phone calls to individuals who have identified themselves as part of the team of an ICO and poof, that ICO is off the table. It’s funny to think that a simple phone call is enough to scare a scammer and prevent them from stealing funds from uneducated investors. It’s also disturbing to think a simple phone call is all that is needed to keep the thieves away.

I wonder if there are any efforts being made by non-governmental agencies to help protect the reputation of ICOs by working to keep the scammers at bay.
I have many thoughts regarding regulations and what they will ultimately mean for the small time investors. Both good and bad, but in an effort to keep this video short I want to leave you with this little thought nugget:

Are you ready for the government to step in and regulate this space, even if it results in barriers of entry that will most likely keep you from participating in the ultimate form of currency competition?

If your wondering if the ICO bubble is over, consider this:
Even despite the wildly different claims of the ICO earnings of 2017, some claim 5.6 billion, while others say 3.7 billion or 4 billion, it’s only the end of February and so far ICOs have raised over 1.7 billion.

Additional Reading/Sources:

Official guidelines from IRS
Coinbase Tax FAQs
Article on Coinbase Users and IRS
Parameters for IRS Summons
Initial Summons of Coinbase Users
SEC Scares Scammers from holding ICOs
ICO funding stats