1/ @blockchainassn and its 46 member companies—companies with tremendous expertise in the crypto ecosystem—appreciate the Senate’s ongoing engagement on the digital asset tax information reporting provisions in the bipartisan #infrastructurebill.
2/ While some minor improvements have been made, the latest language still poses fundamental concerns and questions about certain terms and definitions used in the provision.
3/ To be clear, the Blockchain Association firmly believes that all taxpayers should pay the taxes they owe.
4/ Our Tax Working Group has had an ongoing dialogue with the IRS and relevant congressional committees for nearly 2 years to figure out how to best apply a reporting requirement to traditional crypto exchanges, enabling their customers to more easily pay taxes.
5/ However, this provision is written in a way that could be interpreted to apply to persons in the #crypto ecosystem who don’t have access to the information required for information reporting.
6/ As this bill continues to move through the Senate, we urge Senators to clarify that the language doesn’t capture non-custodial entities in the digital asset ecosystem.
7/ If these network participants—who don’t have any customer relationships—are required to provide such information, it will be impossible to comply, driving innovation and business overseas.
8/ The industry should know—and needs to know—how this provision applies, but it still remains unclear. We look forward to continuing this dialogue and sincerely thank Senate offices for their engagement and attention to this issue so far.
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3/ As we’ve grown along with the broader crypto industry, we’ve made it a point to cultivate members working on varied aspects of the diversifying field.
Our members innovate on lending, trading, mining, venture capital, network security, custody, DeFi, and more.
1/ FinCEN's truncated comment period on the proposed rules regulating so-called "unhosted wallets" has ended.
The rule and process may be deeply flawed, but the community response of 7400+ responses has been inspiring. Here's a roundup of comment letters from BA members:
2/ We at @blockchainassn completely agree with this strategy -- step 1 is to challenge on procedural grounds, which we have a good chance of winning. If not, then step 2 is for @coincenter to lead the constitutional challenge
3/ As Jerry mentioned, @blockchainassn is on this. We’ve been engaged with @kirkland_ellis for weeks and are ready to file if/when the rule becomes final.
2/ We support the proposed rule, which seeks to require that financial services are accessible to all customers and businesses engaged in legal activities.
3/ Crypto businesses have long struggled to get full and fair access to basic financial services over the past decade. This rule would open up those services and help crypto become further integrated into the global economy.
1/ Today we submitted our comment to FinCEN’s proposed regulation for “unhosted wallets.” Here’s a few of the most important points and our full response:
2/ Big point of basic fairness: Treasury should extend the comment period for the NPRM to *at least* 60 days so that the public can provide substantive feedback. We believe the truncated comment period runs afoul of fundamental tenets of good governance & requirements of the APA.
3/ And now to four glaring flaws:
1st—the rule would be an unprecedented and untested expansion of the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to include collection of counterparty information
2nd—money services businesses (MSBs) may be unable to comply with the proposed rule...
2/ The letter states that blockchains have the same status as other global financial networks, such as SWIFT, ACH, and FedWire.
This is a giant advance for crypto because it paves the way for these networks to be a formal part of the US financial infrastructure.
3/ Also, the idea of US banks contributing to the operations of the blockchains supporting stablecoins -- Ethereum, Stellar, etc. -- is a major step forward.