A notable development has occurred in the United States, which has been marked by recent legal regulations. The US-based cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has announced that it will share the personal data of 42,000 platform users with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in response to a court order. The exchange officials stated that the requested data will be sent to the IRS in early November.
Kraken to Share Personal Data
The official website of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken stated that the call to generate various records and data about its customers in the US and send them to the IRS came with a court order from the Northern District of California in May 2021.
The company officials objected to the request made by the IRS and convinced the court to significantly reduce the number of affected customers and the amount of customer transaction data through legal proceedings.
With the court’s decision, Kraken was ordered to provide personal information and transaction data for customers who exceeded $20,000 in any period between 2016 and 2020. This restriction also included customers who did not perform any transactions other than deposits and withdrawals.
Notable Discussion in the US
Kraken will share the names, birth dates, tax identification numbers, addresses, contact information, and transaction history of the customers affected by the court order with the authorities. All these developments will result in 42,000 personal data being sent to the IRS.
The US First Circuit Court of Appeals is also reviewing another case where the IRS requested user data from Coinbase. According to this, the US-based exchange announced that it will send tax identification numbers, names, birth dates, addresses, and transaction records covering the period from 2013 to 2015 to the IRS for the 13,000 customers affected by the request.
James Harper, a customer of Coinbase, applied to the IRS and objected to this decision in order to prevent the US government from having unlimited access to a user’s cryptocurrency market transaction history. In October 2023, the DeFi Education Fund, known as a cryptocurrency advocate, called for support and submitted an amicus brief in support of Harper’s action.
