In 2014, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) classified virtual currencies as property for tax purposes, forcing a rapidly evolving technology into the capital gains tax system, which is not designed to handle such diverse use cases. At that time, the global cryptocurrency market cap was less than $10 billion. Today, it’s roughly $3 trillion. The rise of this industry has prompted congressional action to define the market, clarify regulatory ambiguities, increase reporting, and reform its tax treatment. In the tax space, cryptocurrencies expose long-standing weaknesses in the capital gains tax. Treating crypto as ... (full story)