Friends,

As you know our Senate has been debating a trillion dollar infrastructure bill to help the country recover from the pandemic.  What most don’t know is that carefully hidden among those 2,600 pages is a provision intended to make tax collection of crypto activities easier – requiring any cryptocurrency broker to issue activity reports to the IRS.

This would be a simple thing if not for the fact that this provision defines a “broker” as anyone who facilitates the transfer of crypto currency no matter what kind of transfer. This imposes huge requirements on software developers, crypto miners, stakers and even online wallets that do nothing other than allow you to transfer crypto to your friends or other wallets of your own.  In short, anyone who has anything to do with crypto currency at all would basically become a “broker” and subject to invasive and extreme disclosure requirements.

A group of senators is pushing back on the language in the infrastructure bill by proposing an amendment to make it more precise.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Senator Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and Senator Pat Toomey, R-Pa., filed an amendment clarifying the definition of “broker” with respect to digital asset third-party reporting requirements.

However, even this isn’t nearly enough and really only protects miners and software developers, leaving the rest of us floundering.  Don’t be fooled this amendment isn’t a good alternative but the lesser of two evils!

Not two months ago Congress instructed the government to form working groups with representatives from industry and the community to determine how best to handle digital assets in the United States and these groups haven’t even been formed yet let alone provided input, so how are we starting to include legislation?

Here at Cryptillian we are striving to develop products that will allow everyone to utilize crypto assets as currency for everyday purchases, as they are intended.

Should this provision stay in the bill, we along with any other crypto developer or innovator smaller than a fortune 500 company will be forced to move offshore or simply shut down.  It’s no wonder that the wall street banks, Coinbase, Paypal and CashApp among others are supportive – we are their competition!

So if you are an enthusiast, crypto user or simply not a fan of endless regulation and stifling of new technology please consider signing our online petition here, which will email your senators based on your city and state as well as send a fax with your name listed as a signatory.

Alternatively, please call 517-200-9518 (you will be routed to your senator’s office based on your zip code) and ask that they have Sec 80603 removed from HR 3684.

Sincerely,

The Cryptillian Team

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