Following a court order, Kraken, a US-based cryptocurrency exchange, will provide the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with the personal information of 42,000 users in early November.
In May 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a court order requiring Kraken to produce “a wide range of records and data” on its U.S. clients and provide it to the Internal Revenue Service.
The company objected to the IRS’s demands and contested the summons in court, persuading the government to “substantially reduce” the number of clients affected and the quantity of client data.
The court ordered Kraken to disclose client profiles and transaction information for clients who conducted more than $20,000 transactions in a single year between 2016 and 2020. This comprises individuals who completed only deposits and withdrawals.
Kraken will disclose customers’ names, dates of birth, tax identification numbers, addresses, contact information, and transaction history. Approximately 42,000 accounts will reportedly have their data sent to the IRS.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reviews a second instance where the IRS requested user information from Coinbase. In 2018, the exchange informed its 13,000 affected consumers that it would provide the IRS with their taxpayer identification numbers, names, dates of birth, addresses, and transaction history from 2013 to 2015.
James Harper, one of these users, filed an appeal with the IRS to prevent the U.S. government from having unfettered access to the transaction history of a user. In October 2023, the DeFi Education Fund, a cryptocurrency advocacy organization, filed an amicus brief supporting Harper’s appeal.
