Cryptocurrency Monitoring: White House Wants To Regulate Bitcoin

The White House showed its intention of looking possible ways to regulate bitcoin, a day after California’s federal court ordered cryptocurrency broker Coinbase to transmit information of more than 14,000 of its customers to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Remind that Bitcoin is actual leader among digital currencies.

Cryptocurrencies are gaining popularity, due to the lack of regulation, and bitcoin specifically is way ahead of the rest of the pack. It has grown in price over 20 times in the last 2 years. During Wednesday trade it smashed the $11,000 mark and then falled to $9,500. Now it is trading nearly on this point. This massive increase in its value had prompted the questions during Thursday’s White House press briefing.

There is also the matter of tax avoidance. In the Coinbase case, the company claims to have close to 6 million users and calls itself the biggest cryptocurrency brokerage in the world, but IRS data show less than 1,000 people in the country reported cryptocurrency transactions between the years 2013 and 2015. This is despite the fact it is mandatory to report bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions on your tax form.

There is also a fact, that cryptocurrencies can be probably used for illegal purposes. It has happened in the past, in the case of Silk Road, when this dark web platform was used to buy drugs.

Those crypto-currency investors, who abide from law, any regulation may reduce the value of their holdings.

“We believe that the greatest threat is regulation. Several governments across the world have clamped down on exchanges, some halting trading altogether. Others have gone on to outright ban the use of Bitcoin. Sudden government actions in major Bitcoin trading hubs stand to disrupt the market, with the potential to severely affect the utility of bitcoin — and accordingly, the value,” told the president of Global Blockchain Technologies Corp.