Supreme Court Sides With Trump Admin in Landmark IRS vs. Coinbase Privacy Battle
The crypto industry just took a gut punch—and the IRS isn't holding back.
In a ruling that'll send shivers through crypto exchanges, the Supreme Court just handed the Trump administration a decisive victory against Coinbase and privacy advocates. The verdict? Tax collectors get a backstage pass to your transaction history.
Here's the kicker: The 'anonymous' in cryptocurrency just got a whole lot less anonymous.
Meanwhile, Wall Street bankers are probably sipping champagne—nothing they love more than watching decentralized finance take a regulatory hit while their offshore accounts stay untouched. Classic.
The case WOULD have examined whether blockchain data qualified as a sensitive and novel enough category of information that it should be treated differently with respect to the third-party doctrine.
On Monday, however, the Supreme Court declined to take up Harper’s case. The justices did not offer an explanation as to why it opted not to hear it.
A Coinbase spokesperson did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment concerning the decision, and whether the company hopes to pursue the legal issue in question in the future.
Coinbase has long voiced its opposition to broad government requests for user data. In 2016, the IRS asked Coinbase for financial data on more than 14,000 of its customers, whom the revenue collector believed may have avoided paying taxes on crypto gains. Coinbase has said it resisted the request as long as it could before risking legal jeopardy.
While today’s outcome may have been a loss for the crypto industry, it was simultaneously a victory for the TRUMP administration, which defended the agency’s ability to collect financial information from crypto exchanges in the interest of identifying individuals who potentially failed to pay taxes.
Despite its aggressively pro-crypto stance, the Trump administration has, under both of the president’s terms in office, consistently supported the IRS in such situations.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
