By Yasin Ebrahim
Investing.com - Bitcoin pared some gains Thursday as the Treasury Department said it would require that any transfer worth $10,000 or more to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service.
BTC/USD was up 3.06% at $40,536, but had traded as high as $42,425 prior to the news.
“As with cash transactions, businesses that receive cryptoassets with a fair-market value of more than $10,000 would also be reported on,” the Treasury Department said in a report on tax-enforcement proposals released Thursday.
The announcement arrived a day after billions of dollars was wiped off the total crypto market, led by a plunge in BTC to $30,261.
The U.S. crackdown comes amid concerns cryptos are being used in criminal activity including tax evasion.
“Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion,” the Treasury said.
This isn't first time the U.S. government has mentioned cryptocurrency including bitcoin, and illegal activity in the same the breath. But some argue that as data on Bitcoin's blockchain, a public ledger of transactions, is recorded and can be verified, the popular crypto is unfairly dragged into the 'criminal activity' conversation.
But there has been a rise in Ransomware, a malicious software hackers use to gain control of sensitive data, and then demand a fee - usually in crypto - to restore access.
"As of May 10, 2021, we know that ransomware attackers have taken in at least $81 million worth of cryptocurrency from victims. Again though, $81 million must be considered a floor for the time being, as the figure will almost certainly grow as we identify more ransomware addresses," according to Chainlink. "The average known ransomware payment has more than quadrupled from $12,000 in Q4 2019 to $54,000 in Q1 2021."