Cryptocurrency, a digital asset generated by using massive computing power, is already an inscrutable issue to the vast majority. The issue responsible for last weekend’s temporary impasse somehow managed to be even more arcane. The principle at stake was a simple one: Those who trade in traditional financial markets are currently required to report payments over $10,000 for taxation purchases; people who trade on the blockchain, which is the record-keeping technology behind cryptocurrency, should be required to report those, too, so that it’s harder to skirt the Internal Revenue Service. Putting that principle into practice, however, turned out to be a bear — primarily because of a fight over what entities should be qualified as “brokers” with special form-filling obligations.
