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The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Defending Rights and Dissent and 13 other organizations sent a letter to Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and other members of Congress asking them to act swiftly to amend the vague and dangerous digital currency provisions of Biden’s infrastructure bill.
The fast-moving, must-pass legislation is over 2,000 pages and primarily focused on issues such as updating America’s highways and digital infrastructure. However, included in the “pay-for” section of the bill is a provision relevant to cryptocurrencies that includes a new, vague, and expanded definition of what constitutes a “broker” under U.S. tax law. As EFF described earlier this week, this vaguely worded section of the bill could be interpreted to mean that many actors in the cryptocurrency space—including software developers who merely write and publish code, as well as miners who verify cryptocurrency transactions—would suddenly be considered brokers, and thus need to collect and report identifying information on their users.
In the wake of heated opposition from the technical and civil liberties community, some senators are taking action. Senators Wyden, Loomis, and Toomey have introduced an amendment that seeks to ensure that some of the worst interpretations of this provision are excluded. Namely, the amendment would seek to clarify that miners, software developers who do not hold assets for customers, and those who create hardware and software to support consumers in holding their own cryptocurrency would not be implicated under the new definition of broker.
We have already seen how digital currency supports independent community projects, routes around financial censorship, and supports independent journalists around the world.
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Read the original article: 16 Civil Society Organizations Call on Congress to Fix the Cryptocurrency Provision of the Infrastructure Bill