by Nathan McDonald, Sprott Money:

Something I have warned about for years is now unfolding. This is a trend that has taken years to reach this point, but it was unavoidable: The IRS has begun to crack down on cryptos and those who use it.

Coinbase, after a year of battling a court order in a valiant attempt to protect their customers, have lost. Now they must submit roughly 13,000 of their top clients account statements to the IRS.

These top 13,000 clients are what many would classify as “whales” (read: the biggest fish), and thus the easiest target for the IRS to go after first…

Note that I said, “first.”

The IRS, smelling blood in the water, is not going to stop here. For those who have tried to avoid the long arm of the law by hiding under the thin veil of anonymity, the day is coming where they must pay the piper.

As I have been saying for years, this day was unavoidable. Bitcoin is not truly anonymous and can be traced with a little effort. This is made that much easier when it comes to a service such as Coinbase, in which you must legally submit documents to prove your identity. To think that the IRS was not going to poke and prod when so much money is on the line would be foolish.

Do not take this as a total slamming of Bitcoin or cryptos as a whole. I believe a decentralized currency, created by the free market and that competes alongside our current, horribly-flawed fiat system, has its benefits.

However, this foreshadows the vision that many central banksters and financial elites have in mind for the future of digital currencies.

As has been mentioned numerous times lately, more and more countries are pondering the idea of moving to a fully digital, crypto-style currency of their own. This idea, if enacted, would give them horrific powers and abilities to control cash flows, and thus your life as a whole.

This is a nightmare scenario that would make our current fiat-based system look like the gold standard, as at least at this time, you have some control via physical cash.

Moving forward, we can expect the IRS to expand their reach and dig deeper into the crypto sector, attempting to squeeze more money out of those who have avoided their tax payments and not claimed their profits correctly.

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