Coinbase pledges to fight IRS request in court

As an international tax lawyer who has handled many, many cases for clients with money hidden in secret accounts offshore, I have two pieces of advice.

1. For Coinbase, this will not end well. The best Coinbase can hope for is a pretense (for marketing purposes) of Standing Up to The Man. Then a total data dump to the Department of Justice or go out of business.

2. For Bitcoin users, don't cheat on your taxes. (Oblig.) If you are concerned about information leakage to the U.S. government, do business with a company that has no ties to the USA.

It's not hard to see trendlines if you have watched for a while. Remember G.K. Chesterton's fence.