A provision in Biden's infrastructure bill could dramatically expand US government surveillance on crypto

The crypto community is urging citizens to support an amendment to the US administration's infrastructure bill to alleviate concerns of crypto firms and traders. The bill is expected to have a profound and negative impact on crypto innovation and cryptocurrency infrastructure in the US.

US Senators float targeted crypto amendment 

The $1 trillion US infrastructure bill with a section that will extract $28 billion in taxes from crypto industry players is being criticized intensely for its definition of taxable parties. The definition of brokers is excessively broad and is a cause of concern in the crypto community since it would result in unfair taxation of parties, like miners and software developers.

The bill could dramatically expand the US federal government's surveillance on cryptocurrency trades and lead to stunted innovation. The provision has been added to the must-pass bipartisan infrastructure package at the last minute, raising concerns about rushed legislation. 

After the initial pushback from the wider crypto community, lawmakers revised the section to clarify the definition of a broker and broadened its scope, attracting further criticism. Under the new definition, the privacy of rokers is threatened since the reporting requirements imply that user data, including users' names and addresses, would be collected. This increases the surveillance of the government on crypto-related individuals and entities through a single provision.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden and Republican Senators Pat Toomey and Cynthia Lummis have introduced an amendment with a more targeted approach that requires cryptocurrency exchanges and other virtual currency entities to report information to the Internal Revenue Service. It will clarify the expansion of the definition of "broker" so that it does not apply to open source software developers or validators like miners or stakers. The proposed amendment needs to garner at least 60 votes in the Senate.

Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Massachusetts, is supporting the amendment and gathering support for the same. In the past, the group has promoted causes related to online privacy and censorship through the internet. The crypto amendment has not yet been scheduled for a vote in the US Senate. 

Senator Wyden recently tweeted about the bipartisan amendment: