First Circuit Wary of Reviving Challenge to IRS Coinbase Summons

A Coinbase client faced skeptical First Circuit judges during oral arguments Monday over his bid to shield his records from a third-party IRS summons targeting the cryptocurrency exchange.

James Harper, who used Coinbase to buy and sell cryptocurrency, asked the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to revive his petition to quash the IRS’s summons after a federal court in New Hampshire dismissed his case. The lower court agreed with the IRS’s position that, because Harper had provided the records to Coinbase voluntarily he had no reasonable expectation of privacy nor property interest in the information subject to ...