I want to make this post a meaningful discussion about American taxes that has three goals:

• Helping those of us with significant crypto holdings become informed on how to proceed with 2017 taxes
• Strengthen our position as legitimate law-abiding citizens
• Not holding anyone legally responsible for "legal advice" who contributes to this discussion thread (this is about getting our bearings)

If you are like me you found 2017 to be a very good year for you. I'm not talking to the people who got in on this in early December and made $1,000. I'm talking to those of us who saw our modest yet respectable holding of bitcoins grow to jaw-dropping prices and then continued to diversify our digital portfolio to the point that we may now be holding dozens of currencies traded at various times on a variety of exchanges.

What we are doing is legal and has been legal for years. I am one of those alleged 802 people who pays their taxes on Coinbase. And let me tell you, the professional accounting firm I use to pay my taxes charged me a pretty penny for basically knowing the one thing everyone does know about cryptocurrency - that you have to pay long-term capital gains tax on cryptocurrencies you've held for over a year and sold for American dollars. So that's what I've been doing and I've been doing that with each bitcoin being considered at 100% profit because I bought all my bitcoins from Mt. Gox! Maybe you've never payed taxes on all the bitcoin you sold but let's face it - in 2017 you better pay your taxes and you better know what you're talking about and doing. A lot of us have found ourselves with serious money that we did not have until 2017.

The real problem comes from the variety of exchanges we've joined and the amount of trading of currencies on these exchanges. Many of these exchanges are also not illegal to use. While Bitcoin has been on the IRS radar for a while these exchanges specialize in something that has never been truly significant enough to get the IRS's full attention until 2017. But this problem is multi-faceted:

• In 2017, was exchanging one crypto for another crypto considered a taxable event? - The fact is there isn't a clear answer on this. With the IRS tying cryptocurrencies down as property (rather than currencies which- as I understand it- wouldn't be taxed) they allowed the loophole of the 1031 which allows swaps for like-kind properties. The IRS called cryptos properties, people are swapping cryptos with each other (literally) while small fees are charged for using the network or exchange, and thus - it could be argued that all exchanges between cryptos are NOT a taxable event. I personally like this idea but I clearly have a bias. There are many other people who claim that all cryptocurrency transactions between each other are taxable and this comes with its own bag of worms. And indeed, the rock-star new Republican tax code does mirror this sentiment by solely claiming 1031 use for Real Estate. So this leaves us with another question:

• What legal stance should we take when talking with our accountants/ doing our taxes? The stunning impossibility of what is expected of us LEGAL citizens doing LEGAL trading in order to report on our taxes, if we do take the stance that all crypto transactions are taxable, is so highly complex that it's almost like the IRS is forcing all crypto-traders into an illegal space. In a sense they are trip-wiring the entire crypto market with expectations that are impossible to follow. We must have some legal rights here or at least legal stances that we can take when dealing with such a new fast paced market and such a slowly-responding vaguely-directed bureaucracy like the IRS. In one of the better crypto tax threads on reddit one person expressed with acute detail the amount of problems recording all of our transactions really are based on the current IRS expectations which are vague and the IRS is not giving a clear answer on whether cryptos are allowed to be considered exempted using 1031. Even if they were there still is expected a way to report everything. My accountant will want to do whatever is safest for them and likely the most expensive for me. How do I ensure a reasonable approach is taken by my tax professional that considers my needs and not just throwing as much money at the IRS as possible? I want to pay my taxes but I want tax laws to be fair on crypto, which leaves me to my next point:

• What is the best way to look at crypto from a tax point of view? Currently cryptocurrency is a square peg in a round hole. The IRS, clearly unprepared (as we all were) for the massive attention and growth of cryptocurrency in 2017 was already stuffed into the the "property" hole despite being developed and created for much more than that. Cryptocurrency - whether you want to call it an asset or a currency - is already billions of dollars deep in projects that are meant to change the way entire systems operate on a global scale! This is a global thing taking place within different countries. We already pay capital gains taxes or income taxes when we exchange them into dollars which is a fair and easily reliable system to document - is it even right for the IRS to tax more? While there may be some in here who believe nobody should be paying taxes with cryptos I think that cryptos (like everything else) should have some taxable responsibility- but not so much that it becomes highly burdensome and a legal minefield allowing the IRS specter to be chasing you for alleged misdoings years down the line. And if crypto is as successful as its going to be there will likely be less of a reason to exchange into dollars anymore thus losing the leverage of the capital gains/income tax. And looking into the short term future decentralized exchanges are even going to be set up potentially removing the ability to track cryptos in any form whatever! What is the appropriate way to tax crypto basing it on the fact that it IS crypto and not necessarily merely "property" or "currency"?

• What level of responsibility do exchanges play in 2017 taxes? Being a proud Coinbase tax payer I had the privilege of giving my tax accountant a printed out piece of paper with a terrible excel sheet on it that displayed my yearly bitcoin transactions and told them that this was the best document they were going to get. I haven't gotten the information from Coinbase this year yet, and hopefully they've improved the quality of the report but at least there is one. I just tried looking for how to get the information from Bittrex and while it may be available it wasn't easy to find with a google-search or on their website. That is a problem. This is an exchange that is legally allowed to operate in the United States. I could sign up to Bitcoin.tax to find out the information allegedly but I really should not have to sign up to anywhere to find out how to get my annual tax document from my exchange. And if they don't provide one then why is the United States legally allowing them to operate within their borders? If the IRS decides to take their records two years down the line like they did in 2017 with Coinbase and they come to us asking us why we didn't report something and it was because there was no easy/possible way to obtain the records from the users end, how can that be our fault? It would be great if there was a sticky-noted thread on ANY of these crypto boards on how to obtain a document of the year's transactions from every one of the exchanges out there because many of us need them. There is an expectation that we are supposed to calculate the amount gained from when we first purchased a currency to when we traded it for another currency. Aside from the fact that even if we are provided an annual report document it won't be in dollars - it will be in BTC or ETH or USDT or some other pairing at a specific time with a specific amount in those pairings on that specific exchange. The dollar correlation that's needed - if not provided - makes reporting crypto transactions nearly impossible.

• How are we supposed to accommodate for transactions to and from wallets? Say we can do all of those things above but now we move it to a private wallet for safekeeping. From there we might send it to another wallet as it intermingles with other coins and from there they are traded on other exchanges. What is the dollar correlation there? What is the appropriate gains? Which exchange did you buy that specific coin from? This all matters for taxes but almost impossible to track between wallets and exchanges. If it can't be done, how can we be held accountable to do it? If we can't do it, then what legal ground do we have to say what is being expected is byzantine and unrealistic? Also, it's my understanding that we don't need to report coins in private wallets but that'll be nearly impossible not to do if we have to do all this tracking.

• Who specializes in cryptocurrency? - Maybe we can't find all the answers here but some of you out there must be able to point us in the direction of someone that can give us answers. I'm not talking about the conservative tax lawyer that's going to make sure you pay every last dime in a way that would make the IRS want them to be the new head of the department - and I'm not talking about the shady guy who promises that you can get out of paying a dime. I'm talking professionals that aren't just going to be pushed over and know their stuff on this topic. I will gladly pay for this legal muscle to ensure I am legally participating in our society through crypto transactions while not just trying to tax me every time I click the mouse.

Some people say just to ignore all of this tax mess because the IRS is likely to change their stance 10 more times. But I don't want to ignore it because cryptocurrency is already seen as a shady business. And it's not - it's a globally disruptive technology that provides benefits many centralized systems can't and it's the reason why it's busting through the $700 billion market cap at the beginning of 2018. Please, let's organize and approach our taxes honestly and in an informed fashion this year. The fact is many of us in the crypto community visit crypto subreddits and together - with a similar mentality, attitude, drive, and direction- we can influence the crypto policy to be fair to both the country and the crypto-trader.