Bitcoin Daily: US Reps Want IRS To Update Crypto Tax Guidance; Bitcoin Miners Face DDoS Vulnerability

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) is looking to clamp down on “misleading” initial coin offerings (ICOs), Reuters reported. And, while Reuters reported that the market for ICOs in the country isn’t all that large, the regulator is still making them a focus. In a statement, ASIC Commissioner John Price said,  “If you raise money from the public, you have important legal obligations…it is the legal substance of your offer — not what it is called — that matters.”

In other news, a denial-of-service (DDoS) vulnerability has been discovered in older versions of the bitcoin core software, TheNextWeb reported. The patch notes recommended that users upgrade to version 0.16.3, and TheNextWeb notes that, through the DDoS vulnerability, “bitcoin miners could have brought down the entire blockchain by flooding full node operators with traffic.”

And lawmakers want the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to offer taxpayers comprehensive guidance for taxes on crypto transactions or investments, Coindesk reported. U.S. representatives Lynn Jenkins, Kevin Brady, Darin LaHood, Brad Wenstrup, and David Schweikert are calling on the agency to “issue updated guidance, providing additional clarity for taxpayers seeking to better understand and comply with their tax obligations when using virtual currencies.”  As of now, the letter writers claim that the IRS’s enforcement actions center around preliminary rules from 2014.

On another note, Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) released data suggesting that attacks on crypto platforms and wallets have skyrocketed in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2017, Coindesk reported. The authority said that roughly $540 million of crypto was stolen between January and June this year, while only $5.9 million was taken over the same period last year. In addition, the lion’s share — or approximately $518 million — was taken from exchanges. By contrast, only around $22 million came from crypto wallets.

And Japanese messaging app LINE wants to create an a “token-powered ecosystem” before the end of the year, Coindesk reported. At an event in Singapore on Thursday (September 20), the company said it wanted to make its “token and accompanying applications as easy to use as possible in a bid to migrate some of those millions of users to its nascent crypto-economy,” according to the outlet. To that end, the app seeks to distribute its LINK tokens to users as a incentive for using decentralized apps (dApps) tied to the LINK blockchain instead of offering them through a sale.