Page 3 of the leaked IRS training document titled “IRS Cyber Crimes, Virtual Currencies, by James Daniel” opens ceremoniously to state that virtual currencies are “money on the internet” that “does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction”.
This is wrong on two counts.
One: there are countries that are issuing their own virtual currency (which for all intentions and purposes is still virtual currency) and two: these government issued virtual currencies are a legal tender. For instance, this Library of Congress issued report (page 116) states that Marshall Island is issuing its own virtual currency as legal tender.
To the credit of the training document, it does confide that virtual currency has “all the characteristics of traditional money.”
Surprisingly, the document does shed light on the benefits and issues of centralized vs. decentralized systems.
Page 6 did an excellent job on going over the birth of bitcoin.
There does seem to be a few pages missing from the leaked document that would have logically talked about Ethereum based on the sequence listed on the deck.
Read more detailed information here.
