Bitcoin Daily: Coinbase Woos Merchants With New Crypto Tools, Most Crypto Traders Don’t Pay Taxes

It will now be easier for retailers to accept cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, Bloomberg reported. Through a Coinbase service called Coinbase Commerce, retailers will be able to accept digital coins, such as bitcoin and bitcoin cash. To set up an account, retailers just need to provide their e-mail address and phone number.

And BitPay will now accept Litecoin, CNBC reported. With the news, Litecoin surged nearly 37 percent on Wednesday (Feb. 14) to $218.23, and was trading around $207 as of 3:15 p.m. ET. Even so, Litecoin’s price is down about 11 percent since the beginning of the year.

It was only a matter of time: Hackers are posting ads on Google in an attempt to steal digital coins from cryptocurrency wallets by directing them to bogus digital wallet websites, Fortune reported. According to a report by Cisco’s Talos cybersecurity team, a hacker group from Ukraine has stolen more than $50 million in cryptocurrency from users who logged into websites that looked like they belonged to a legitimate digital wallet service.

And in a fitting Valentine’s Day story, a digital photo was sold for a whopping one million dollars – paid in cryptocurrency, of course, CNN Money reported. Ten collectors paid $100,000 each for the photo, which was a picture of a red rose. The photo could be very well the most expensive digital artwork ever sold.

But while cryptocurrency enthusiasts may purchase artwork, some are not crazy about paying taxes, MarketWatch reported. Only 100 people reported ownership of any digital coins of the first quarter million tax filings at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). That’s not many people – it comes out to far less than 1 percent of cryptocurrency traders paying taxes to the government, according to Credit Karma.

While the U.S. government determines its best approach to cryptocurrency regulation, Brian Quintenz, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said firms in the crypto industry should think about adopting their own standards and best practices, Reuters reported. Quintenz made his comments to reporters before the first meeting of CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee in two years.

And some cryptocurrency enthusiasts are donating their digital cash, Coindesk reported. Fidelity Charitable received a whopping $69 million in cryptocurrency donations last year. The donations came from 169 donors in the form of bitcoin and Ether.