What's up, everybody? Welcome to this week's Crypto Forces segment of the Hidden Forces

podcast, where I speak with engineers, investors, entrepreneurs, and anyone else from the world of

cryptocurrencies and distributed

consensus. Today, I speak with Mark DeMichael, a forensic accountant with Citrin Cooperman,

who specializes in the tax implications for cryptocurrencies. We're going to talk about

taxable events like kind exchange and what the filing requirements are for anyone

who has profited from transacted in or mined a cryptocurrency at any point in the last nine years.

This is an incredibly informative and timely discussion, so let's get right to it.

Mark, welcome to Hidden Forces. Thank you, Dimitri. It's great having you on, man. Definitely, glad to be here. Do you remember when you and I first met? I believe it was about a month and a half ago at one of those Crypto Circle networking events. We were at Richie Heckler's Cryptocurrency Working Group. Oh, right, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The group was founded with Richie,

and he did it at Goldman Sachs with Goldman. And it was like a group of like 20 people, and there

was someone from Hashgraph. So that's how I came across Hashgraph. But we met at Andrew

Masanto's apartment where they were like 100 people or something. And I overheard you

talking to a couple of guys who were trying to ask you like what they're supposed to do with

cryptocurrencies and taxes and stuff like that. And they were specifically talking about

like kind exchange because they're talking about like if I had some Bitcoin and I, you know,

bought some ICO. I did I bought I used it in an ICO and I got a different cryptocurrency, do I have to

pay?

And you were responding and you were, sounded like you really knew your shit. And I was like, this guy really knows the shit on taxes. I haven't heard anyone talk about taxes. I got to pick this guy's brain. So I picked your brain. Turns out you're also a nice guy. And I thought it would be great to have you on because I haven't been able to find anyone

or anything, any real source to talk about taxes. So I want to sort this out with you a little bit, right? Definitely. Now you, as I mentioned the audience, you're sort of an autodidact on this. You're taxic, you're an accountant, but you're a forensic accountant, but you specialize in taxes among other things, right? Well, originally I was a fraud and forensic accountant, and that was how I got into this to begin with. You know, back in the day, this is mainstream now, but back in the day, this was, you know, underground criminal fraud type stuff. Cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies, yeah. So that's when I first became interested in it, wanted to learn more about

it, and that's why I'm a good bit ahead of the curve compared to most accountants on how they're taxed. I didn't know that aspect of the story. So when did you start looking into this? When did you start doing this as part of your forensic work? Well, I haven't had any forensic cases dealing with it yet. I'm sure it's one's coming down the pipe, I'm sure. But it was just staying current in the

field. I knew this was, one's coming down the pipe, I'm sure. But it was just staying current

in the field. I knew this was, this was where it was at as far as, you know, fraud and money laundering. I wanted to stay current. So I began learning about that. What did you tell me, I didn't educate myself properly in this. You sent me an article, but there's some dispute as to whether or not money laundering is what is this what is this there was actually a florida court that ruled about a

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