Israeli’s privacy will soon be lost when dealing in cryptocurrency. Bits of Gold, Israel’s Bitcoin Exchange will share information about client’s who make and have made transactions of over $50,000 in the last one year. The data will be shared with Israel’s Tax Authority.

According to Israeli law financial institutes and brokerages need to pass information on fraudulent transactions and activities to the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority (IMPA). However, sharing to Israel’s Tax Authority is not mandatory as privacy is affected.

Recently when Israel’s Tax Authority asked for a client list from a bank that went bankrupt, it was rejected at once by the Israeli court. Thus what Bits of Gold is doing is not needed but seems to be playing in the good books of the tax authorities.

Tomer Niv, Bits of Gold cleared doubts from the public about intruding privacy concerns. He stated, “We at Bits of Gold only transfer the information we are required by law, which is still in the hands of the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority, in order to protect the privacy of customers on the one hand, and the provisions of the law on the other.”

Bits of Gold was founded in 2013 by Jonathan Rouach who is an engineer and entrepreneur. Bits of Gold mainly deals with buying and selling of Bitcoin and Ethereum for Israeli new shekel (ILS), U.S Dollars and Euros via bank transfer, cash and even credit cards. Currently, Bits of gold has over 50,000 registered users.

Bits of Gold has been approached by the tax authority last month, where the company books were audited. It further proves that the tax authority is going after Israeli Cryptocurrency exchange.

Cryptocurrencies are regarded as assets in Israel, while miners of cryptocurrency are levied fixed business tax rates. As a result, investors pay up a capital gains tax on cryptocurrency which is at the rate of 25% currently. Israeli cryptocurrency exchanges levy 17% VAT on clients.

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