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[On November 29], Coinbase suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Internal Revenue Service, nearly a year after the case was initially filed. A California federal court has ordered Coinbase to turn over identifying records for all users who have bought, sold, sent, or received more than $20,000 through their accounts in a single year between 2013 and 2015. Coinbase estimates that 14,355 users meet the government's requirements.
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Coinbase Ordered to Report 14,355 Users to the IRS
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
I consider the day misspent that I am not either charged with a crime,
or arrested for one.
-- "Ratsy" Tourbillon
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:26AM (7 children)
" estimates that 14,355 users "
That's not an estimate.
That's a number. A very specific number. At best, to the nearest five, which is about as accurate you can get.
An estimate would be: 14,000 users.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @10:46AM
English is a giant clustersnarl of a language. Just one additional possible reading of TFS is:
There's the potential for quite a bit of estimation there in not just numbers of users, but also in dollar trade amount as well as relevant time period.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @11:18AM
I find your choice of 14,000 users very specific.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @11:46AM
It means "My witch hunt will be over when I say it's over."
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Tuesday December 05 2017, @12:53PM (1 child)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday December 05 2017, @01:26PM
"About 14,000" would imply to me anywhere from 13,500 to 14,499, probably distributed over a bell curve, but with a peak around the 14k mark
"About 14,000 to 15,000" would imply around the 14500 mark, give or take 500.
"About 13,500 to 14,500" would imply around the 14,000 mark, give or take 500, but with a flatter curve in the middle than "About 14,000"
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday December 05 2017, @02:19PM
It might be an "estimate" because of some fiddly details about what does and does not count. Calling it an estimate covers them if it turns out to be inaccurate.
For example, if a user had 4 accounts that each did $10k worth of transactions, but it's not immediately obvious it was all one person, the IRS may have intended this person be counted (perhaps because of a different definition of "user") but Coinbase understandably didn't count them. If the IRS comes back later and wants to know why they were skipped over, Coinbase can say their previous number was an estimate and it was always possible a few corner cases slipped through.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 05 2017, @02:51PM
Sure it can be. If it's 14,355 +/- 5, it's pretty exact.
If it's 14,355 +/- 10,000, it's a very vague estimate. Without a stated margin of error, we can't know which is implied.
"Round numbers" based on base 10 are completely arbitrary and should not be seen as a necessary center for a statistical distribution. I know there's a concept of "significant figures" which is sort of what you're getting at, but without error bars, we can't know what's implied about precision here.