Judge Dismisses Coinbase Bid Against IRS Crypto Summons Over Service Error

A California federal judge dismissed Coinbase user Roger Metz’s bid to block an IRS crypto summons seeking his transaction records for a 2022 tax audit. The court, led by Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, did not rule on Metz’s privacy or overbreadth arguments. Instead, it threw out the petition on procedural grounds: Metz failed to properly notify the U.S. Attorney General in Washington within the 90-day window. The ruling reinforces how hard it is for crypto investors to contest IRS information-gathering powers tied to summonses (including “John Doe” summonses) and highlights the broader “third-party doctrine,” where records held by financial institutions face weaker Fourth Amendment privacy expectations. The article also notes the IRS has used John Doe summonses since 2016 to compel major exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Circle to provide user data. Looking ahead, compliance may shift as of 2026 when Form 1099-DA begins requiring digital asset brokers to report proceeds directly to the IRS, potentially reducing summons-driven data pulls. For traders, this is not token-specific, but it can increase perceived regulatory and tax-compliance risk around centralized exchanges. In the short term, it may weigh on sentiment during periods of expanding enforcement capacity, while the longer-term trend points to more standardized reporting rather than ad-hoc summonses.