On August 8, 2019, the Canada Revenue Agency (the
"CRA") released an Income Tax Ruling,
2018-0776661I7, clarifying its view on the taxation of
cryptocurrency miners.
The ruling responded to a taxpayer inquiry, asking whether a
bitcoin miner should include the value of mined bitcoin in income
at the time it is received.
Bitcoin miners have an essential role in both the creation and
the maintenance of the block-chain technology, which is the
foundation of bitcoin itself. When miners, using their computers,
solve computation-intensive math problems on the bitcoin network,
they produce or create new bitcoin. In addition, in solving the
math problems, bitcoin miners verify the network's transaction
information, securing the bitcoin payment network.