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Jul 01, 2025
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Taxman's lens now on telltale crypto clues
Look out for random alphabets scribbled on a piece of paper or long strings of what may seem like gibberish, sprinkled with alpha numerals. Watch out for ‘wallet.dat’ or 'key.dat' files and pen drives tucked in closets. Gently remind a person of interest of possible imprisonment for holding back passwords they have memorised instead of jotting them down somewhere -- a trick that techies call ‘brain wallets’.
As cryptocurrencies are increasingly used to store and hide wealth, tips like these are being passed on by the Income tax (I-T) department to its investigators to trace and freeze this complex, little-understood digital asset. Tax officials, many of whom are probably innocent of cryptos, are being groomed to spot the clues they may stumble upon during a search and seizure operation. They are told not to mistake certain files and notings that may hold the keys to cypoto wallets, as irrelevant information or meaningless griffonage.
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