In the United States crypto is treated as property, not as currency. That single sentence produces almost every rule that follows: every time you dispose of it you have a gain or a loss to report, and that includes swapping one token for another, spending it, and converting to a stablecoin. Buying and holding is not a taxable event. Moving between your own wallets is not either.
The mental model, in one page
Crypto is property. When you buy property you have a cost basis. When you dispose of it you compare what you got against that basis, and the difference is a capital gain or loss. Everything else in this section is detail on top of that.
Disposal is the trigger
Selling, swapping, spending or converting to a stablecoin are all disposals. Buying and holding is not, and neither is moving between wallets you own.
What counts as a disposalTwoBasis decides the number
Your gain is proceeds minus cost basis. If you cannot prove the basis, the default assumption is that it was zero, which makes the whole proceeds taxable.
How basis worksThreeSome crypto is income, not gain
Staking rewards, airdrops, mining and interest are generally income at the value on the day you received them, and then have their own basis from that point.
Income versus gainsThe three things that surprise people
A swap is a sale. Trading ETH for SOL is a disposal of ETH at its market value that day, even though no dollars were involved and nothing reached your bank. Somebody who swapped actively all year can owe tax without ever having withdrawn a cent.
The exchange form is not your records. It knows what happened on that exchange. It does not know what you paid on another platform, what you did onchain, or which wallet a deposit came from.
A loss year still needs filing. Losses offset gains and, above that, a limited amount of ordinary income each year, with the rest carried forward. Not reporting a bad year throws that away.
The six pages in this section
Taxable events
What is a disposal and what is not, with the edge cases that catch people.
ReadCost basis
FIFO, specific identification, and the wallet by wallet rule that changed in 2025.
ReadStaking, airdrops and mining
When crypto is income rather than a gain, and what it is worth on arrival.
ReadRecords to keep
What to save from day one, and how to reconstruct it if you did not.
ReadThe forms and what they miss
1099-DA, 8949 and Schedule D, and why the numbers will not match.
ReadThe seven common mistakes
The errors that turn a small tax bill into a large one, or into a letter.
ReadCommon questions
Do I owe tax if I never sold for dollars?
Possibly, yes. Swapping one token for another is a disposal of the first one, and so is spending crypto or converting it to a stablecoin. Dollars never have to touch your bank account for a taxable event to have happened.
Do I have to report if I only lost money?
Reporting a loss year is usually to your advantage. Capital losses offset capital gains, and beyond that a limited amount of ordinary income each year, with the remainder carried forward indefinitely. Leaving it off the return throws that carry forward away.
Is moving crypto between my own wallets taxable?
No. A transfer between wallets you control is not a disposal, because you still own the same asset. It does need to be recorded, because otherwise your own history looks like a sale out of one wallet and a purchase into another.
Where to go next
Work out what your history actually says
We go through your transaction exports together and identify what is missing, so you arrive at your accountant with a complete picture instead of a shoebox.