What Blockchain Data Tell Us About $457+ Billion in Potentially Taxable Crypto Activity

Summary

• On-chain potentially taxable crypto activity around the world reached more than $457 billion in 2025, with the United States alone accounting for roughly $112.6 billion.  Material taxable activity can be attributed to all other countries as well.
• The OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), the EU’s DAC 8, and domestic information reporting reforms are meaningful steps forward, but material portions of DeFi, peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers, private wallet holdings, and historic activity fall outside their scope.
• Without blockchain intelligence to complement traditional reporting, tax authorities risk being aware of only a fraction of crypto activity that is relevant to accurate risk assessment and tax calculations.

This chapter is a preview of our report, The Crypto Tax Report: Mapping Global Taxable Activity with On-Chain Data. The report covers on-chain activity across six major blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Tron, BNB Smart Chain, and Base), attributed to countries using a combination of direct location signals and proportional allocation based on service-level activity. Because trading, staking, and lending conducted inside centralized exchanges (CEXs) are not visible on-chain, our estimates likely understate total economic income. Download your copy for the full methodology and country-level breakdowns.

Crypto’s growth over the past several years has fundamentally changed what “taxable activity” looks like. In 2025, the most recent complete year of data, on-chain taxable crypto flows — combining realized gains attributed to centralized and decentralized exchanges; income from mining, staking, lending and gambling; and crypto-denominated payments — reached $457 billion.

As the Sankey above illustrates, taxable on-chain activity can be treated as falling into three broad buckets: gains, income, and payments. These in turn can be divided into smaller categories: CEX and DEX gains; mining, staking, lending, and gambling income; and merchant services and P2P-like payments.

Each of these flows can then be attributed to geographic regions. North America leads with $134.6 billion in 2025, followed by the European Union ($125.1 billion) and East Asia ($54.7 billion). But absolute dollars are only one way to think about the stakes. Crypto taxable activity is also worth measuring relative to a country’s existing tax base, and in that dimension, the picture changes.

Top 15 Countries by Taxable Crypto Activity 

Top 15 Countries by Crypto Share of Gov Deficit 

Source: International Monetary Fund

Top 15 Countries by Crypto Share of Gov Revenue

Source: International Monetary Fund

Especially in developing economies, taxable crypto activity is large enough to potentially increase total government revenue (before adjusting for actual taxation). In Nigeria, for example, total on-chain taxable activity in 2025 equaled $4.4 billion against the government’s 2025 revenues of $35.5 billion. Other countries’ taxable crypto activity is even larger than its deficit (again, before adjusting for actual taxation, if any)). That is the case in Portugal: it had $2.0 billion in taxable crypto activity in 2025, a sum 201.05%% larger than its government deficit for that year.

Of course, almost no country has a 100% tax rate or collects 100% of its theoretically taxable revenue — be it from crypto or any other source. But crypto taxes in particular go unpaid at very high rates based on public reports of different countries.

One press release from Sweden, for example, estimates that more than 90% of people didn’t report their crypto activity. In the United States, press reports indicate that the “crypto tax gap,” i.e., the difference between taxes paid and taxes owed on transactions involving crypto, was roughly $50 billion annually in 2022 — about 8% of the total tax gap for that year. This gap has begun to close with the introduction of Form 1099-DA (the IRS’ form for reporting digital asset sales); congressional reports project it will generate $28 billion over 10 years. But like domestic information reporting reforms in other countries, the impact of purely domestic reforms is limited due to the ability of taxpayers to transact outside of their country of tax residence.  This impact is particularly acute where countries introduce domestic information reporting and/or withholding.

CARF: a meaningful step forward, but only part of the picture

To address the reported shortfalls of voluntary declarations of transactions involving crypto, the OECD released the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) in late 2022. The framework is designed to function as a risk detection tool, in some ways similar to the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for traditional finance.

Practically, CARF applies to centralized exchanges, brokers, retailers, and certain wallet providers in terms of collecting customer information and reporting crypto transactions to the tax authority(ies) with which they have the specified jurisdictional nexus. Dozens of countries have committed to begin exchanging information under CARF starting in 2027, with more expected to join later.

A significant share of global crypto trading occurs off-chain, inside the closed order books of centralized exchanges. This activity is likely the easiest for tax authorities to account for: it occurs within the view of entities that generally know who their customers are, and (at least for trades wholly within their order books) how those customers generated returns. CARF is designed to capture this off-chain activity directly from Reporting Crypto-Asset Service Providers (RCASPs).

CARF’s reach extends to some on-chain activity, too. For example, an inflow or outflow from an unhosted (or private) wallet to a centralized exchange that corresponds to a sale is a CARF-covered action. However, when we look at the full universe of on-chain taxable activity, these CARF-inclusive events represent only 14% of the global total. The remaining 86% — encompassing DEX activity, peer-to-peer transfers, on-chain income streams, and payments — falls outside the framework’s practical scope.

Several structural factors explain why important inputs relevant to taxable income calculations will not be known to tax agencies, even after they receive data under CARF:

• It’s common for taxpayers to acquire crypto on one platform before transferring it to the original or another platform.
• Most crypto has historically been held in private wallets prior to transfers to RCASPs for disposition, or subsequent to acquisition on an RCASP (and which may be reported as such a transfer under CARF or some domestic information reporting rules).
• CARF is not retroactive in nature.
• Most decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are practically out of scope.
• Peer-to-peer transfers, self-custody activity, and foreign platforms without a reporting nexus in a CARF jurisdiction also fall outside the framework.
• Mining rewards, staking yields, lending income, and many goods/services payments aren’t captured by CARF (although certain transfers relating to such income types may be).
• Cost basis gaps persist. Even where exchanges report dispositions, they often lack information for digital assets acquired elsewhere, making accurate gain/loss calculation difficult.
• CARF data are aggregate, as opposed to transactional, in nature.

Highlighting these points is not intended to be a suggestion to revise CARF, as it provides valuable insights into transactions occurring on platforms where the majority of crypto trading occurs (i.e., centralized exchanges). Rather, our intention is to make the point that the value of data received under the information reporting reforms is maximized when combined with workflows that leverage blockchain data. Reliable blockchain data can reveal compliance risks that otherwise would be masked.

If a country or other reader would like to discuss these data further, including countries not specifically identified in this report, please contact us.

FAQs

What is CARF and when does it take effect?

The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is an Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)-developed international standard for automatic exchange of information in tax matters for crypto-asset transactions between jurisdictions. It requires Reporting Crypto-Asset Service Providers (RCASPs) (largely centralized exchanges and some other types of brokers) to collect and report customer transaction data to tax authorities with which they have the required nexus. The data are then shared with other participating tax authorities. Most committed jurisdictions will begin exchanging information in 2027, with the additional countries starting to exchange data in 2028 or 2029. The EU’s “DAC 8” scope is similar to CARF, while also pulling in expanded notions of nexus (that are not reliant on physical presence) from MiCA. A number of countries have domestic information reporting frameworks that do not consider on-chain data directly. The same points outlined above for CARF may apply to such domestic frameworks.

How much crypto activity is taxable globally?

Based on Chainalysis data and the methodology we applied, total global taxable crypto activity in 2025 reached at least $457 billion. The United States accounts for the largest single-country share at approximately $112.6 billion. Please note that, when we reference taxable activity, we do not account for the rules of some countries that can exempt certain types of transactions or certain income from taxation.  Such rules tend not to be the global norm, and when they do exist, they have limitations on their scope. Importantly, blockchain data are relevant to when these limitations on exemption can apply.

Our approach to identifying taxable activity focuses on on-chain activity and is conservative in nature.  Our report does not take into account activity occurring on centralized exchanges, all blockchains, and all transaction types or venues. The methodology section of the report contains additional details. Thus, the $457 billion figure can be considered a lower boundary.

How can blockchain intelligence help close the crypto tax gap?

Blockchain intelligence allows tax authorities to observe on-chain activity directly; tracing flows between wallets addresses; identifying use of foreign or decentralized platforms; reconstructing cost basis; detecting income from mining, staking, lending, and liquidity provision; and flagging high-risk patterns such as interaction with mixers or no/weak KYC services. These data, as well as dozens of other categories and behaviors, complement information reporting from exchanges and help authorities build a more complete and accurate picture of taxpayer activity, particularly in the areas CARF and similar frameworks don’t reach.

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