Greater than half of cryptocurrency buyers don’t perceive the basic idea of taxability relating to their digital asset holdings, in response to a survey by the U.S.-listed crypto alternate Coinbase (COIN) and Cointracker, a crypto tax and portfolio monitoring platform.
The 2026 Crypto Tax Readiness Report discovered that solely 49% accurately perceive that crypto is taxable anytime it’s offered, whereas nearly 1 / 4 mistakenly imagine easy transfers set off tax occasions.
Regardless of nearly all of customers having good intentions relating to crypto tax compliance, the multi-platform actuality of crypto possession exacerbates the so-called value foundation downside, deducting the unique buy worth of an asset to report capital positive factors.
The survey discovered customers averaged 2.5 platforms/wallets with 83% utilizing self-custodial wallets, and solely 35% reporting that they’d adjusted their value foundation previously. The survey, carried out in late 2025, surveyed 3,000 U.S. crypto customers.
The confusion round value foundation within the new 1099-DA varieties is made worse because of a level of overreporting constructed into the brand new regime, Coinbase says. It’s because on a regular basis actions like stablecoin funds and Ethereum fuel charges set off taxable occasions, whereas producing little significant tax income.
Coinbase stated it expects to problem over 4 million 1099-DAs Kinds to clients with below $600 of proceeds – added to the truth that over 60 % of its clients have incomplete value foundation information as a result of means digital belongings transfer throughout wallets and platforms.
“At this time, which means each stablecoin cost, each small DeFi [decentralized finance] transaction, each fuel payment is technically a taxable occasion,” Coinbase stated. “The compliance burden this imposes on abnormal People is not simply inconvenient – it is a direct risk to the adoption and innovation the GENIUS Act was designed to unlock.”
Regardless of the wrinkles, the transfer to standardized reporting of crypto taxes will assist adoption in the long term, stated Matt Worth, director of investigations at blockchain analytics agency Elliptic. Worth, a former IRS particular agent centered on legal investigations, sees this as a shift towards focused enforcement moderately than the broad, guide investigations of the previous.
Additionally a former head of investigations at Binance, Worth understands the complexity of doing crypto taxes, having been paid partly in crypto by Binance and having to account for a risky asset within the type of a cost.
“How do you even report it?” Worth stated in an interview. “I did not actually have a 1099 to report that, so I needed to primarily do all of my very own accounting to file correct taxes to account for that info.”
As such, the arrival of 1099-DA varieties means welcome standardization that merely brings crypto in keeping with what different monetary merchandise have had for years and mirrors the method of the 1099-B for brokerages.
“There is definitely nuance and it’s a good level that the premise is tougher to calculate given the excessive frequency of buying and selling,” Worth stated. “However there are some parallels to that in conventional investments as nicely; I do not know what number of retail merchants are working algo trades on Schwab, for instance, however that can also be a really comparable sort of commerce. If they will determine it out, I feel the trade can most likely determine it out.”
