Do Crypto Exchanges Report to the IRS?

Yes, they do. The more useful question is what exactly gets reported, because the gap between what the IRS receives and what you actually earned is where most crypto tax problems start. This is about where the data comes from — not about which box to fill in.

Form 1099-DA, and the number that isn't your profit

Custodial brokers now file Form 1099-DA for digital asset sales, and you get a copy. So far, so ordinary. The detail that matters is what the form contains.

For the 2025 tax year, brokers report gross proceeds only. The cost basis box is blank in most cases. Basis reporting starts with transactions made on or after January 1, 2026, which means the first forms carrying it arrive in early 2027.

Gross proceeds are not profit. If you bought at 900 and sold at 1,000, the form shows 1,000 — and unless your return explains the other 900, the IRS is looking at a number ten times larger than what you actually made. That mismatch is one of the most common reasons an ordinary filer hears from them at all.

"Covered" and "uncovered" — why transfers make it worse

Basis reporting only applies to covered assets: coins bought and held inside that one broker account.

Move coins in from a wallet you control, or from an older platform, and they arrive uncovered — the broker has no idea what you paid, so the basis stays blank no matter which year it is. The more you self-custody, the more of your reporting looks like pure proceeds with no cost attached, which is the opposite of what most people expect self-custody to do for them on paper.

Keeping your own acquisition records isn't bookkeeping fussiness. It's the only thing that closes that gap.

The bank leg

Whatever happens on-chain, dollars land in an account with your name on it.

Recurring transfers from an exchange are ordinary banking data, and matching them against a filed return requires no blockchain forensics at all. In practice this is where a large share of examinations begin — money arriving that the return doesn't explain.

The international layer arrived in 2026

Offshore platforms used to be the real gap. That closed this year.

Under the OECD's Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), 48 jurisdictions began collecting crypto transaction data on January 1, 2026, with the first automatic exchanges between tax authorities in 2027. A second wave — including Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland and the UAE — follows in 2028. The United States is scheduled to exchange from 2029, and the EU runs its own version, DAC8, on the 2026/2027 timetable.

Read that carefully: exchange of data between countries is a few years out in some directions, but collection has already started. The 2026 records are being kept now, wherever you are.

"Which exchange doesn't report?" is the wrong question

It gets asked a lot, so it deserves a straight answer rather than a list.

Reporting duties attach to the service, and they follow custody and jurisdiction — not branding. A platform outside the reporting perimeter today is one law change or one licence application away from being inside it, and the records it kept in the meantime don't disappear when that happens. Choosing a service on the basis of what it currently fails to report is a bet on someone else's regulatory calendar.

And it answers the wrong question anyway. Your obligation to report a gain doesn't depend on whether a third party also reported it.

What the chain shows, and what it doesn't

Precision matters here, because the confusion runs in the wrong direction.

A public blockchain shows everything, permanently: amounts, timing, and how addresses relate to one another. The single thing it does not show is who is behind an address.

That link isn't built by chain analysis — it's built by off-chain data: the verified account where you bought, the bank you withdrew to, the email you reused. A public chain is pseudonymous, not anonymous, and when a pseudonym is tied to a name, it ties backwards across the whole history. The identity side of that is covered in crypto exchange without KYC: why ID is required.

Privacy is not evasion

This belongs in the body of the text, not a footnote.

Not wanting your balances, counterparties and every transfer sitting in a company's database is a legitimate preference, and it is unrelated to whether you pay what you owe. A tax obligation doesn't depend on where the swap happened. If there was a gain, it gets reported.

Our own service needs no account, and that changes nothing about anyone's filing duties. Reading "no registration" as "nothing to report" is the fastest route to a real problem.

Practical

Record your cost basis as you go. It is half of every gain calculation and it is usually years old by the time you need it. Note the date, amount and price when it happens.

Track transfers between your own wallets. They aren't disposals, but they are what turns a clean 1099-DA into a blank-basis one.

When it isn't obvious, ask someone qualified. How to file is a question for the IRS instructions and a tax professional; this article is about where the data originates.

Our current rates and terms are on their own pages, and the swap itself doesn't require an account. If the destination is a stablecoin, read Monero to USDT first: the issuer of a stablecoin can freeze an address, and that is a different kind of exposure from the one this article is about.