Potentially taxable onchain cryptocurrency activity reached at least $457 billion worldwide in 2025, while international reporting rules may capture only a fraction of it, Chainalysis estimates.
The U.S. accounted for $112.6 billion of the total, with North America leading all regions at $134.6 billion. The European Union followed with $125.1 billion. These estimates include realized gains, income from activities such as mining, staking and lending, and crypto-denominated payments across six major blockchains. Transactions within centralized exchanges were excluded from the calculation.
According to Chainalysis, transactions covered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) represent just 14% of the onchain taxable activity identified. The remaining 86% includes transactions on decentralized exchanges, peer-to-peer transfers, onchain income streams and payments.
CARF, developed by the OECD in 2022, requires covered crypto service providers to report customer transaction data to tax authorities. Data collection under the framework began on Jan. 1, 2026, in 48 jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and European Union. Covered crypto platforms must collect additional customer and tax residency information for reporting purposes.
The framework’s focus on intermediaries helps explain the gaps highlighted by Chainalysis. Colby Mangels, a former OECD adviser involved in CARF’s development, noted that the framework was designed around businesses facilitating crypto transactions as intermediaries. Much of decentralized finance remains outside the reporting perimeter due to the absence of centralized operators or custodial relationships.
Regulators are monitoring developments in anti-money laundering regulation to determine when decentralized platforms or their operators should be treated as regulated crypto service providers, potentially expanding the scope of reporting requirements in the future.
