Chainalysis released a report on 26 August that, in 2025, encryption activity in the global potential taxable chain exceeded $457 billion, but only 14 per cent of transactions could be covered by the actual reach of existing international reporting systems. The rest comes from DeFi, private wallets, chain income and point-to-point payments.

Coverage activities were only 14 per cent

The report provides an inventory of realized gains, revenues and payments on Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, Tron, BNB Smart Chain and Base. Revenues include mining, pledge, borrowing and gambling, while payments include a chain flow of business receipts and similar point-to-point transfers.

Chainalysis states that $457.0 billion is only a floor estimate. Transactions, pledges and loans within the Centralized Exchange were not included, as they did not appear directly in the open block chain; nor did the report cover all public chains, types of transactions and places of dealing.

America is number one.

By country, the United States was headed by $112.6 billion, of which approximately $64.6 billion had been disbursed, $30.1 billion had been realized and $17.9 billion had been earned. By region, North America stood at $134.6 billion, the European Union at $125.1 billion and East Asia at $54.7 billion.

Germany, China and the United Kingdom followed by a breakdown of approximately $24.1 billion, $21 billion and $19.4 billion, respectively. India, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Russia and Thailand also entered the top 10. The report emphasizes that these figures reflect the scale of activities that may be taxable and do not amount to actual tax payable.

CARF mainly covers intermediary platforms

In 2022, OECD launched the Encrypted Asset Reporting Framework CARF, which aims to allow participating jurisdictions to exchange information on cross-border encrypted transactions. The framework is aimed primarily at intermediaries such as the Centralized Exchange, brokers and possibly some retailers and wallet service providers.

According to the report, data collection was launched on 1 January 2026 in the first 48 jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and EU member States. Most participants plan to begin data exchange in 2027. Even so, Chainalysis measured that only 14 per cent of potential tax-paying chain activity was actually covered by CARF.

DeFi still has a gap with the private purse.

The report found that the DeFi agreement and private wallets were the hardest part of the current reporting system. The centralization exchange usually operates on smart contracts, without a single custodian and without necessarily having complete identity information. Users who hold assets through private wallets, participate in agreements or make transfers may also bypass a declarationable platform.

Another difficulty is the cost basis, i.e. the purchase price and the holding period. If a user buys an asset on a platform and then transfers it to another location for sale, the receiving platform may know only the amount sold but not the original purchase cost. CARF is not retroactive, and the historical record gap is likely to persist.

The chain analysis can complement the investigation.

Chainalysis states that tax authorities can use chain analysis to track transfers between wallets, identify interactions with DeFi or offshore platforms, and identify revenues from mining, pledge, borrowing or providing liquidity. By combining the customer information available to the regulated platform, law enforcement may match a transaction history to a specific taxpayer.

Additional information:The report mentions that in May this year the Italian regulatory authority, through a review of the block chain records, tracked suspected undeclared proceeds of Ordinals, which exceeded Euro1 million, showing that the chain data had been used for tax investigations.