Chainalysis: Global Potential Taxable Cryptocurrency Activity in 2025 to Exceed $457 Billion, with CARF Only Covering 14%

BlockBeats News, August 27th, Chainalysis released a report stating that by 2025, the global on-chain potential taxable cryptocurrency activity will reach at least $457 billion, covering revenue generated from both centralized and decentralized exchanges, as well as activities such as mining, staking, lending, gambling income, and cryptocurrency payments. Due to the inability to directly observe transactions, staking, and lending activities within centralized exchanges, the data may actually underestimate the scale of global crypto-economic activity.

Regionally, the potential taxable crypto activity in North America is projected to reach $134.6 billion by 2025, with the EU at $125.1 billion, and East Asia at $54.7 billion. The United States leads as a single country at $112.6 billion, followed by Germany at $24.1 billion. Chainalysis pointed out that a significant portion of global crypto activity remains outside the scope of the traditional tax reporting system.

In 2022, the OECD introduced the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), with dozens of countries committed to starting information exchange from 2027, and more expected to join in 2028 or 2029. However, in the 2025 global on-chain potential taxable activity, only about 14% actually falls under the CARF coverage, with the remaining 86% involving DEX transactions, peer-to-peer transfers, self-hosted wallets, on-chain mining and staking income, lending income, and cryptocurrency payments. Moreover, CARF is not a retrospective system, and issues such as the lack of cost basis and transactions on foreign platforms may affect tax authorities in accurately calculating taxable income.

Chainalysis stated that blockchain analysis can help tax authorities directly observe on-chain activities, track fund flows between wallets, identify cross-border and decentralized platform transactions, reconstruct the cost basis of digital assets, and discover sources of income such as mining, staking, lending, and liquidity provision, thereby bridging the gap in coverage between CARF and the traditional tax reporting system.