Cryptocurrency Capital Gains: What You Owe and How to Track It

When you sell, trade, or spend cryptocurrency capital gains, the profit you make from selling crypto after buying it at a lower price. Also known as crypto profits, it’s not just a number on a chart—it’s taxable income in most countries. If you bought Bitcoin at $30,000 and sold it at $50,000, that $20,000 isn’t a gift. It’s a capital gain, and the IRS and other tax agencies want their cut.

It doesn’t matter if you turned crypto into cash, traded it for another coin, or bought coffee with it. Every time you dispose of crypto, you trigger a taxable event. This trips up even experienced traders. You might think holding Ethereum for a year means you’re safe, but if you swapped it for Solana, that’s still a capital gain. And if you earned tokens from an airdrop like WATCoin, a token distributed for free by GAMEE in 2025 as part of its play-to-earn ecosystem, you owe taxes on its value the day you received it—even if you never sold it. Same goes for staking rewards, mining income, or referral bonuses. The IRS doesn’t care if it felt like free money. It’s income.

Tracking this isn’t just about avoiding fines. It’s about knowing your real profit. Many people think they made $100,000 trading crypto, but after fees, taxes, and cost basis errors, they’re left with half. Tools like Koinly or CoinTracker help, but you don’t need fancy software to start. Just write down: what you bought, when, for how much, and what you traded it for. That’s your foundation. The posts below show you exactly how this plays out in real cases—from the failed exchange InfinityCoin, a platform with zero volume and sky-high fees that vanished in 2025, to the confusing SWITCH, two different tokens with the same name, one tied to a rewards app, the other to a blockchain bridge. Both created tax headaches for users who didn’t track their trades.

You’ll find real examples here: how Myanmar’s crypto ban affects tax reporting, why Iceland’s mining restrictions changed profit calculations, and why airdrops like CKN or Zenith Coin—both with $0 value—are still taxable events. You’ll see how spot trading strategies can be optimized not just for returns, but for tax efficiency. And you’ll learn why some people who made big gains still lost money after taxes, while others who traded carefully kept more of their profits.

This isn’t about getting out of paying taxes. It’s about paying the right amount, at the right time, with the right records. The goal isn’t to hide—it’s to be clear. And the posts below give you the exact details you need to do that without guesswork.