86% of taxable crypto activity falls outside CARF

Global taxable crypto activity on the blockchain amounted to at least $457 billion in 2025, with the United States accounting for the largest share at $112.6 billion. That is according to a new report from Chainalysis. Despite international reporting initiatives such as the OECD Crypto Asset Reporting Framework, 86% of all taxable on-chain activity falls outside the scope of that framework.

In brief:

• Taxable crypto activity on the blockchain reached at least $457 billion worldwide in 2025
• North America was the largest region with $134.6 billion, followed by the EU with $125.1 billion
• Only 14% of that activity falls within the scope of CARF, the OECD’s international reporting framework

US leads, but most activity remains invisible

Chainalysis maps out which crypto activity is taxable in theory, by adding up realised gains on centralised and decentralised exchanges, income from mining, staking and lending, and payments in crypto. The $457 billion figure is a lower bound: activity taking place within the closed systems of centralised exchanges is not visible on the blockchain and therefore does not count.

North America tops the list with $134.6 billion, followed by the European Union with $125.1 billion and East Asia with $54.7 billion. In emerging economies, the ratio to the government budget is sometimes strikingly large. In Nigeria, taxable crypto activity amounted to $4.4 billion against total government revenues of $35.5 billion. In Portugal, taxable crypto activity at $2 billion was more than twice as large as that year’s budget deficit.

CARF covers only a small share

The Crypto Asset Reporting Framework, or CARF for short, is an OECD initiative that obliges centralised exchanges and brokers to pass on customer data and transactions to tax authorities. Dozens of countries have pledged to exchange information under this framework from 2027.

Yet the Chainalysis report shows that in practice CARF covers only 14% of all taxable on-chain activity, amounting to $63.8 billion. The remaining 86%, or $393.7 billion, falls outside it. This concerns activity on decentralised exchanges, peer-to-peer transactions, self-custody of crypto, income from staking and mining, and payments.

Chainalysis points to a range of structural causes. For instance, CARF is not retroactive, and exchanges often lack information about the purchase costs of crypto obtained elsewhere. As a result, even with the data CARF provides, tax authorities cannot make an accurate profit or loss calculation.

Tax evasion remains a major problem

The gap between what taxpayers owe and what they actually pay is considerable. In Sweden, more than 90% of people are said not to have declared their crypto activity. In the US, the annual shortfall was estimated at around $50 billion in 2022, which amounts to approximately 8% of the total tax gap that year.

In the US, Form 1099-DA has now been introduced, allowing the tax authority to register digital asset sales. It is expected to generate $28 billion in additional tax revenue over ten years. Chainalysis argues that blockchain data is a necessary complement to reporting through CARF, because it is the only way to make compliance risks visible that would otherwise remain hidden. The broader debate on crypto regulation also plays a role in this.