Form 1099-DA: What It Means for Crypto Tax Reporting

When you trade, stake, or earn crypto, the Form 1099-DA, the IRS’s official form for reporting digital asset transactions. Also known as Digital Asset Proceeds Statement, it’s now the standard way the government tracks your crypto activity—whether you bought Bitcoin, got an airdrop, or swapped tokens on a DeFi platform. This isn’t just paperwork. It’s the IRS’s way of closing the gap between what you think you owe and what they know you earned.

Before Form 1099-DA, many crypto users didn’t report airdrops, staking rewards, or DeFi yields because there was no clear system to track them. Now, crypto exchanges, platforms like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken that handle digital asset transactions must report your sales, trades, and income directly to the IRS. If you earned more than $10 in crypto from staking, lending, or airdrops in a year, they’ll send you a Form 1099-DA. And if you sold any asset for a profit, that gain is now tied to your Social Security number.

It’s not just about exchanges. DeFi protocols, smart contract platforms like Uniswap, Aave, or Arbitrove that let you trade or earn without a middleman don’t issue forms—but you’re still responsible. If you earned tokens from liquidity pools or yield farming, you owe taxes on their value at the time you received them. The IRS doesn’t care if you used a non-custodial wallet. They’ll find out through bank deposits, wallet analysis, or third-party reports.

Form 1099-DA doesn’t cover everything, though. If you sent crypto to a friend, used it to buy groceries, or swapped one token for another, you still need to track those events. The form only shows income and sales. It doesn’t tell you your cost basis. That’s on you. Keep records of when you bought each coin, how much you paid, and what you used it for. Without that, you could end up paying way more than you should.

And it’s not just U.S. residents. If you’re a U.S. citizen or green card holder living abroad, you still have to file. The IRS doesn’t care if you’re in Vietnam, Kuwait, or Russia—your crypto income is taxable. That’s why guides on Vietnam’s crypto pilot or Kuwait’s ban matter: they show how rules change globally, but your U.S. tax duty stays the same.

What you’ll find below are real, practical breakdowns of how this affects your crypto journey. From airdrops like Monsoon Finance’s MCASH or Shield DAO’s SLD, to risky tokens like FourCoin or Dreamcoin, every post ties back to one truth: if you earned it, you owe tax. We’ve got guides on how to track your gains, spot scams disguised as tax-free giveaways, and understand what the IRS really wants. No fluff. No jargon. Just what you need to stay compliant—and keep more of your crypto.