Chainalysis estimates that $457 billion of potentially taxable cryptocurrency activity occurred globally in 2025, with the United States representing about $112.6 billion and North America accounting for $134.6 billion, followed by the European Union at $125.1 billion. The estimate includes realized gains, mining, staking, lending, and crypto‑denominated payments on six major blockchains, but excludes trading activity on centralized exchanges.

The Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development’s Crypto‑Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) is projected to cover only 14 % of that activity, leaving roughly 86 %—including decentralized exchanges, peer‑to‑peer transfers, on‑chain income streams and direct payments—outside the reporting scope. CARF, developed in 2022, obliges crypto service providers to collect customer and tax residency data and transmit transaction details to domestic tax authorities for cross‑border sharing. Its implementation is scheduled to begin on Jan. 1, 2026, in 48 jurisdictions, including the United Kingdom and the EU.

Colby Mangels, a former OECD adviser who helped design CARF, told Cointelegraph that the framework was created around intermediaries that facilitate transactions, leaving many decentralized finance activities outside its perimeter because no central operator exists. Regulators are reviewing anti‑money‑laundering rules to determine when decentralized platforms might be treated as regulated crypto service providers.

The disparity underscores challenges in applying traditional tax reporting to decentralized crypto ecosystems, and it remains unclear how future regulations will address the large share of unrecorded activity.