The US Treasury proposes new rules that would treat crypto exchanges more like stockbrokers, requiring them to report gross proceeds to the IRS starting in 2026
including DAOs and certain wallet providers—or to create them... Emily Wilkins / @emrwilkins : US Treasury and IRS out with a new proposed rule today on taxing crypto and digital assets. Would require brokers to report sales and exchanges - say it's similar to rules for reporting securities. https://home.treasury.gov/... Richard Rubin / @richardrubindc : One could be cynical/clever and note the incentive for Congress to purport to raise revenue by enacting difficult-to-administer tax hikes that IRS punts forward. The score for 2024-25 counted toward the bill paying for itself. What happens after that happens after that. @nc_blockchain : North Carolina Congressman @PatrickMcHenry, Chair of House @FinancialCmte, issues strong statement against today's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on #digitalasset reporting requirements from the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act issued by @USTreasury & IRS. #crypto #dex Jerry Brito / @jerrybrito : It's almost 300 pages long and complicated. Doesn't seem to be completely bad or completely good. We at Coin Center are digesting it and will have more to say in the coming days. Miller / @millercwl : There is a lot in here and this is just an initial take... we'll be going through it throughout the day. I encourage people to read this proposal and submit comments because it gets to core issues of open access and decentralization relevant to the entire technology. Richard Rubin / @richardrubindc : New from us: The long-awaited crypto tax regulations are here. https://www.wsj.com/... LinkedIn: Nik Fahrer : The IRS dropped proposed regs for digital asset 1099 reporting this morning. It's 282 pages long, so I'm still digesting the info, but here's some quick hits: … Forums: r/CryptoCurrency : New tax laws enforcing 1099's for DeFi users. Msmash / news.slashdot.org : US Tackles Crypto Tax Mess
Context & Ripple Effects
Crypto tax reporting had already faced implementation friction: Treasury and the IRS were previously reported to be delaying an earlier start for firms to track customers’ gains and losses, underscoring how difficult transaction-level reporting is across digital-asset systems.
This proposal marks a clearer attempt to apply securities-style intermediary reporting to crypto. The direction later hardened when Treasury finalized reporting requirements for cryptocurrency brokers, although the eventual framework focused on custodial platforms.
First-order effects
- Crypto exchanges would need to prepare systems to capture and report customers’ gross proceeds to the IRS if the proposal takes effect in 2026; potentially covered DAOs and wallet providers face immediate uncertainty over whether they qualify as brokers.
- The IRS would gain a proposed standardized reporting channel for crypto sales and exchanges, while users of covered services could face tax records that are more readily matched to their activity.
Second-order effects
- Compliance costs and legal risk would favor platforms able to build reporting, identity, and recordkeeping operations, while providers with less clear intermediary roles would have incentives to narrow services or seek clearer exemptions.
- The proposal extends a compliance effort that had already been slowed by an earlier delay to crypto gain-and-loss tracking, making implementation definitions—not merely the reporting requirement—the central competitive and policy issue.
Third-order effects
- If applied consistently, broker-style reporting would make custodial crypto venues operate more like established financial intermediaries for tax purposes, reducing one difference between digital-asset trading and securities markets.
- The unresolved treatment of decentralized services suggests the longer-term divide may be between identifiable custodians that can report and protocols whose role remains harder to fit into intermediary rules.
The trend: Crypto regulation is shifting from bespoke, lightly defined obligations toward financial-market compliance rules centered on identifiable intermediaries.