09-04-2026 
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Tax gain activities and regulations have been creating a lot of buzz in the digital currency world lately, as blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimated that taxable blockchain digital currency activity reached $475 billion globally in 2025. Meanwhile, New Zealand and South Korea have updates in their tax regulations for crypto.
- Chainalysis: Taxable blockchain activity categorized
- New Zealand proposes tax-free gains for holders
- South Korea rolls out revised tax guidelines
Chainalysis estimates $457B in taxable crypto activity
According to Chainalysis’s latest report, the U.S. accounted for $112.6 billion, the largest share of the world’s on-chain taxable digital currency activity, followed by Germany and China at $24.1 billion and $21 billion, respectively.
“In 2025, the most recent complete year of data, on-chain taxable crypto flows — combining realized gains attributed to centralized and decentralized exchanges; income from mining, staking, lending, and gambling; and crypto-denominated payments — reached $457 billion,” the analytics firm said.
In terms of geography, North America leads with $134.6 billion in 2025, followed by the European Union at $125.1 billion and East Asia at $54.7 billion.
The taxable blockchain activity, Chainalysis explained, falls into three categories: gains, income, and payments. These are divided into smaller categories, such as CEX and DEX gains, mining, staking, lending, and gambling income, as well as merchant services and P2P-like payments.
Chainalysis added that transactions covered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development‘s (OECD) Crytpto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) account for just 14% of the on-chain taxable activities they identified. The remaining 86% were from decentralized exchange activity, peer-to-peer transactions, ochain earnings, and payment-related use cases.
The OECD introduced CARF in 2022 as a framework that requires eligible crypto-asset service providers to collect and share information about users’ transactions with tax authorities.
New Zealand: ACT promises tax-free crypto gains after a year
In other digital currency tax news, New Zealand promises tax-free digital currency gains by 2027.
The ACT party in New Zealand said that it wants to allow people to make profits from digital currencies tax-free as long as they hold them for over a year.
Under the current regulations, investors need to calculate tax on their profits whenever they sell or swap their digital assets.
ACT’s campaign said that any gains on certain personal digital currency held for more than 12 months should not be taxed. However, professional traders or businesses trading digital currencies would still need to pay tax under the current regulations.
ACT Deputy Nicole McKee stated that the proposed changes would give everyday investors “certainty and simplicity” and would also remove unnecessary tax compliance requirements.
“Inland Revenue should focus on significant taxable activity, not trivial transactions that create more paperwork than revenue,” she added.ACT added that it will introduce clearer rules for firms and startups that work with digital currencies, such as stablecoins. Apart from tax cuts, the party will also investigate whether red tape is preventing legitimate financial tech companies from opening bank accounts.
In April this year, Inland Revenue reminded those buying and selling crypto to “get tax compliant now” to avoid “an expensive surprise down the line.”
“Despite popular thinking, people are not invisible on blockchain, and we have the tools and the analytics capabilities to identify and expose crypto-asset activities,” a spokesperson said.
South Korea to implement new tax rules in January
In more recent news, the South Korean government plans to classify income from transferring or lending digital currency as other income for tax purposes.
By January 2027, BusinessKorea reported that investors who earn KRW 10 million ($7,256) in net gains from digital currencies could face a tax bill of KRW 1.65 million ($1,201) under the proposed tax system.
A 22% tax rate—including local income tax—will be applied to the annual gains after the deduction of expenses and basic exemption of KRW 2.5 million ($1,819). Income earned this year will not be subject to tax, as the first tax return and payments are scheduled for May 2028.
Following the announcement, concerns over the lack of clarity in the rules emerged. Some inquiries are about determining the cost basis of assets transferred from overseas exchanges or personal wallets to domestic exchanges.
Investors said that if they cannot prove their acquisition costs and only 50% of the sale proceeds are recognized as a deductible expense, they may pay taxes that exceed their actual gains.
In addition, investors are also raising concerns over the fairness of the new tax rules compared with other investment assets.
In South Korea, the government does not tax capital gains from listed stocks earned by individual investors, while digital currency gains are taxable once they exceed the KRW 2.5 million ($1,819) exemption. Also, unlike stocks, they said that digital currency losses cannot be carried forward to offset future gains.
As a result, industry groups are asking for the basic exemption to be raised to KRW 6 million ($4,368) and KRW 20 million ($14,560), arguing that a low exemption may result in administrative costs exceeding tax revenues and also place a reporting burden on small-scale investors.
The criticism comes as legislation is being introduced to establish the digital currency industry’s legal foundation. Experts warned that introducing the tax before strengthening the country’s regulatory framework could “accelerate capital outflows.”
Around KRW 700 trillion ($509 billion) has reportedly flowed from the country to overseas digital currency exchanges since 2021, raising concerns that higher taxes could make domestic platforms less competitive.
Watch: Digital currency regulation and the role of BSV blockchain
