A 1099-DA reports proceeds; it does not finish the tax calculation

In a 28 January reminder, the IRS explains that people who sold or disposed of digital assets through brokers may receive Form 1099-DA for 2025 transactions. Its examples include cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and NFTs. The agency notes that most of these statements will not include transaction basis for 2025, leaving taxpayers to determine gains or losses. It also says related income, gains and losses must be reported whether a form arrives or not. A missing form does not itself settle the underlying reporting obligation. Source.

Coinbase’s 17 February explanation says an exchange may not know an asset’s cost basis when it arrived from another wallet or platform. It describes providing customers with basis information where available and tools for supplying records or reconciling transactions. For the 2025 year, Coinbase distinguishes information shown to the customer from basis reported to the IRS. Its position on simplifying stablecoin reporting is advocacy by an exchange, separate from the government’s rules. This article describes the US reporting issue; other countries have their own systems. Source.

Our practical reading is that the form is an input to a recordkeeping process, rather than a complete history of a person’s assets. Start by checking which account, year and transactions the document covers. Then compare transfers, acquisition records and disposals across the places the assets were held. Gross sale proceeds cannot be read directly as profit. A transfer between accounts also needs to be distinguished from a sale in the underlying records. When the facts are incomplete, resolving them with a qualified preparer is more useful than assuming a blank field means zero. The central problem is matching the record to the transaction it is supposed to describe.

A fictional person who buys on one exchange, moves an asset to a wallet and later sells elsewhere can have three records for one holding. The receiving exchange may only see the final step. Keeping those records connected explains the missing-basis problem without assuming either that the exchange has a complete history or that the form is necessarily incorrect.