The Crypto Reporting Framework, and What It Records

For years, holding assets through a crypto exchange sat outside the automatic reporting that covers ordinary bank accounts. That is changing. The Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, agreed through the OECD, brings exchanges, brokers and certain custodians into the same kind of automatic exchange that banks have followed under the Common Reporting Standard.

Under it, platforms collect and report information on their account holders, identity, residence and the value moved, to their local authority, which then shares it with the authority where the holder is tax-resident. More than forty jurisdictions have signed up, with the European Union implementing it through its own directive.

The timing is set. Platforms begin collecting the required information from the start of 2026, with the first exchanges between authorities expected in 2027. By the time the data moves, the year it covers has already passed.

For a private holder, the practical effect is simple. Crypto positions that felt private become part of the same reporting picture as a bank balance. The question is no longer whether a holding is visible to an authority, but whether the records behind it, the entities, the residences, the histories, are consistent and correct before they are read.