Crypto Capital Gains & Cost Basis Calculator

How to use the capital gains calculator

What is crypto capital gains?

A capital gain is the profit you make when you dispose of an asset for more than it cost you. In most jurisdictions - including the US - cryptocurrency is treated as property rather than currency, which means the same capital gains rules that apply to stocks or real estate apply to your coins. Every time you dispose of crypto, you compare what you received (the proceeds) with what the coins originally cost you including fees (the cost basis). If proceeds exceed basis, you have a capital gain; if they fall short, a capital loss.

What counts as a disposal?

This is where crypto surprises people. Selling for dollars is the obvious case, but swapping one coin for another is usually also a taxable disposal - trading BTC for ETH means you "sold" the BTC at its market value at that moment, even though you never touched fiat. Spending crypto on goods or services works the same way. Simply buying crypto with fiat, or moving coins between your own wallets, is generally not a disposal. Rewards from staking, mining, or airdrops are typically taxed differently: as ordinary income at their market value when received - and that received value then becomes the cost basis for a future disposal.

Short-term vs long-term

How long you held the coins before disposing of them usually changes the tax rate. In the US, assets held for one year or less produce short-term gains taxed at your ordinary income rates, while assets held longer than one year qualify for lower long-term capital gains rates. Because the difference can be ten percentage points or more, the holding period of each individual lot matters - which is exactly why the calculator above classifies every disposal separately.

Why cost basis method matters

If you bought the same coin at different times and prices, then sold only part of your position, which coins did you sell? That's what a cost basis method decides. FIFO (first-in, first-out) assumes you sold your oldest coins; LIFO (last-in, first-out) your newest; and HIFO (highest-in, first-out) the most expensive ones - which usually minimizes the reported gain. The method you use can change your taxable gain substantially for identical transactions, but tax authorities set rules about which methods are allowed and how consistently you must apply them, so treat the comparison above as a way to understand the range, not a menu to pick the lowest number from.

Losses aren't wasted

Capital losses offset capital gains, and in many systems a limited amount of excess loss can offset ordinary income, with the remainder carried forward to future years. That's the idea behind tax-loss harvesting: deliberately realizing losses on underwater positions to reduce the tax on your gains. Some jurisdictions apply wash-sale or similar re-purchase rules that can disallow the loss if you buy the same asset back too quickly - check how the rules in your country treat crypto before harvesting.

Rules differ by country and change frequently - the one-year threshold, the rates, income treatment of staking, and loss limits described above are simplifications centered on US practice. Use the calculator to build intuition and a working estimate, then confirm the specifics with a qualified tax professional in your jurisdiction.