South Korea’s Potentially Taxable Crypto Activity Reaches $10.9 Billion in 2025, Ranking 11th Ahead of 2027 Tax
Forecast Trend Report by Period
South Korea’s potentially taxable cryptocurrency activity is estimated at about $10.9 billion in 2025 as the country prepares to begin taxing virtual assets in 2027, with debate continuing over tax standards and how to identify transaction data.
According to The Crypto Tax Report published by blockchain data platform Chainalysis on Aug. 31, South Korea logged $10.9 billion in potentially taxable on-chain activity in 2025 based on an analysis of data from six major blockchains: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Tron, BNB Smart Chain and Base. The total included $2 billion in income, $3.2 billion in trading gains and $5.6 billion in payments. Among the countries analyzed, South Korea ranked 11th, behind the US at $112.6 billion, Germany at $24.1 billion and China at $21 billion.
The report said potentially taxable activity does not refer to taxes that would actually be levied or to projected tax revenue. Instead, it measures crypto-related gains, income and payment activity observed on blockchains without applying each country’s tax rates or individual tax exemptions. The figures also exclude trades conducted within centralized exchanges and some activities that are difficult to verify directly on-chain, including staking and lending, meaning actual potentially taxable activity could be higher.
In South Korea, potentially taxable crypto activity amounted to about 144.05% of the government’s fiscal deficit of $7.5 billion in the same year, the second-highest ratio among the countries analyzed after Portugal. That does not mean crypto taxation could generate revenue equal to the fiscal deficit. It is a comparison between the total size of potentially taxable activity and the government’s fiscal shortfall.
The report also found that potentially taxable activity was concentrated in a relatively small share of wallets. In South Korea, 28% of wallet addresses accounted for 87% of that activity. In Singapore, 20% of addresses made up 89%, while in Brazil, 32% accounted for 87%. Japan showed a more even distribution, with 27% of addresses accounting for 57% of activity.
The global crypto tax landscape is also changing. As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development moves ahead with the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, or CARF, many countries are due to begin automatically exchanging crypto transaction information from 2027. Even so, the report found that only about 14% of global on-chain potentially taxable activity would be captured under CARF. The remaining 86% sits outside the framework’s practical scope, including decentralized exchange activity, peer-to-peer transfers, on-chain income and payments.
That underscores the importance of combining off-chain information provided by businesses such as exchanges with data that can be verified directly on-chain. As trading activity spreads across self-custodied wallets, decentralized exchanges and overseas platforms, exchange reporting data alone has limits in identifying a taxpayer’s full crypto activity. Using information obtained through systems such as CARF together with blockchain data would allow authorities to assess taxpayers’ crypto activity more broadly, the analysis said.
Kwon Joon-hyuk, head of Chainalysis Korea, said that ahead of the 2027 rollout of crypto taxation, the key issue is not only setting taxation standards but also how accurately authorities can identify the crypto activity that will actually be taxed. Combining taxpayer and transaction reporting information secured through CARF with on-chain data verified directly on the blockchain would help reduce blind spots and identify taxable activity more broadly and accurately, he added.
