TL;DR: The Blockchain Association has asked congressional leaders to advance bipartisan crypto tax changes, including a de minimis exemption and revised treatment of stablecoins and staking rewards.

For a person buying coffee with cryptocurrency, the tax rules can be far more complicated than the payment itself. A U.S. crypto trade group is asking Congress to address that mismatch with a new push for bipartisan digital-asset tax legislation.

The Blockchain Association sent a letter Thursday to congressional leaders in both parties, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. It also launched a website intended to help digital-asset users contact lawmakers about tax policy.

The proposals under discussion

The association wants a meaningful de minimis exemption for small crypto transactions, under which everyday low-value spending would not trigger the same tax calculations as a major investment sale. It also argues for treating qualifying stablecoins more like cash for tax purposes.

Another proposal concerns rewards from mining and staking. The group favors a framework that treats those rewards as self-created property taxed upon disposition, rather than automatically imposing a tax event at receipt.

These are policy requests by an industry advocacy organization, not changes already adopted by Congress or the Internal Revenue Service. The letter contains a range of further priorities, including clarity for transfers that do not change economic exposure and reporting rules intended to balance compliance with privacy.

Why the timing matters

Crypto transactions can cross boundaries between payments, financial investments and network participation. Ordinary tax categories do not always match that activity neatly. Moving a token between wallets a person controls, for example, has a different economic character from selling it at a profit.

The association says 67 million Americans hold or use digital assets. That is its advocacy figure and should not be mistaken for a fresh government census. The larger policy point is that an expanding market can make small frictions disproportionately expensive to taxpayers and administrators.

There are countervailing concerns. Lawmakers will need to consider the revenue implications of exemptions, the possibility of tax avoidance through transaction splitting and how reporting obligations would work for intermediaries.

For investors, the practical message is restraint: a proposed exemption is not a license to disregard existing records or reporting duties. The association has opened a legislative campaign; Congress has not yet resolved its arguments.

Any eventual bill will be judged not only by whether it simplifies cryptocurrency transactions, but by whether the rules are clear enough for wallets, exchanges, taxpayers and the IRS to apply consistently.

Source: theblockchainassociation.org original announcement or data.

Related Reading: Bitcoin; stablecoins; staking.

Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

South Korea is approaching another decision point on its long-delayed cryptocurrency gains tax, with exchanges and policymakers preparing to discuss whether the January 2027 start date is realistic.

TL;DR: The country’s planned crypto tax has already been deferred three times. A new proposal would push implementation toward 2029, but no additional delay has been enacted.

Finance officials are expected to meet representatives of major domestic exchanges on October 20. The industry is arguing that the systems needed to handle different transaction types and calculate cost bases are still incomplete. A rushed launch, exchanges say, risks creating inconsistent tax treatment or driving activity to offshore platforms.

South Korea’s planned rate is commonly described as 22% after local tax is included, rather than a simple 20% all-in charge. The question now is less about whether crypto gains should ever be taxable than whether the supporting reporting infrastructure is ready for millions of transactions across different venues.

A lawmaker’s proposal would link the effective date to cross-border data sharing through the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, potentially moving the start to 2029. That measure requires legislative action; a meeting with exchanges cannot, by itself, change the law.

For investors, the current scheduled date remains January 2027 unless lawmakers decide otherwise. For exchanges, a later timetable could buy time to build reporting systems, but another postponement would also prolong policy uncertainty. South Korea has reached this crossroads before, which is why a proposed delay should not be reported as a settled outcome.

Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.