Kraken filed 56M 1099-DAs; 18.5M tied to sub-$1 trades

Kraken filed more than 56 million Form 1099-DAs with U.S. tax authorities for the 2025 tax year, the San Francisco-based exchange reported.

The filings include about 18.5 million forms linked to transactions worth less than $1 and more than half tied to trades of $10 or less. Roughly three in four filings covered transactions under $50, while 8.5% of reported transactions exceeded $600.

The exchange attributed the volume to U.S. tax rules that treat digital assets as property. Under that guidance, each transfer can create a taxable event that requires tracking cost basis and reporting gains or losses, whether the activity is buying, selling, spending crypto or receiving staking rewards.

Kraken noted many of the 1099-DA forms do not include complete cost-basis details, leaving customers responsible for reconciling records. The company reported receiving thousands of customer inquiries about how to interpret the new forms and how to report the transactions correctly.

Kraken also said standard tax software often lacks full support for crypto reporting, pushing some users toward specialized tax tools that can cost between $49 and $599 a year. The exchange described the additional paperwork and reconciliation as an added time and expense on top of existing tax preparation efforts.

Kraken and other industry participants have proposed a de minimis exemption to exclude small transactions from reporting, with suggested thresholds commonly between $200 and $600. Some lawmakers have discussed changes to crypto tax rules, but no legislative adjustments to reporting requirements have been enacted.

In a company statement Kraken wrote: “This year, we issued over 56 million Form 1099-DAs, one for every reportable transaction our customers made in 2025. The vast majority of the forms are for staking rewards measured in fractions of a cent, small purchases, and routine activity. Every single one generates a form that a real person is now expected to understand, reconcile, and report.”

Kraken’s parent, Payward Inc., filed an initial draft S-1 for a U.S. IPO in November 2025. The exchange’s valuation was reported at about $13.3 billion in April 2026, down from near $20 billion in November 2025. At the time of the report, Bitcoin traded near $78,250.

Under current federal tax rules, small crypto transactions continue to generate reporting paperwork that requires cost-basis tracking and reconciliation.