Start with the sale year and the basis field

Two things decide whether a basis figure was ever supposed to appear on your form, and the first is the year of the sale.

Under T.D. 10000, gross-proceeds reporting begins with 2025 sales and covered-asset basis reporting begins with 2026 sales. A 2025 sale that reached you as proceeds only was the rule working as written.

For sales after 2025, brokers must report basis for covered digital assets (current figure at the IRS), while basis reporting for noncovered assets is voluntary: a broker may check box 9 and leave box 1g blank.

The second decider is custody.

Per the IRS Instructions for Form 1099-DA, a covered digital asset is one acquired after December 31, 2025 in an account for which the broker provided custodial services, and held in that same account until that broker effects its disposition.

Acquired before 2026, or transferred in from somewhere else: noncovered.

Qualifying stablecoins and specified NFTs run on optional reporting methods with their own basis exceptions, so check the separate reporting exceptions before applying anything below to those.

For orientation on the form as a whole, see the full Form 1099-DA guide.

Trace one asset from purchase to sale

Run the asset through the branches before you interpret anything printed on the statement.

Decision tree: is this asset covered?

  1. What tax year was the sale? 2025 - stop here; proceeds only, no basis required. 2026 or later - go to step 2.
  2. Was the asset acquired after December 31, 2025? No - noncovered. Date unavailable - More history needed: the acquisition date. Yes - go to step 3.
  3. Was it acquired in an account at the selling broker, with that broker providing custodial services? No, it was bought elsewhere and transferred in - noncovered. Account unclear - More history needed: the platform or wallet where the buy occurred. Yes - go to step 4.
  4. Did it stay in that same account until that broker sold it? No - noncovered. Transfers unclear - More history needed: the movement record between acquisition and sale. Yes - covered, and basis reporting is required.

Optional methods for qualifying stablecoins and specified NFTs change basis exceptions, not this status test.

Match the custody path to the reporting result

Acquisition timing Custody path to sale Reporting classification Expected basis reporting
Before January 1, 2026 Bought at the broker, still in that account at sale Noncovered Voluntary; box 9 may be checked and box 1g left blank
After December 31, 2025 Acquired in the selling broker's custodial account, held there through the sale Covered Required, subject to the optional stablecoin and specified NFT method exceptions
After December 31, 2025 Acquired elsewhere, then transferred into the selling broker's custody Noncovered Voluntary
Acquisition date or movement record missing Cannot be followed end to end Not yet classified Unknown until the missing date or custody step is supplied

Work one row of the statement at a time. The tree needs four inputs, and most of them live in records the selling broker never saw.

Acquisition date first. What matters is when you acquired the asset, not when it landed in the account that sold it. A trade confirmation, an order-history export or a dated statement line establishes that; a wallet's first-seen timestamp does not, since a wallet can receive an asset years after purchase.

Then the account. Covered status attaches to acquisition inside an account the broker custodied, so identify the platform where the buy happened, not the platform that later displayed a balance.

Third, continuity. The asset has to have remained in that same account until the broker effected the sale. A hop to self-custody and back, or a consolidation into a different account, breaks the condition.

Fourth, the selling broker itself. Two assets sold on one platform on one afternoon can land on opposite sides of the line, because the test follows each asset's own path.

If any input is blank, the honest output is "More history needed," with the gap named.

That is a usable result: it points at one export to request or one old login to recover, and it stops you from labeling an asset covered because it sits at a broker that reports basis on other holdings.

What a transfer-in changes on the form

A transfer-in does not change what you paid. It changes which party is required to tell the IRS what you paid.

Take the second row of the table: an asset bought in a broker's custodial account in March 2026 and sold from that same account in November 2026. Every condition holds - the acquisition date falls after December 31, 2025, the buy happened in that broker's custodial account, the asset never left, and the same broker made the sale. Covered, with basis reporting required for that 2026 sale.

Now the third row, same purchase month, one difference. After buying, you moved the asset to a hardware wallet, then sent it to a second exchange months later and sold it there. The selling broker provided no custodial services when you acquired it, so the asset is noncovered in its hands, and box 1g can arrive blank with box 9 checked.

Both paths are illustrative applications of the classification in the IRS instructions, not descriptions of how any named platform behaves.

Pre-2026 holdings reach the same place without a single transfer. Coins bought in 2019 and never moved off the broker that sold them are noncovered, because the acquisition date fails the test on its own.

Which brings up the objection that shows up constantly: I already gave the platform my basis, so why isn't it on the report? Supplying a purchase price is worth doing, and a broker may report basis for a noncovered asset voluntarily. Voluntary is the operative word.

The supplied value does not convert the asset to covered, and the absence of a required report does not delete your purchase records. Your basis lives in your documentation whether or not box 1g shows it.

A blank field does not settle your tax result

Four separate things get collapsed into one worry here: what box 1g displays, what a platform stored internally, what the broker was obligated to report, and what your gain or loss actually is.

Taxable gain or loss on a disposed asset is proceeds minus cost basis. That subtraction happens on your return, out of your records, filled field or not.

A blank box 1g on a noncovered asset means the broker did not report basis. A zero is a different animal. When an asset arrives on a custodial platform from an outside source with no purchase-price record attached, zero is commonly the default applied absent records the taxpayer supplies.

That default is a placeholder in a platform's ledger, not a determination that your basis is zero. So $0 and blank tell you the same thing about the report and nothing at all about what you paid.

Myth versus fact

  • Myth: noncovered means tax-free. Fact: the classification describes a broker's basis-reporting duty. A noncovered sale is still a disposition you report, and the label says nothing about whether tax is owed.
  • Myth: a blank basis field proves my basis is zero. Fact: blank means no basis was reported. A zero on a transferred-in asset with no purchase-price record is a default, not a finding about your purchase.
  • Myth: giving the exchange my purchase price makes the asset covered. Fact: covered status depends on when and where you acquired the asset and whether it stayed in that account. Supplied records can support voluntary reporting under box 9 while the asset remains noncovered.

Reporting classification and the existence of purchase records answer different questions. If your statement shows a blank or a zero where you expected a number, the diagnosis and the repair belong to work through a blank or zero basis field. This page stops at the classification.

Where the 2025 wallet-allocation safe harbor fits

Two dates in Rev. Proc. 2024-28 get swapped for each other constantly.

The procedure became effective June 28, 2024.

January 1, 2025 is the date as of which its transition safe harbor permits a reasonable allocation of unused digital-asset basis to wallets or accounts, subject to the eligibility, record-keeping, timing and other conditions the procedure sets.

We checked the text of the procedure on September 26, 2026, because the January 1 date circulates in secondary write-ups as if it were the effective date.

It belongs in a covered-status page for one reason. The safe harbor concerns where your basis sits across wallets; covered status concerns whether a broker must report it. Those are different questions, and the procedure was the backdrop your pre-2026 holdings carried into the reporting phase-in.

Allocation method and eligibility questions sit outside this passage.

Sources

Choose the next step for your result

Each branch of the tree leads somewhere different.

Covered: expect a basis figure in box 1g, and compare it against your own acquisition record before you rely on it. Noncovered: expect box 9 checked, with box 1g blank or filled voluntarily, and plan on supplying basis yourself. For either one, find the basis field on the form if the layout is unfamiliar.

A blank or a zero where you expected a number goes to work through a blank or zero basis field.

"More history needed" deserves more than a note to get organized.

Write down the exact missing item for that asset: the acquisition date, the account or wallet where the buy happened, the movement record covering each hop between acquisition and sale, or the identity of the broker that executed the sale.

One of those, per asset, is a finishable errand. Reconstructing a decade of transfers across closed exchanges and forgotten wallets is not an evening's work, and naming the single gap is what keeps it from becoming an all-or-nothing project.

If a statement you expect has not shown up yet, check when the next form should arrive before assuming something went wrong.

Keep your custody-path result written next to each sale line you reviewed. Where purchase records still need to be established for a noncovered line, take that line into the blank-or-zero basis guide and work it there.