You Probably Can't Reconstruct Your Full Crypto History. The IRS Just Made That a Legal Problem.
If you were active in crypto between 2017 and 2021, your transaction history is scattered. Some of it lives in Coinbase's servers. Some of it is on a Ledger you may or may not still have the seed phrase for. Some of it went through exchanges that no longer exist — Celsius, Voyager, Poloniex — platforms that deleted user accounts when they collapsed or wound down. Some of it moved through DeFi protocols that didn't issue receipts, across bridges that didn't track cost basis, between wallets you created once and never opened again. None of those individual decisions were irresponsible. You were using the tools that existed, in the way they were designed to be used. The problem is that crypto was architected to operate without centralized record-keeping. The IRS requires centralized records. Those two facts have just collided in a new audit form. What the Form Actually Does The IRS Small Business/Self-Employed Division began issuing a new examination document in late 2025. ...