The self-custodian’s tax season checklist

Self-custody moves the custodian’s work to you, and that includes the paperwork. Nobody sends a self-custodian a year-end statement. This checklist is the statement you build yourself, and each step is small if you do it before the deadline makes it big.

1. Inventory every venue you touched

Exchanges including the ones you abandoned, every wallet address that held funds, DeFi protocols, perp venues, prediction markets. The account you forgot is the gap an auditor finds. Old emails and browser password managers are surprisingly good archaeologists.

2. Export everything exportable

Trades, transfers, fees, from every live account, before the APIs forget. On-chain history keeps itself; exchange history does not.

3. Match your own transfers

Every withdrawal that landed in your own wallet is continuity, not a disposal. Unmatched, it becomes a phantom gain. This is the single highest-value hour of the whole checklist.

4. Pick a lot method and stay with it

FIFO, HIFO, average: which lots you sold changes the gain. Jurisdictions differ on what is allowed; consistency across years matters everywhere. Decide once, with a professional if the sums are serious.

5. Count the income events

• Staking rewards are typically income at the value when received, and that value becomes their cost basis.
• Airdrops follow similar logic in many places: income at receipt, basis set, gains measured from there.
• Interest, referral rewards and learn-to-earn payouts belong on the list too, small as they feel.

6. Keep what you built

The return gets filed; the workings get kept. Exports, the matched-transfer ledger, the method note. Next year starts from this year’s records instead of from zero, and questions years later get answers instead of shrugs.

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