Crypto glossary
Taxable event
A taxable event is any crypto transaction that creates a tax obligation, such as selling, swapping, spending or receiving tokens as income.
Tax authorities distinguish between actions that change what a person owns economically and those that do not. In most countries, selling crypto for fiat, exchanging one crypto for another, paying for goods or services with crypto and receiving it as salary, mining income or staking rewards are taxable events. Buying crypto with fiat, holding it and transferring it between wallets owned by the same person generally are not.
Details vary by country. In the US, every disposal is taxable and income from mining or staking is taxed when received, under IRS guidance including Revenue Ruling 2023-14 for staking. In Spain, the tax agency treats crypto-to-crypto swaps as permutas that generate a capital gain or loss, while gifts can trigger gift tax for the recipient and a capital gain for the donor. Grey areas include wrapping tokens, bridging, lending and liquidity provision, where guidance is limited.
Because each swap is a taxable event in many jurisdictions, an active DeFi user can generate hundreds of events a year without ever converting to fiat.
Example
A user swaps 1,000 euros of SOL for USDC on a DEX and never cashes out. In Spain, that swap is still a permuta that must be reported, with a gain or loss against what the SOL cost.