Looking to share your digital wealth without sharing it with Uncle Sam?
Good news—you can gift cryptocurrency without triggering immediate tax consequences, but there are rules to follow.
In 2025, gifts under $19,000 per recipient fly completely under the tax radar, requiring no reporting whatsoever.
The gift tax sweet spot: $19,000 per person, per year—no IRS paperwork, no questions asked.
This exclusion applies separately to each lucky person on your gifting list and resets every January 1st—like a tax-free gifting reset button.
Exceed that $19,000 threshold to any single person, and paperwork enters the chat.
You’ll need to file IRS Form 709, which sounds scarier than it actually is.
Think of it as raising your hand to say, “Yes, I gave someone something nice,” rather than opening your wallet to pay taxes.
Most donors won’t actually owe gift tax thanks to the lifetime exemption—over $13 million in 2025—which acts like an enormous tax-free gifting reservoir you can draw from throughout your life.
For recipients, the tax picture is even clearer: receiving crypto gifts isn’t taxable, period.
They only face tax implications when they eventually sell or exchange those digital assets.
The recipient inherits your cost basis and holding period—think of it as passing along your crypto’s tax DNA along with the asset itself. Tools like CoinTracking software can help you document these important details for recipients.
Proper record keeping is essential when gifting crypto to ensure compliance with tax regulations and to provide clear documentation for both parties involved.
Gifting crypto to qualified charitable organizations is completely exempt from gift tax and may provide you with an income tax deduction.
Cross-border gifting adds complexity faster than a blockchain adds blocks.
Recipients of gifts from foreign sources exceeding $100,000 annually must file Form 3520, with each gift over $5,000 individually detailed.
Gifts from foreign corporations or partnerships have their own thresholds ($19,570 in 2025).
Special rules apply when gifting to non-citizen spouses, who enjoy a higher annual exclusion ($185,000 in 2025) but don’t qualify for the unlimited marital deduction that citizen spouses receive.
