Happy Tax Season, Crypto Bros

Ever since the NFT boom began last year, non-fungible tokens—the blockchain-linked digital files that can contain, well, anything—have escaped easy definition. After an artist working under the name Beeple sold a piece of NFT artwork for $69 million at auction last March, pieces as varied as concert tickets and pictures of ape heads started trading for sums that would fetch houses. One thing about NFTs is clear at this point: Vast quantities of money are changing hands in confusing, often ridiculous-seeming ways.

And that’s before you think about tax season. The IRS’s existing tax guidelines can be applied to various NFT-transaction scenarios, but none was created with NFTs in mind. That means tax experts of all stripes are now second-guessing which assets and transactions to report, and how. They’re doing their best to lay out rules of thumb, but all they