Who We Help · Crypto Investors · Bookkeeping
Crypto bookkeeping: one Canadian-dollar cost base per coin, across every wallet
CRA treats cryptocurrency as a commodity, which makes every trade — including a swap of one coin for another — a disposition that needs a Canadian-dollar result. No exchange knows what you did on the other platforms and wallets you use, so no exchange can compute your adjusted cost base. We aggregate the raw transaction data, maintain one ACB pool per coin in Canadian dollars, and feed the result into books that can stand behind your filing.
By the AnalytIQ Accounting team · Last reviewed: August 12, 2026
Why no single exchange can produce your numbers
Most Canadian crypto investors run several venues at once: a Canadian platform like Wealthsimple Crypto or NDAX for fiat on-ramps, an international exchange for depth, a hardware wallet for cold storage, and a DeFi wallet or two. Each one sees only its own fragment of your history. Send ETH from an exchange to your Ledger and the exchange records a withdrawal it cannot explain, while the wallet shows coins arriving with no cost attached.
Crypto bookkeeping is therefore an aggregation problem before it is an accounting problem. Every wallet address and exchange account has to land in one dataset, with transfers between your own accounts matched and cancelled out — otherwise they masquerade as taxable disposals on one side and free coins with a nil cost base on the other. And because platforms shut down and accounts get closed, we pull and archive raw transaction exports as part of the routine, so the history still exists when the filing depends on it.
One ACB pool per coin, in Canadian dollars
Units of the same coin are identical properties, so all of your BTC — across every wallet and exchange — shares a single adjusted cost base pool computed as an average cost in Canadian dollars. Each purchase adds to the pool at its CAD value on the day. Each sale, swap, or spend pulls cost out at the average and crystallizes a gain or loss. Track ACB per account instead of per coin and every subsequent number is wrong.
The part that surprises people is that a coin-to-coin trade is a disposition. Swapping BTC for SOL means you disposed of BTC at its CAD fair market value that day and acquired SOL for the same amount, even though no dollars moved. The superficial-loss rule applies too: sell a coin at a loss and rebuy within 30 days and the loss can be denied and folded back into ACB. None of this appears on any exchange dashboard — it only exists in maintained books.
Staking and DeFi create income records, not just gains
Rewards are generally income at their Canadian-dollar value on the day you receive them, and that value becomes the ACB of the new units for their eventual sale. Staking payouts, lending interest, liquidity-mining rewards, and airdrops with real value all follow the same pattern — which means a validator paying daily rewards generates hundreds of small income events a year, each needing a date, a quantity, and a CAD price.
Nobody should type those in by hand, but somebody has to keep the income ledger separate from the capital ledger, because the two land on different lines: income on the return in the year received, dispositions on Schedule 3 — or the whole activity as business income on a T2125 or T2 where frequency, holding periods, and conduct make it a business. Characterization is a facts test, and clean, consistent records are most of the argument either way.
How common events hit the books
| Event | What the books record |
|---|---|
| Buy a coin with CAD | Adds to that coin's ACB pool at cost, including fees; no gain or loss yet |
| Swap one coin for another | Disposition of the first at CAD fair market value plus acquisition of the second; gain or loss now |
| Transfer between your own wallets | No disposition — but both legs must be matched so nothing looks sold or newly acquired |
| Staking or lending reward | Income at CAD value on receipt; that value becomes the new units' cost base |
| Spend crypto on goods or gas fees | A disposition of the units used, at their CAD value, against the pool's average cost |
Koinly feeds the books — it is not the books
We build the pipeline on crypto tax software — Koinly, CoinLedger, or CoinTracking — connected by API keys and wallet addresses, with CSV imports for anything that will not sync. The software does the heavy lifting on aggregation and per-coin ACB math, but a human still reviews the output, because mislabeled internal transfers, missing purchase history, and worthless spam tokens will silently distort every downstream number if left alone.
The reviewed result then feeds the actual record: an annual gains-and-income summary for investors filing personally, or monthly journals into QuickBooks Online or Xero for traders and corporations that need a real profit and loss. Two flags sit on every year-end checklist. Holdings on foreign exchanges can be specified foreign property for T1135 reporting once total cost passes CAD 100,000, and Canada is implementing the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, so platforms will increasingly report your activity to CRA directly. Both get full treatment on our crypto cross-border tax page; the monthly process behind all of this lives on our bookkeeping services page.
Source: CRA — Guide for cryptocurrency users and tax professionals.
Common questions.
Is swapping one coin for another taxable in Canada?
Yes. CRA treats the swap as a disposition of the coin you gave up at its Canadian-dollar value that day, producing a gain or loss against its ACB, plus an acquisition of the coin you received.
Can I just rely on the report Koinly or my exchange produces?
Not on its own. An exchange sees one account, and an aggregator is only as good as the wallets connected and the transfer-matching behind it. We review and correct the data before anything reaches your books or your return.
How are staking rewards recorded?
As income at their Canadian-dollar value when received, which then becomes the cost base of those units. The books keep that income ledger separate from your capital gains so each lands on the right line.
Related reading
Books that survive a crypto review.
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