Cryptocurrency exchanges now report users' gains to the US Internal Revenue Service. The IRS gets those gain figures, but it does not know the cost basis, meaning the price investors originally paid. According to a Cointelegraph Magazine piece published Sep 25, 2026, that gap is a big headache for some crypto investors.
The timing is the US tax season for 2025 returns. For those investors, the IRS knows part of the picture but not all of it.
The article was written by staff writer Christina Comben and reviewed by staff editor Andrew Fenton. The excerpt available here doesn't say how many investors are affected, how much money is involved, or how the IRS plans to handle the missing cost basis. Those points are still unknown.
For somebody already holding a perpetual position on Bitget, Bybit, MEXC or OKX, this changes nothing directly. The story is about US tax reporting of gains. It says nothing about funding rates, trading fees or liquidity on any of these four exchanges, and it doesn't mention perpetual futures at all.
Source: cointelegraph — Exchanges reporting crypto gains to IRS becomes tax nightmare