Keeping records of ETH bets before tax season catches up with you

Nobody starts betting with ether because they enjoy spreadsheets. Still, the first time I tried to work out what a year of ETH betting had actually cost or earned me, I realised how little I had written down. The sportsbook history showed bets, the wallet showed transfers, and the exchange showed what I paid for the coins in the first place. None of them talked to each other.

The reason this matters is that a bet placed in ETH can involve two separate events. One is the bet itself, won or lost. The other is the coin you used, which may have risen or fallen in value between buying it and sending it to the book. Depending on where you live, either or both of these can count for tax purposes, and the rules differ a lot from country to country. I am not going to guess at yours. What I can say is that whichever rule applies, you need the same raw information.

Here is what I now keep, in one plain file. The date and time of every deposit and withdrawal. The amount of ETH, the network used, and the transaction hash. The value in my home currency at that moment, taken from one consistent price source. And a monthly summary of bets from the sportsbook account page, saved as a screenshot or export before the site trims its history.

That last point caught me out once. Some books only show a limited window of past activity in the account area. If you wait until spring to look back at last January, the detail may already be gone. Saving a monthly copy takes five minutes.

It also helps to keep betting funds in a wallet that does nothing else. When the same address receives salary payments, trades on a DEX and pays a sportsbook, untangling it later is miserable. A dedicated address means every outgoing transfer is a deposit and every incoming one is a withdrawal.

When choosing where to bet, I now check whether the account history is easy to export, and whether withdrawals come back to the same wallet without fuss. Those details rarely appear in adverts, so I lean on independent comparisons. The ETH sportsbook notes at Casino Crypto Rank were useful for seeing which books accept ether and on which networks, which feeds straight into how tidy your records end up.

If your situation is complicated, a local accountant who already handles crypto is worth paying once. Bring them a clean file and the bill will be smaller. Bring them a pile of wallet addresses and the bill will reflect that.

Published 28 October 2026.