How it works
- Gather all the data from exchanges, wallets, financial institutions
- Put the data together in a single set
- Compute the gains/losses on the dispositions
What makes it hard
- I work on this as if I’m the auditor, trying to find errors, and constrain myself to the way an auditor thinks about crypto. This means a lot of normal crypto stuff gets interpreted in less-than-expert ways. It’s how to win an audit, and also it’s annoying.
- cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets and financial institutions have universally bad reports.
- data gets lost to time, defunct exchanges, bankruptcy, etc.
- people believe the myth that crypto is always on a blockchain and therefore all reports are always available.
What clients do to make it hard
- don’t read emails completely or carefully
- speak imprecisely
- don’t keep records
- don’t trust processes which have worked for years and won audits
What I do which makes things hard
- obsess over details which may or may not mean much in the end
- waste time looking for answers in the blockchain instead of just asking the client for the information and moving on to other things until I get the answer
- take difficulty personally
- communicate badly