Gathering your transaction data
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 6 min
In short
Collecting data means working three fronts: exchanges, wallets, and reward services. An exchange's annual statement leaves out everything that happened in self-custody or in DeFi. When you finish, keep a list of what you pulled from where — that list is how you later notice what is missing. Check the required scope of records with the National Tax Agency and ask a tax accountant where it is unclear.
Key points
- An annual statement is useful but only covers what happened inside that one exchange
- Work three fronts: exchanges, wallets, and reward services
- Keep a log of what you pulled and from where
- Export windows are limited — do not put this off
Definition
Pulling from every service and wallet you used the records needed to reconstruct a year of crypto activity.
Japanese exchanges generally issue an annual transaction statement. It is a genuinely useful document but not a complete one: it describes what happened inside that exchange, not what became of coins you withdrew, nor where coins that arrived from elsewhere originally came from. Treat it as a starting point and expect to fill in what it cannot see.
Overseas exchanges usually have no equivalent document. What they do have is CSV export, so pull each type separately — trades, deposits and withdrawals, rewards. Export windows are often capped, sometimes at one year per request. Do not judge success from the screen; open the file and check its contents and row count.
For self-custody wallets, the usual route is a block explorer's history export, done per chain and per address. If you used several accounts on a hardware wallet, every one of them counts. Not being able to remember which addresses you used is where this work commonly stops.
Staking, lending and other reward services generally keep their history in their own dashboard rather than in an exchange's. Auto-compounding designs produce an enormous number of lines. Volume alone is not a problem, but trying to handle it directly in a spreadsheet will be. At this stage, save the raw files unmodified.
Finally, record what you collected: 'Exchange A — trades CSV and transfers CSV, full year, obtained'; 'Chain B — history for address 0x…, obtained'. When a figure later refuses to reconcile, that list tells you immediately where to go back to. Without it, you start again from the beginning.
Watch out for
- · This page is a general orientation, not tax advice
- · Never enter a private key or seed phrase into any service in order to retrieve history
- · The required scope of records is set by the rules — confirm with the tax agency and a professional
Frequently asked questions
Is the annual statement enough on its own?
If everything you did stayed inside that one exchange, it comes close. Once there are withdrawals or activity in other wallets, it is not sufficient. Start by checking whether your activity really was self-contained, and ask a tax accountant if you are unsure.