A new estimate from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis puts potentially taxable crypto activity in France at $9.4 billion for 2025, a figure that dwarfs what French taxpayers have actually reported to the state.
According to French tax authorities, only €368 million in capital gains from crypto assets was declared last year, submitted by 24,000 taxpayers. The disparity between the scale of activity flagged by Chainalysis and the sums actually disclosed points to a substantial reporting gap in one of the eurozone's largest economies.
France requires residents to declare gains from crypto asset disposals, but enforcement has relied heavily on self-reporting, with tax authorities lacking systematic visibility into holdings and transactions carried out on exchanges, particularly those based outside the country.
DAC 8 on the horizon
That is expected to change with the arrival of DAC 8, the European Union's directive extending automatic exchange of information rules to crypto asset service providers. The directive is due to take effect in 2027, requiring platforms operating in the EU to report client transactions and holdings to tax authorities across member states.
For France, DAC 8 would mark a shift from a system dependent on voluntary disclosure to one where tax administrations receive data directly from crypto platforms, mirroring the reporting infrastructure already in place for traditional financial accounts under earlier iterations of the EU's directive on administrative cooperation.
The scale of the numbers involved underscores why Brussels and national governments have pushed for the measure. With billions of dollars in crypto activity potentially generating taxable events in France alone, and only a small fraction currently declared, the current framework leaves tax authorities with limited means of cross-checking what taxpayers report against what is actually happening on-chain and on exchanges.
A European-wide concern
France is not alone in facing this challenge. Other EU member states are grappling with similar gaps between crypto trading volumes and declared gains, a problem that DAC 8 is designed to address across the bloc rather than through a patchwork of national rules. The directive's implementation timeline gives both tax authorities and crypto service providers roughly two years to prepare reporting systems ahead of the 2027 deadline.
Until then, the discrepancy highlighted by Chainalysis's estimate remains a reminder of how much taxable crypto activity currently sits outside the visibility of national tax administrations, even as the assets themselves become more widely held and traded across Europe.
