Almost half of Australian crypto holders are unaware that they have an obligation to report their holdings to the Australian Tax Office per a new report from crypto education provider Koinly.

Further, 15.4 per cent of the 1,000 people surveyed for Koinly’s report responded saying they did not know they had an obligation to report crypto on their tax return.

Released as Australians begin to put together their tax returns for FY23, the Koinly report shines light on the level of education the population has on crypto obligations.

Adam Saville-Brown, regional head at Koinly, said 31.6 per cent of Australians hold or have held crypto, so the report’s findings meant the industry needed to do a better job at educating the public.

“We are big fans of both the crypto industry and decentralised finance and also doing the right thing when it comes to helping grow this industry so that it benefits people around the world,” he said.

“When we look at this, we see that we’ve done a great job in advertising and bringing out products… but we have an obligation to continue education and to move these numbers in the right direction.

“Even the education piece to accountants is important. If someone is doing 50,000 transactions a month the accountants can’t manually reconcile that, and the idea of doing so in a space they aren’t maybe fully across is difficult.”

The report found that of the crypto investors who know they are obligated to report transactions to the ATO but do not intend to, 80 per cent are men.

Though he “can’t really comment on peoples’ thought processes”, Saville-Brown said many in the crypto space were unaware of the implications of ignoring obligations.

“The ATO has been really proactive in letting people know of their obligations when you log in – your prefill will say ‘we see you’ve disposed of some cryptocurrency’. That should be enough to trigger doing the right thing,” Saville-Brown said.

“But I also think that a lot of people may have gone into crypto with the hype, without looking into what it actually was as an investment asset.

“There’s still some education piece that needs to be done around the implications of that.”

The report also found that the majority of crypto investors think now is the “best time to buy more crypto”. It comes as the price of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are well below the highs recorded at the peak of crypto-mania in 2021.

“People understand that it is one of these products that’s going to take time to develop,” Saville-Brown said.

“Crypto has only been going for such a small period of time that there are going to be ups and downs, but I think that those that believe in its long-term use case will always dollar-cost average it at a lower price.”