Global crypto tax reporting still has major cracks — and tokenized stocks may be the catalyst that forces the system to catch up.

In recent weeks, platforms like Robinhood and Gemini have started offering tokenized stocks to users in the European Union. These blockchain-based derivatives mimic the price of real equities like Apple and Tesla and allow users to trade 24/7, free from the limitations of traditional market hours.

That might sound like a leap forward for accessibility and innovation. But if these products continue to gain traction, and firms like Galaxy Digital believe they will siphon liquidity from traditional exchanges, regulators will face growing pressure to close the reporting gap between crypto platforms and traditional brokers.

Despite the progress the crypto industry has made over the years, crypto tax reporting is still far behind compared to traditional asset exchanges in many parts of the world.

There is still an obvious gap. Take Australia. The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) provides the tax office with structured data, including sale prices, dates, and proceeds, which is automatically pre-filled into users’ returns.

For crypto, the ATO’s approach is more like a gentle tap on the shoulder to its taxpayers. It presents a notification reminding users to check for taxable events, rather than a detailed pre-filled report. While the ATO knows you are active in crypto because crypto exchanges report you have an account, it does not have the same comprehensive oversight as it does with stock trading.

That approach may have been justifiable in crypto’s early days, when most activity was tied to speculative tokens or NFTs. But now, with platforms likely wanting to expand their offerings of tokenized stocks globally — which are not yet available in Australia but I dare say it is being considered — the lack of tax transparency becomes much harder to justify.

Governments can’t afford to let potential tax revenue slip through the cracks simply because they’re happening onchain. I believe as tokenized stocks start to gain more and more attention over the coming months, regulators will be scrambling to ensure they are prepared.

In the U.S., the IRS is already attempting to catch up. Its new crypto reporting rules, including the long-awaited Form 1099-DA, are set to take effect in 2026. These will require crypto brokers to report user transactions similar to traditional financial institutions.

Meanwhile, Robinhood is reportedly preparing to launch tokenized stocks for U.S. customers.

It raises a timely question…will that rollout coincide with the new IRS requirements?

On a global scale, the OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), also due in 2026, will enforce transaction data sharing across jurisdictions, similar to how banks comply with the Common Reporting Standard.

If tokenized stocks are going to mimic real equities then the tax data reporting around them needs to match accordingly.

The days of crypto existing in a regulatory gray zone are numbered. Whether platforms are ready or not, the era of full tax transparency is coming and tokenized stocks may be the turning point that forces it into reality.

I believe that moment will arrive within the next five years.

Ethereum introduced smart contracts to the world and spurred a Cambrian Explosion of innovation, including DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and a universe of dApps. On July 30, the network will hit its 10 year anniversary.

The past decade of the ecosystem focused on proving Ethereum’s functionality and capabilities as well as enhancing efficiency through upgrades like The Merge, which marked the transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. The next era requires a pivot to match the more mature ecosystem that it now supports — one that includes not just Web3 natives but financial institutions, governments, corporations, and people who don’t know what «yield farming» is but who may want to get a loan for their house with crypto collateral.

Amid increasing government and institutional involvement, the hope that crypto will contribute to creating a «free and open society,» an ideal originally expressed in A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto, is sometimes lost. For Ethereum to make good on that original promise, privacy must be a core tenant of its future.

Privacy is identity

Some degree of privacy is essential for financial safety and freedom. You wouldn’t want to reveal your net worth to the cashier every time you buy a latte or a slice of pizza, but this is essentially how crypto has been operating for the past decade — with the radical transparency of immutable ledgers recording every transaction publicly.

Not only does this level of transparency put individuals at risk for phishing and other attacks, but it also hinders the involvement of institutions that do not want to give their competitors an edge by revealing their activity. Though it is possible to retain pseudonymity through never interacting with a centralized platform, this is not practical for interactions that touch the real world.

People and businesses need to be able to interact with governments and banks through ID-linked accounts, and the key to enabling these types of interactions — without putting personal information in jeopardy to theft and misuse — is programmable privacy.

The solution is ZKP-powered technology

The solution is already here: Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP)-powered smart contracts give users control over what information to share and with whom. With the programmable privacy enabled by ZKPs integrated into Ethereum at a foundational level, a world of applications are not just feasible but practical.

Products and services must comply with the regulatory requirements of each jurisdiction in which they operate. This includes collecting customer information in accordance with KYC guidelines, Countering-the-Financing-of-Terrorism (CFT) and AML laws. Typical KYC processes involve sharing some form of ID, such as a passport or driver’s license, along with personally identifying information (PII) like name, date of birth and address.

If captured by bad actors, this type of information can be used to target people in phishing scams and other types of attacks (see recent Coinbase data breach). Rather than requiring people to reveal their PII and make themselves and their data vulnerable to attack and theft, ZKP-powered solutions allow people to prove they are not operating out of sanctioned countries and to prove eligibility to participate, all without giving the platform their data and contributing to potential honey pots.

The possibilities enabled by ZKPs go well beyond compliance too. Airdrops currently suffer from Sybil attacks where AI bots beat out real human participants to give certain participants an outsized advantage. The same issue applies to decentralized governance. Decision making in a DAO cannot be truly fair and free unless it can be proven that the right number of votes are going to the right number of people — not bots. ZKPs offer a solution with «proof of humanity» via data provenance tools like zkPassport, zkEmail, and zkTLS.

Digital payments must provide the same privacy as cash. Payments in dollars, euros, and other sovereign currencies via stablecoins are another important factor in enabling mass adoption of DeFi applications, but this will never take off en masse without privacy guarantees. The same applies to decentralized mortgages, loans, and essentially any type of legal contract, which all require IDs to execute.

There are many other applications made possible with privacy as a core tenant of the Ethereum ecosystem. These include proving the authenticity of product or restaurant reviews, enabling secure digital voting, decentralized escrow services, carbon offsetting tracking, proving builder status on GitHub anonymously, and employment skill verification — all done in a secure, privacy-preserving way that doesn’t involve the sharing of sensitive PII to centralized providers.

Creating a culture that demands privacy

Though the technology exists to implement ZKP solutions today, challenges will need to be overcome before privacy is comprehensively reflected as a core value throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. Technical challenges with implementing ZKP-powered tech include the greater expense of ZKP transactions. Building ZKP-focused applications is also more complicated, posing a learning curve for builders. These are all solvable issues.

Other challenges are cultural: creating universal buy-in from the spectrum of participants in the value of privacy and coordinating the implementation of solutions across the tech stack, from protocol to wallet. There is also the misguided perception hurdle of privacy’s associations with illicit activity.

Changing technology is ultimately easier than changing minds, but the core ethos of crypto is, after all, a philosophical one — a technology that underpins a belief in freedom and the privacy of individuals and entities. If in another 10 years, we look back on another decade of Ethereum and can celebrate its role in enabling greater financial freedom, an emphasis on privacy will be key.

PEPE fell around 2% in the last 24-hour period as part of a broader 5% sell-off that started amid a crypto market slowdown and a wave of high-volume selling.

The price slid from $0.000014268 to $0.000013568 during the session, with 349 billion tokens offloaded during the move, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis data model.

The meme-inspired cryptocurrency briefly rallied to a session high of $0.000014713, supported by 11.7 trillion tokens traded in a single surge. But the attempt fizzled, encountering stiff resistance and triggering a swift reversal. The sharp move led to more than $4 million in liquidations, per CoinGlass data.

That session high now stands as a firm technical ceiling, reinforcing trader doubts about near-term upside. Relative post volume on social media is up more than 23% compared to its 24-hour average, according to data from TheTie, suggesting growing interest.

Support came in near $0.000013618, where buyers showed interest during earlier dips. While the token briefly moved below that level, it has since recovered to surpass it.

Meanwhile, Nansen data shows that even as the top 100 addresses holding PEPE on Ethereum have increased their holdings by 0.11%, exchange wallets added 0.24% in the last 24 hours, showing a growing supply on the market.

Despite the drop, PEPE is slightly outperforming the wider memecoin space. The CoinDesk Memecoin Index (CDMEME) saw a 2.4% drop in the last 24 hours, compared to PEPE’s near 2% drop. Over the past month, PEPE is up nearly 55% compared to CDMEME’s 41.7% rise.

The frog-themed token has been outperforming after forming a golden cross pattern earlier this month. Crypto analyst Lark Davis on social media flagged a potential breakout target at $0.0000155.

Technical Analysis Overview

• Trading volume spiked to 11.72 trillion tokens during a breakout attempt, signaling widespread market participation.
• Strong rejection at $0.000014713 now serves as a critical ceiling for further upside.
• Consistent buyer activity formed a key support near $0.000013618
• A sharp deterioration began with 230.19 billion tokens sold in a concentrated period.
• Massive offloading occurred in successive waves of 237.67 billion, 329.19 billion, and finally 349.11 billion tokens. Activity dwindled to near-zero then, signaling trader fatigue and lack of conviction for recovery.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.