HMRC breaks out crypto gains for the first time: 17,600 taxpayers, £1.38bn, and 240 people holding half of it

Britain's tax authority has published standalone figures for cryptoasset capital gains for the first time, and the concentration is the story. Of the 17,600 people who declared taxable crypto disposals in the year ended 5 April 2025, 240 reported gains above £1m each — £717m between them, or roughly 52% of the £1.38bn total, per HMRC figures reported by CoinDesk on 27 August.

The numbers exist because HMRC added a dedicated cryptoasset section to the self-assessment return, making it the first year the split was required rather than inferred. Average declared gain across the whole group: £78,000. Average among the 240: about £3m. Almost 90% of filers were men, HMRC said.

The disclosure figures land ahead of a real enforcement change. HMRC has begun implementing the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework, the OECD standard obliging crypto service providers to hand customer data to tax authorities. HMRC starts receiving that data in 2027 — meaning the 2024-25 self-assessment numbers are the last vintage collected on the honour system, with no third-party feed to check them against.

HMRC also said its compliance and education work generated an additional £168m ($228.2m) in capital gains tax in 2024-25. CoinDesk reports that as a capital gains figure; it is not described as crypto-specific.

Key facts

• 240 taxpayers declared crypto gains over £1m each, totalling £717m — HMRC, via CoinDesk (27 Aug 2026)
• 17,600 taxpayers declared taxable crypto disposals for the year ended 5 April 2025 — HMRC, via CoinDesk
• Total declared gains: £1.38bn; average £78,000 per person — HMRC, via CoinDesk
• Almost 90% of declaring taxpayers were men — HMRC, via CoinDesk
• First tax year with a dedicated crypto section on the UK self-assessment return — HMRC, via CoinDesk
• CARF data flows to HMRC from 2027 — HMRC, via CoinDesk
• £168m ($228.2m) additional CGT from compliance and education activity in 2024-25 — HMRC, via CoinDesk

The real-world read

The dollar conversion doesn't reconcile. CoinDesk's summary line puts the £1.38bn total at "$1.87 billion"; its body text converts the same £1.38bn to "$1.77 billion." Its own stated rate elsewhere — £1m = $1.36m, and £168m = $228.2m — implies roughly $1.88bn. The $1.77bn figure is the outlier. Treat the sterling number as the real one; it is what HMRC published.

These are declarations, not holdings. The figure measures what people told HMRC, from a single tax year. Undeclared gains are, by definition, not in it — which is precisely why the 2027 CARF feed matters and why the 2024-25 baseline should not be read as a measure of UK crypto wealth.

No primary document to check. These figures reach the public through CoinDesk's reporting of HMRC; a direct HMRC publication or statistical release isn't linked in that coverage. Nothing here suggests the numbers are wrong, but the arithmetic above is the only cross-check currently available.

Sponsored material on the page. The CoinDesk article page carried a promoted item for "Anvil," described as an on-chain collateral layer. It is advertising, unrelated to HMRC, and forms no part of this story.

Opinion, and whose

None offered. Neither HMRC nor CoinDesk attached a forecast, projection or interpretation to the figures in this reporting — the release is descriptive statistics, and nobody quoted has drawn conclusions from them.

Sources

• CoinDesk (27 Aug 2026), "240 UK taxpayers made more than $1.3 million each from crypto holdings in fiscal 2025" — sole source for all figures; cites HM Revenue and Customs throughout. Tier 2 secondary reporting; the underlying HMRC publication is not linked.
• Anvil promotional unit on the same CoinDesk page — marketing, not journalism; not used.

Nothing here is financial or tax advice.