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I believe this is where a lot of the confusion comes from. If you use Coinbase to directly trade crypto (e.g. BTC for ETH) this is a taxable event on your BTC even though you never touch fiat in the process.

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And that's quite logical if you think about it. How else can you explain the amount of your gains/losses when trading crypto for crypto and then back to fiat again.

Didn't this recently change? Prior to 2018 was it not considered a "like for like" transaction?

> Prior to 2018 was it not considered a "like for like" transaction?

It's "far from certain" [1]. Tax diligence is part of investing; these questions should be approached before one trades an asset, not after.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/owe-irs-crypto-crypto-trades

Only against the advice of most accountants. Exchanges between different grades of the same precious metal aren't considered like kind transactions, so it seems pretty unlikely this "trick" would work for crypto.

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