Bitcoin.Tax vs Figment

As a specialized software utility, Bitcoin.Tax processes transaction histories across spot exchanges, wallet addresses, and institutional trading accounts. The application is built to ingest data using read-only API connections and structured CSV uploads. It catalogs historical spot trades, mining income, staking rewards, compensation payments, hard forks, gifts, and donations into unified ledgers mapped against historical fiat prices.

The system supports major digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and standard altcoins, pairing historical fiat valuations to match transaction timestamps. Once data is imported, users can run calculations using FIFO (First In, First Out), LIFO (Last In, First Out), HIFO (Highest In, First Out), Average Cost, or Specific Identification accounting methods. Filers who require specific lot selection can adjust matched trades manually to reflect their tax strategies within relevant legal boundaries.

In addition to standard capital gains schedules, the platform includes dedicated modules for income calculation and closing position reports. These outputs allow filers to differentiate between short-term capital gains, long-term holdings, ordinary income, and capital loss carryovers, providing essential documentation for annual filings.

Figment delivers staking-as-a-service infrastructure designed specifically for institutional asset managers, exchanges, custodians, and decentralized protocol foundations. The platform maintains active, monitored validator nodes across more than thirty leading proof-of-stake protocols, encompassing major networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, Near, and various Cosmos application chains. Organizations can deploy dedicated private validator nodes or direct delegations toward public enterprise clusters depending on balance size and architectural preferences.

Beyond standard bare-metal validator operations, Figment equips institutional engineering teams with developer tooling, including robust API endpoints and webhooks for automated staking, validator lifecycle tracking, and programmatic rewards harvesting. The Figment App serves as a centralized operational dashboard, offering institutional clients granular visibility into active stakes, historical reward distributions, commission deductions, and node uptime metrics across multi-chain portfolios.

For enterprise platforms embedding staking into consumer or custodial products, Figment acts as the underlying execution layer. Custody providers and financial institutions integrate Figment staking infrastructure directly into their existing custody environments without transferring control of funds, maintaining a clean technical separation between key storage and transaction validation.

Pricing on Bitcoin.Tax operates on an annual tax-year model rather than an ongoing recurring execution charge. Users purchase access per tax year based on the total volume of transactions processed for that specific period. The platform provides a free tier covering up to 20 transactions, intended for basic filers or those evaluating the software's calculation flow prior to committing capital.

For active individuals, paid annual tiers expand transaction limits across standard brackets, including 500, 5,000, 10,000, and 50,000 transaction caps, with prices generally scaling from entry-level annual fees upward. Filers with very high trading volumes or algorithmic strategies can acquire enterprise or high-volume tiers tailored to hundreds of thousands of events. Each purchased tax-year license allows unlimited recalculations and report downloads for that specific tax period.

Professional preparers and CPAs can access multi-client licenses with dedicated dashboard tools. These institutional plans allow firms to purchase bulk transaction bundles, assign separate sub-accounts to individual clients, and manage permissions from a centralized workstation. Payment for plans can be settled using credit cards or major digital assets.

Figment utilizes a protocol commission model where fees are typically deducted directly from gross on-chain staking rewards rather than invoiced as flat monthly infrastructure costs. Standard protocol commission rates vary across supported blockchains, reflecting individual network tokenomics, hardware requirements, and custom client volume tier agreements. For dedicated institutional validator clusters, customized fee agreements or software-as-a-service infrastructure fees may apply depending on technical configuration, custom service level agreements, and support requirements.

Because Figment does not custody digital assets, all principal deposits and generated staking rewards settle directly to client-controlled wallet addresses or whitelisted institutional custody accounts according to protocol rules. Figment does not apply proprietary withdrawal charges, spread markups, or liquidity exit penalties beyond native network transaction fees and protocol commission percentages agreed in enterprise contracts.

Yield realization timelines, unbonding schedules, and payout frequencies depend strictly on the underlying network protocol mechanics. For instance, Ethereum rewards distribute on-chain according to consensus rules, while networks like Cosmos or Polkadot enforce native unbonding windows ranging from two to four weeks. Stakers must account for these native blockchain rules when modeling portfolio liquidity.

Because Bitcoin.Tax is a non-custodial software service, it does not hold private keys, manage digital asset custody, or initiate transfer operations. The system interacts with exchanges strictly through read-only API credentials, which restrict access to historical balances and transaction records without permitting trading or asset withdrawals.

Account access is protected using standard industry security protocols, including two-factor authentication via time-based one-time password applications. User data, uploaded spreadsheets, and generated tax forms are stored within authenticated cloud environments protected by transport layer encryption and encrypted storage systems. Users maintain operational control over their stored datasets, with options to delete uploaded files, purge exchange sync histories, or wipe individual client portfolios at will.

While software-based data processing reduces custodial risks, users remain responsible for ensuring that API keys created on third-party exchanges have trading and withdrawal permissions permanently disabled. Additionally, filers must verify that uploaded CSV files do not contain extraneous personal identifying credentials beyond standard transaction parameters.

Security architecture at Figment centers strictly on non-custodial operations, ensuring that clients retain full ownership and administrative control over their cryptographic private keys and staking withdrawal credentials at all times. Figment operates validation nodes and signs blocks on behalf of delegators, but never maintains access to funds or holds authorization to transfer principal assets out of client-managed custody vaults.

To mitigate technical and operational vulnerabilities, Figment maintains independent SOC 2 Type II compliance and ISO 27001 certifications covering its infrastructure management and operational workflows. Node deployment utilizes distributed cloud and bare-metal environments across diverse geographical data centers, incorporating robust hardware security modules, multi-region failover, and active anti-DDoS mitigations to sustain high validator uptime and prevent double-signing events.

Figment provides commercial slashing coverage policies for eligible institutional clients, designed to protect against potential financial losses resulting from validator downtime penalties or accidental infrastructure errors. While these operational measures significantly diminish technical failure risks, delegators still operate within the broader regulatory and software failure risks inherent to public distributed consensus protocols.

Bitcoin.Tax is accessible globally, serving taxpayers across multiple countries. The system natively accommodates calculation rules and currency valuations for the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and parts of Europe, allowing users to configure local base currencies and tax reporting frameworks suited to their home revenue authorities.

For United States filers, the software generates outputs formatted directly for IRS Form 8949 schedules, complete with attached descriptions, acquisition dates, disposal dates, cost-basis adjustments, and gain/loss totals. Data can also be exported into standard file formats ready for direct ingestion into common consumer tax preparation suites such as TurboTax and TaxAct, as well as comprehensive CSV dumps for custom tax software.

Customer support is primarily delivered through a digital ticketing framework, complemented by documentation guides, video walkthroughs, and FAQ archives explaining standard import formatting and troubleshooting. Professional-tier users receive prioritized inquiry handling to assist during peak annual filing deadlines.

Headquartered in Canada and operating globally, Figment structures its products to comply with international enterprise standards, serving hedge funds, venture funds, registered investment advisers, public companies, and global fintech institutions. The company maintains strict enterprise onboarding workflows, executing standard Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering due diligence before provisioning dedicated validator infrastructure or enterprise API services.

Customer support for enterprise clients includes dedicated technical account managers, specialized integration engineers, and around-the-clock infrastructure monitoring. Service level agreements provide intended to provide response times, proactive incident notifications, and scheduled operational reviews, catering specifically to institutional expectations that standard retail community channels cannot satisfy.

Comprehensive tax and accounting support represents a core component of the platform. Figment provides downloadable, auditable reporting tools that export reward histories, cost-basis calculations, and protocol event logs in formats compatible with major institutional crypto accounting platforms, easing quarterly financial reporting and internal audit requirements for corporate treasuries.

Selecting the right tier on Bitcoin.Tax depends primarily on trading volume, account complexity, and organizational role. Individual casual users with fewer than 20 total transactions across a tax year can utilize the complimentary free version to generate basic summaries without upfront software costs.

Active retail traders who execute frequent spot trades or participate in recurrent staking programs should calculate their total expected annual trade entries to select an appropriately sized standard tier. Upgrades can be performed mid-season if import volumes exceed initial estimates. For accounting practitioners, the multi-client Pro tier provides client isolation, white-label client summaries, and bulk billing capabilities that streamline practice workflows.

Clients engaging Figment can choose between delegating directly to Figment public validator addresses or deploying dedicated, single-tenant validator nodes. Delegating to public validators allows institutions to activate staking quickly across multiple assets with minimal technical overhead, paying standard commission rates deducted from rewards. Dedicated nodes cater to larger asset managers requiring bespoke operational rules, custom MEV extraction policies, zero-commission internal routing, or specific geographic validator placement to satisfy internal compliance standards.

Choosing the appropriate architecture depends on an organization's balance sheet size, regulatory parameters, and developer integration capabilities. High-volume funds often prefer dedicated infrastructure to maintain isolated signer authority and tailored uptime SLAs, whereas multi-asset treasuries may utilize shared validator infrastructure across dozens of supported ecosystems simultaneously without configuring unique hardware nodes.