This page exists to give an honest answer to a question that gets a confident one almost everywhere else. The two IRS pages this site has read and quoted do not address wash sales at all, and the site's rule is to record that rather than reason toward a conclusion the authority has not published.
What was read, and what it does not contain
This site's US column is built from the virtual currency FAQ and the digital assets hub page, both read on 8 September 2026 and both reduced and committed so every quote can be checked against the snapshot. The phrase wash sale does not appear in either, not once, and nor does substantially identical. There is no sentence here to quote, and inventing one would defeat the point of the column.
What the guidance does say about a loss, and about units
Q4 recognises a capital gain or loss on a sale and adds “subject to any limitations on the deductibility of capital losses”, referring to Publication 544. On which units were sold the FAQ is explicit: A39 permits specific identification where you can substantiate the basis, and A41 defaults to first in, first out from the earliest acquired. Identification is settled; disallowance is not addressed.
Why the absence is the useful finding
A blank in a tax table reads as “no tax”, which is the failure this index is built to prevent, so every cell is either a quoted sentence or an absence with a kind. Wash sales are an absence of the not-published kind on the pages named above. A reader who needs the position for a filed return needs a registered practitioner, not a page, and this site does not hold that roster.
How the UK handles the same shape
HMRC has published a rule about buying back quickly, though it is not a wash sale rule and does not disallow anything. Its selling guidance says you work out your gain for each transaction and that “the way you work out your gain is different if you sell tokens within 30 days of buying them”. That is a matching rule about which units are disposed of, and it belongs to the UK column.
Questions people ask about crypto wash sale
Does the wash sale rule apply to crypto?
The IRS pages in this ledger do not say, either way. This site records that as an absence with the page named and the date it was read, and does not publish a position the authority has not published.
Is there any IRS limit on crypto losses on these pages?
Q4 refers to “any limitations on the deductibility of capital losses” without listing them, and points to Publication 544. So a limit is acknowledged in the abstract and not specified in the answer.
Does HMRC have a wash sale rule?
No, and the 30-day rule it does publish is a different mechanism. The selling guidance says the way you work out your gain differs if you sell tokens within 30 days of buying them. It is a rule about matching disposals to acquisitions, not about disallowing a loss.
Why not just summarise the general wash sale rule?
Because this index only carries what a tax authority published about crypto, quoted with its page and date. A general rule restated here would look like guidance on digital assets that the IRS has not given on these pages.