The anniversary that still counts as short-term
Sell crypto on the first anniversary of the purchase, and the IRS treats the result as short-term. Publication 544 shows why with dates of its own. For an asset bought on June 17, 2024, counting starts on June 18, so a sale on June 17, 2025 is “not longer than 1 year,” while a sale on June 19, 2025 is.
Apply that to ether bought on November 11, 2025. A sale on November 11, 2026 is short-term. Waiting two more days, until November 13, puts it past the line that the publication’s example draws.
The line itself comes from the statute. Section 1222 of the Internal Revenue Code defines a short-term gain or loss as one on a capital asset “held for not more than 1 year” and a long-term one as held for more than a year.
Answer 50 of the IRS digital asset FAQ applies it to crypto, with a period that “begins on the day after you acquired the digital assets and ends on the day you sell or exchange them.”
What the extra days can be worth in 2026
The gap between the two treatments is wide. Revenue Procedure 2025-32 taxes a single filer’s ordinary income for 2026 at rates from 10% up to 37%, the top one applying above $640,600. Net short-term gains are taxed at those ordinary rates, as IRS Topic 409 notes.
Long-term gains follow their own schedule. For the same filer, 0% applies up to $49,450 of taxable income in 2026 and 15% up to $545,500, with 20% above that. Two days of patience can therefore move a gain from one table to the other, which is how capital gains tax on crypto ends up depending on a calendar.
Where you see it
On Form 8949, Part I takes sales held one year or less and Part II takes the rest. Each row carries the date acquired in column (b). Inherited coins skip the count, since the instructions generally send them to Part II with “INHERITED” written in that column. A block bought on several dates may go on one row as “VARIOUS,” but its short-term and long-term pieces still belong in separate parts.
A broker’s Form 1099-DA shows the purchase date in box 1d, in MM/DD/YYYY format, and box 6 has checkboxes for a short-term or long-term result. The instructions let a broker leave box 1d blank for coins bought on various dates, and Code Y exists for a sale whose holding period the broker can’t determine. Your own records fill the gap.
Swaps restart the clock
A costly mistake is assuming that a coin-for-coin trade carries the old date forward. Answer 74 of the FAQ says the holding period of digital assets received in such an exchange “begins the day after they are received.” Swap bitcoin bought in 2020 for ether in October 2026, and the ether’s clock starts in October 2026.
Gifts work the other way. Under answer 77, a gift’s holding period includes the time the giver held it, if you can document that. Without the giver’s records it starts the day after you receive the coins.
Britain puts its dates to a different use. HMRC’s CRYPTO22200 pairs a disposal with same-type tokens acquired on that date, then with any acquired over the following 30 days, before the section 104 pool. The GOV.UK rates page sets the rate by taxable income and the size of the gain.
The entry describes how the term is used and is not tax advice.