The precipitous fall in the value of cryptocurrencies last year resulted in American investors losing $1.7 billion last year. That’s according to Credit Karma, which says that unrealized losses, belonging to those who didn’t sell, account for a further $5.7 billion.
Most Americans apparently didn’t even realize that they could claim tax deductions of up to $3,000 on the realized losses. According to the general manager of tax at Credit Karma, Jagjit Chawla, “61% of respondents who lost money on bitcoin didn’t actually realize they could get a tax deduction for bitcoin losses”.
Almost all major crypto-currencies lost a large chunk of their market value last year after a blockbuster year in 2017. The biggest, Bitcoin, plummeted more than 70 percent last year, leaving most investors with massive losses.