FinCEN Form 114: What It Is, Who Needs It, and How It Affects Crypto Trading

When you hold more than $10,000 in foreign financial accounts at any point during the year, you’re required to file FinCEN Form 114, a mandatory report filed with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network to track foreign financial holdings. Also known as FBAR, it’s not a tax form—it’s a disclosure tool designed to prevent money laundering and tax evasion. This rule applies whether your money is in a bank in Switzerland, a crypto exchange based in Singapore, or a brokerage in Canada. If you’re trading crypto on non-U.S. platforms and your total balance crosses $10,000, you’re not off the hook—you need to file.

The FBAR, a reporting requirement enforced by the U.S. government for foreign financial accounts doesn’t care if your crypto is stored in a wallet or on an exchange. What matters is control and location. If the exchange isn’t based in the U.S.—like Binance, KuCoin, or MEXC—and you have access to funds there, it counts. The same goes for foreign bank accounts holding crypto purchases, or even peer-to-peer wallets tied to foreign entities. Many people assume crypto is invisible to the IRS, but FinCEN and the IRS share data. Missing this form can lead to penalties as high as $10,000 per violation, even if you didn’t mean to skip it.

It’s not just about crypto. foreign financial accounts, any financial account held outside the United States, including bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and digital asset platforms cover everything from traditional savings to DeFi staking pools hosted overseas. If you’ve ever sent U.S. dollars to a foreign exchange to buy Bitcoin, or held ETH on a platform that doesn’t have a U.S. entity, you’re already in scope. The key is aggregation: combine all your foreign accounts, even if no single one hits $10,000. If the total does, you file.

People often think this only applies to wealthy investors or expats. It doesn’t. If you’re a freelancer in Texas who sent $8,000 to Binance and $3,000 to a German bank account for a hardware purchase, you’ve crossed the line. The system doesn’t ask for intent—it asks for thresholds. And with crypto prices rising, it’s easier than ever to accidentally hit that $10,000 mark across multiple platforms.

What you’ll find in the posts below are real cases, clear breakdowns, and hard truths about how crypto fits into this system. Some posts explain how exchanges report to U.S. authorities. Others show how people got fined for forgetting to file. There’s no fluff—just what you need to know to stay compliant, avoid penalties, and understand where your crypto actually lives under the law.