Session Logs and Bet History: What to Export and Why
Your bet history is often the only record of your play that exists anywhere, and two 2026 changes made it worth more than it used to be. US federal law now allows a deduction for only 90 percent of wagering losses, so a break-even year can still produce taxable income; and the Form W-2G reporting threshold rose from $1,200 to $2,000 — while an offshore crypto casino issues no tax form at all. Regulator complaint forms, meanwhile, ask for a username, a game, an amount and an exact date and time. Export monthly in CSV, keep the on-chain side as a separate ledger, and store both for three to six years. This is general information, not tax or legal advice. Gambling carries real financial risk, is 18+ only, and may not be legal where you live.
The 2026 rule that can tax a break-even year
Only 90 percent of wagering losses is deductible now, and the missing tenth is taxable.
Section 70114 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act rewrote the loss rule in Internal Revenue Code section 165(d). The deduction for losses from wagering transactions is now “equal to 90 percent of the amount of such losses during such taxable year, and shall be allowed only to the extent of the gains from such transactions during such taxable year.” It applies to taxable years beginning after 31 December 2025 — which means the 2026 tax year, the one you are living in.
The arithmetic is unforgiving. Win $50,000 across a year and lose $50,000 in the same year, and the deduction is capped at $45,000 against $50,000 of gains: $5,000 of taxable income out of a year that made nothing. The unused tenth does not carry forward and does not offset other income. Under the previous rule the same year netted to zero.
This is the part that catches crypto players. Deposit 0.1 BTC, play four thousand spins and withdraw 0.1 BTC, and your wallet shows no change — while the gross gains and gross losses behind it can each run to five figures. The 90 percent limit bites on the gross loss number and the cap is set by the gross gain number. Neither is visible in a blockchain explorer. Both live in the operator's bet history.
Who reports what, and who reports nothing
The threshold moved for the first time since 1977, and it never applied offshore anyway.
The IRS instructions for Forms W-2G and 5754, revised January 2026, set the minimum reporting threshold for payments made in calendar year 2026 at $2,000, with yearly inflation adjustment after that. For bingo, keno and slot play that replaces the $1,200 trigger that had stood since 1977. Regular 24 percent withholding still attaches to sweepstakes, wagering pools and lotteries where winnings less the wager exceed $5,000, and backup withholding of 24 percent applies where a correct taxpayer identification number is not supplied.
All of that sits on the payer. An operator licensed in Curaçao or Anjouan files nothing with the IRS and sends you nothing, and the absence of a form does not remove your own obligation: the IRS states plainly that gambling winnings are reported whether or not a W-2G was issued. What changes offshore is only who holds the evidence — which becomes you. If you are weighing where to play, the practical consequences of a licence are set out in what a licence actually covers.
What the IRS actually asks you to keep
An accurate diary, plus the documents behind it.
The requirement itself is short. You must keep “an accurate diary or similar record of your gambling winnings and losses” together with “receipts, tickets, statements, or other records that show the amount of both your winnings and losses.” No schema is prescribed, which in practice means the burden of proving the figures is yours. A workable minimum per line: date and time, operator, product or game, amount staked, amount returned, currency, and the fiat conversion rate you used with its source.
Retention follows the period of limitations rather than habit. Three years from filing is the general rule; six years where income that should have been reported was omitted and the omission exceeds 25 percent of the gross income shown on the return; indefinitely where no return was filed or the return was fraudulent. For a heavy wagering year, plan on six.
Crypto adds a second ledger, and no form arrives for it
Funding an account is a disposal of property, tracked per wallet since 2025.
For US tax purposes digital assets are “considered property, not currency,” and the IRS treats exchanging or trading them “for property, goods or services in any amount” as a reportable disposal. Moving coin into a casino account is therefore capable of producing a capital gain or loss entirely separate from whatever happens at the tables, and the same is true in reverse when a withdrawal is later sold.
Two mechanics make records essential here. Since 1 January 2025, basis must be identified wallet by wallet and account by account rather than across a universal pool, following the final broker regulations and the transition safe harbour in Revenue Procedure 2024‑28. And Form 1099‑DA covers broker sales from the 2025 tax year, with basis reporting phasing in for assets acquired after 1 January 2025 — but a casino is not a broker filing that form. Nothing will be reported for you. Keep, for both directions: transaction hash, chain, timestamp, amount, network fee, and the rate at the moment of transfer. Where a deposit route involves a bridge or a wrapped asset, note that too — the reasons are in wrapped and bridged tokens at crypto casinos, and the fee side in network fees by chain.
Disputes: the fields a regulator asks you to fill
A complaint without a timestamp is a complaint that stalls.
The Malta Gaming Authority's player complaint form is a useful specification of what any serious dispute needs, because it asks for exactly the things a session log holds: the operator's name and website, your username at that operator, the game played, the disputed amount, and the date and time of the incident. It also expects the operator to have been approached first — the MGA “strongly recommended” step — and its licensee complaint rules give the operator ten days from receipt to inform the complainant of the result, extendable by a further ten days only if the player is told inside the first ten days that the extension is being used and why.
Most crypto casinos are not MGA-licensed, and the offshore alternative is usually a weaker route or no independent adjudicator at all. That cuts the wrong way for the assumption people tend to make: with less process available, the quality of your own evidence matters more, not less. It is the same logic as screenshotting promotional terms on the day you claim, covered in the five clauses that decide your payout, and it pairs with knowing what a verification request will ask for in KYC and AML at crypto casinos.
What to export, and how long to hold it
Six record types, four sources, different clocks.
| Record | Where it comes from | What it proves | Keep for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bet / game history (CSV) | Account → history or statements | Gross wins and losses, session by session | 6 years |
| Account transaction ledger | Account → transactions | Deposits, withdrawals, bonuses, adjustments | 6 years |
| On-chain transaction hashes | Wallet or block explorer | That funds moved, when, and for what fee | 6 years |
| Exchange buy and withdrawal records | Exchange statements | Cost basis of the coin you deposited | Disposal year + 6 years |
| Promotional terms screenshot | Promo page on the day you claim | The version of the offer you agreed to | Until the bonus settles + 1 year |
| Limit and self-exclusion confirmations | Email from the operator | That a limit was set, and when | Indefinitely |
A ten-minute routine, once a month
The export you need later has to be made while the account still works.
Test the export on day one
Find the history page before you need it. Retention differs by operator, some accounts expose only a recent window, and an account that is closed, restricted or self-excluded may expose nothing.
Take CSV over screenshots
Screenshots do not sum, and the figures you need are totals. If only a screen view exists, that is itself worth knowing early.
Fix one rate source and stay with it
Convert at the timestamp of each transaction, from a single published source, and note which one. Consistency is what makes a diary defensible.
Reconcile three numbers
Account ledger deposits and withdrawals against on-chain transfers against your exchange records. A mismatch is easier to explain in the same month it happened.
Store it outside the account
Your own drive or cloud folder. An account you lose access to takes its history with it, which is also an argument for not leaving a balance parked — see wallet whitelisting and withdrawal address locks.
Keep the limits trail with it
Deposit, loss and session-limit confirmations belong in the same folder as the bet history; the setup is in our deposit and loss limits toolkit.
Records are a discipline, not a strategy. Set your limits before you play with our responsible gambling resources, see how the pieces fit together in the crypto casino guide, and check how payout conduct is weighted on our ranked best crypto casinos list.