Some countries including Canada and Australia levy tax on unrealised gains when taxpayers lose tax residency even if they do not sell bitcoin. On Aug. 25 (local time), blockchain outlet CryptoSlate reported that some high-value bitcoin holders are increasingly considering the timing of leaving a country before the timing of selling.

Jeremy Savory (제러미 새버리), chief executive of immigration consultancy Millionaire Migrant, said demand is rising among clients in Canada, Australia and Britain to relocate before the bitcoin price rises.

The backdrop is an automatic information-sharing framework for cryptocurrency transactions. Under the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) and the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), service providers such as banks and exchanges report users' transaction data and tax residency information. As a result, which country a person is a tax resident of has become more important than moving assets.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said 76 jurisdictions have agreed to participate in CARF, and some countries began collecting domestic data from Jan. 1, 2026. Cross-border information exchange will begin in 2027. Cryptocurrency service providers in Britain also began collecting users' tax residency and transaction information from the same day, and the first report for this year must be submitted to Britain's tax authority HMRC by May 31, 2027.

Canada and Australia are representative countries that treat departure itself as a taxable event.

Canadian tax authorities generally deem certain assets to have been disposed of at fair market value when tax residency ends.

Australia is a country that cites bitcoin as a direct example. If an investor bought BTC for 10,000 Australian dollars (about 9.9 million won) and leaves when BTC has risen to 22,000 Australian dollars (about 22 million won), it calculates a capital gains tax (CGT) gain of 12,000 Australian dollars (about 12 million won) based on the departure date. The investor can choose to defer payment of the tax.

The larger the holdings, the bigger the difference. If a person buys 100 BTC at $20,000 each (about 27.7 million won) and leaves when bitcoin is around $78,000 (about 108 million won), the person must pay tax on a profit of $5.8 million (about 8.03 billion won). If the person leaves after bitcoin rises to $120,000 (about 166 million won), the profit increases to $10 million (about 13.85 billion won). Even with the same holdings, the tax base can increase by more than $4 million depending on the timing of departure.

Britain does not impose a general exit tax, but return rules for temporary non-residents can be a variable. If someone who was a UK resident for at least 4 of the last 7 tax years returns before 5 full tax years have passed, gains from existing assets earned while overseas can again become subject to UK tax. There is also no separate relief mechanism to spread that tax burden over multiple years.

Spain also imposes an exit tax on some shareholding assets, but whether it applies varies depending on asset size and residency requirements.

The United States is an exception in that it levies tax based on citizenship. U.S. citizens must pay tax on worldwide income even if they live abroad. To avoid this tax system, they must renounce citizenship, and even then an exit tax applies if certain requirements are met, deeming all assets to have been disposed of on the day before renunciation. Cryptocurrency is no exception.

Puerto Rico is cited as the only option that allows people to keep U.S. citizenship while receiving a 0 percent tax rate on local capital gains. That does not exempt gains already accrued on assets held before moving. Savory said: "It is not a system that exempts gains already accumulated. It is a structure that applies a low tax rate to gains that arise in the future," and added: "You have to move before the price rises, not after it rises."

Those benefits will not necessarily remain under the same conditions. Under Bill 38-2026 signed in March 2026, new applications received from Jan. 1, 2027 will face a 4 percent capital gains tax rate instead of the current 0 percent. Existing approved applicants can keep the previous conditions, and the programme will run until 2055.

Ultimately, tax-saving strategies for bitcoin holders are not decided solely by price expectations. Once cross-border information exchange based on CARF begins, tax authorities will be able to more easily identify differences between paper residency and the actual base of daily life. By contrast, investors who complete an actual move of residence before a price rise can fix the taxable scope based on valuation gains up to the departure date. While taxable targets and timing differ by country, information sharing is expanding rapidly, making tax residency and departure timing key variables for high-value bitcoin holders.