Aurum Trading Bot Tax Guide 2026: What To Report

If you are running an Aurum bot, your US tax position turns on two questions, and neither of them waits for a tax form. Aurum trading bot taxes depend on whether the returns credited to your dashboard were income at the moment they appeared, and on what you can actually prove about your deposits and withdrawals when you come to file. Aurum issues no 1099, so both answers have to be built from your own records.

I'm Chris Herbst, Managing Director at CountDeFi, a global crypto tax reporting firm specializing in complex cryptocurrency and DeFi reconciliations. I hold the GTP (Global Tax Practitioner) designation and am a member of CIBA (Chartered Institute for Business Accountants). Since 2017 our team has reconstructed returns for clients whose platforms went dark mid-year, rebuilding deposit and withdrawal legs from chain data and filing the theft-loss and amended-return work that follows.

This guide is for US taxpayers who deposited into an Aurum bot product, referred others through its partner program, or spent through its card, and who now need to know what to report and how a loss would work.

What is Aurum and what does the platform actually claim?

Aurum Foundation markets a cluster of crypto products under one brand: AI trading bots, flash loans, a "Neo-Bank," and crypto payment cards, according to its own ecosystem page. The flagship product is the EX-AI Bot, which the operator's product page describes as trading "major cryptocurrency pairs including BTC, ETH, BNB, and other high-liquidity assets across multiple exchanges."

Those are the platform's claims, not independently verified facts, and I am going to keep the two categories apart throughout. What matters for tax is not whether the marketing is accurate. It is what you deposited, what was credited to you, what you withdrew, and what you can prove.

What have regulators said about Aurum?

On 6 July 2026 Belgium's FSMA published a public warning naming Aurum Foundation among six firms offering crypto-asset services without the authorisation required in or from Belgium, adding them to its list of fraudulent crypto-asset service providers. This is worth knowing and worth keeping in your file, but it does not settle anything for tax purposes on its own. A regulator warning is not a finding of theft under state law and it is not a criminal charge, which matters later when we get to whether a loss is deductible and when. It does raise the practical stakes on the record-keeping in the rest of this guide.

What returns does Aurum advertise?

Aurum's EX-AI Bot page states the bot "has delivered an average monthly return of 18.5% over 1.5 years of stable operation," with a disclaimer that past performance does not guarantee future results. That figure is not consistent across the brand's domain cluster. The same headline appears as "up to 18.5%" on aurum-ex-ai-bot.com, while affiliate marketing quotes EX-AI Bot at an average of 17.5% per month, EX-AI PRO at 10% and Zeus AI Bot at 15%, with one projection built on a "consistent 14.87% monthly client return."

I flag the divergence for a narrow, practical reason. You cannot reconstruct taxable income from a marketing percentage, and if you try, different pages of the same brand will not reconcile to one number.

What are the stated terms on deposits and withdrawals?

Aurum's own FAQ sets out four terms that carry more tax weight than the headline return: a $20 per year account maintenance fee; a performance fee model in which "fees are deducted from profits"; a one-year lock-up on principal; and profits stated to be withdrawable "at any time without penalty," with a 35% penalty on principal withdrawn before the one-year mark.

Credited profits nominally available on demand, principal locked. That single combination is the whole tax argument in miniature, and I come back to it below.

Who holds the coins?

The platform makes two claims that cannot both be true. The EX-AI Bot page asserts "Your funds remain in your custody at all times. EX-AI Bot only has trading permissions, not withdrawal permissions." Third-party walkthroughs of the onboarding describe the opposite: funding an account by sending USDT to an address the back office generates, then moving funds from a main Aurum balance into a dedicated EX-AI bot deposit. An affiliate FAQ states that "the bots run on the corporate servers which are tied into the exchanges."

Treat the custody question as unresolved on the public record. It is not a detail. It decides whether your return has thousands of trade lines on it or none, which I set out in the next section.

How are Aurum trading bot taxes calculated on automated bot income?

Automated bot trading is taxed on the underlying facts, not on the automation: if the bot trades assets you still own, each trade is a disposition reported on Form 8949 and Schedule D, and if you transferred your USDT to an operator-controlled address in exchange for a contractual claim, the credited return is ordinary income under Section 61. Which of those applies to Aurum is genuinely contested because the platform describes both models.

If Aurum is trading your own assets as agent

On the operator's "funds remain in your custody" description, every fill the bot places is a disposal of property by you. That means short-term capital gain and loss reporting on Form 8949 and Schedule D, potentially thousands of lines, with per-wallet FIFO under Rev. Proc. 2024-28. The advertised monthly percentage is not an income item at all under this reading; it is the net of thousands of items you would have to itemise. Crypto-to-crypto legs inside that activity are taxable in their own right, as we cover in our guide to swap taxation.

If Aurum holds the funds and credits you a return

On the account-funding description, sending USDT to an Aurum-generated deposit address may itself be a disposition of that USDT, and what you hold afterwards is a claim against the operator. The credited return is then ordinary income, reported on Schedule 1 as other income unless the activity rises to a trade or business, with no per-trade reporting at all.

There is no IRS guidance distinguishing agency from deposit for bot platforms of this design. Practitioners will split on it, and the platform's own materials support both readings. Worth confirming your position with a specialist before you file rather than after.

Is depositing USDT into Aurum itself a taxable event?

It depends on which of the two models above applies, and on whether your USDT had unrealised gain or loss. A transfer between accounts you control is not a disposal. A transfer of ownership to an operator in exchange for a claim generally is. Because stablecoin basis is usually close to face value, the dollar consequence is often small; the characterisation consequence is not.

What is phantom income and does it apply to Aurum bot returns?

Phantom income is tax on amounts credited to you that you never actually received in spendable form, and it is the central risk with any platform that posts a monthly return to a dashboard. We wrote a general primer on phantom income in crypto taxation; the Aurum fact pattern is the textbook version of it.

The argument that credited returns are income when posted

Treas. Reg. Section 1.451-2(a) treats income as constructively received when it is credited to the taxpayer's account, set apart, or otherwise made available so the taxpayer may draw upon it at any time. Aurum's own FAQ says profits can be withdrawn at any time without penalty. On the operator's description of its own product, a cash-method taxpayer has ordinary income each period whether or not a withdrawal happens. Rev. Rul. 2023-14, issued 31 July 2023, points the same way for credited crypto rewards, holding that a cash-method taxpayer includes the fair market value of validation rewards in gross income in the year the taxpayer gains dominion and control.

The argument that they are not income yet

The same regulation says income is not constructively received where the taxpayer's control of its receipt is subject to substantial limitations or restrictions, and it addresses amounts that may not be withdrawn until the maturity of a plan, treating those as income in the year the plan matures. Reporting from a 29 June 2026 first-hand account of an Aurum recruiting call describes users encountering compliance holds, withdrawal windows converted from daily or weekly to quarterly, and in one cited case a 12% "compliance" fee demanded before release. A taxpayer who was in fact blocked from withdrawing has a substantial-limitations argument for that period.

Why you cannot have it both ways

This is the part most people miss. Rev. Rul. 2009-9 holds that where an amount is reported to the investor as income and left in the arrangement, that phantom income increases the deductible theft loss later. So reporting the credited returns costs you money now and buys a bigger Section 165 loss if the platform fails. Not reporting them defers the cost and caps the eventual loss nearer to cash in. Neither route is free, and the choice is effectively locked in by the return you already filed.

There is no ruling, notice or case applying constructive receipt to a credited yield on a centralised bot platform of this shape. That is an open area, not a settled one.

What happens to Aurum trading bot taxes if the platform stops paying?

If an operator stops paying and the money is gone, the US route is a theft loss under IRC Section 165, and for an investment-motivated loss that is Section 165(c)(2), not a capital loss. Section 165(a) allows a deduction for losses sustained during the taxable year and not compensated by insurance or otherwise, and Section 165(c) limits an individual to losses incurred in a trade or business, incurred in a transaction entered into for profit, or arising from casualty or theft of personal-use property.

What the IRS said in CCA 202511015

IRS Chief Counsel Advice memorandum CCA 202511015, dated 17 January 2025, analysed five scam fact patterns arising in 2024. It concluded that losses from investment-type scams are losses from a transaction entered into for profit and therefore deductible under Section 165(c)(2), with the amount claimable "limited to their basis in the property." It also concluded that non-profit-motivated scams such as romance and kidnapping scams fall under Section 165(c)(3) as personal casualty losses and are not deductible by reason of Section 165(h)(5), absent personal casualty gains.

Why the ordinary versus capital distinction matters so much

Rev. Rul. 2009-9 holds that where a Ponzi promoter deprived investors of money by criminal acts, the investors' losses are theft losses under Section 165(a), not capital losses, and that such a loss is not subject to the Section 165(h) personal loss limits nor to the itemized deduction limits of Sections 67 and 68. A capital loss would be trapped behind the ordinary-income offset cap. A theft loss on an investment is not. That difference is usually worth more than the argument over which year to claim it in.

What you must actually prove

To sustain a Section 165 theft loss you have to show a theft under state law, meaning an illegal taking with criminal intent; that there is no reasonable prospect of recovery; the amount of the loss, generally basis, reduced by recoveries or expected reimbursements; and profit motive if you are relying on Section 165(c)(2). Our fuller walkthrough is in the crypto scam and theft loss tax guide.

Can you use the Rev. Proc. 2009-20 safe harbor for an Aurum loss?

The Rev. Proc. 2009-20 Ponzi safe harbor requires that the lead figure be indicted, charged by information, or be the subject of a criminal complaint with assets frozen or in receivership, and on the public record found for this brief Aurum has attracted regulator warnings and blacklistings rather than criminal charges. Regulator warnings are not a trigger under the revenue procedure.

What the safe harbor gives you when it applies

Rev. Proc. 2009-20 permits an electing taxpayer to deduct either 75% or 95% of the qualified loss in the discovery year. Section 4.04 defines the discovery year as the year in which the indictment, information, or criminal complaint occurs. Rev. Proc. 2011-58 modified the qualified loss definition in section 4.02 to address situations where the death of a lead figure has foreclosed criminal charges, with a conforming change to the discovery-year definition.

Why it probably will not apply here

CCA 202511015 found that none of its five scam scenarios met the criteria for the Rev. Proc. 2009-20 safe harbor. No US enforcement action, indictment or criminal complaint against Aurum was located in the research behind this article. Absent one, you are on general Section 165, where the loss is deductible under Section 165(e) in the year of discovery for a transaction entered into for profit.

Which tax year is the loss sustained in?

This is the live fight. The aggressive position is that the loss is sustained in the year withdrawals stop and the operator becomes unreachable, because there is no realistic recovery channel from an offshore entity with no identified principals. The conservative position is that while the platform is still online, still paying some users, and a receiver or liquidator might still appear, a reasonable prospect of recovery exists and the loss is not yet sustained. Courts have found a reasonable prospect of recovery where victims hold bona fide claims for recoupment with a substantial likelihood of success.

The cost of getting this wrong is asymmetric. In Giambrone v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2020-145, the Tax Court held that a taxpayer must strictly follow Rev. Proc. 2009-20, including claiming the deduction in the year the revenue procedure specifies. Claim too early and the deduction is disallowed with the statute possibly closed on the correct year. Claim too late and the same problem runs in reverse.

Which part of Form 4684 do you use?

Form 4684 Section C is used to figure a Ponzi-type theft loss under Rev. Proc. 2009-20 as modified by Rev. Proc. 2011-58; Section C replaces Appendix A of the revenue procedure, and the result carries to Section B, line 28, with lines 19 through 27 skipped. Section B is the section for casualty and theft of business and income-producing property, with income-producing property designated by property code "I". If you are outside the safe harbor, you are on Section B without the Section C computation.

Did the One Big Beautiful Bill Act change any of this?

Section 70109 of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act amended Section 165(h)(5)(A) by striking ", and before January 1, 2026" and changed the heading from "2018 THROUGH 2025" to "BEGINNING AFTER 2017," making the personal casualty and theft loss limitation permanent. The same section extended the casualty loss deduction to losses attributable to a "State declared disaster," new in 2026. Personal casualty and theft deductions under Section 165(h) remain subject to a $100 per casualty floor and a 10% of AGI reduction, with the AGI reduction disapplied and the floor raised to $500 for a qualified disaster loss. None of that touches an investment theft loss under Section 165(c)(2), which is the route CCA 202511015 pointed to for investment scams. For the wider policy picture see our note on crypto tax headlines you should stop believing.

How does Aurum bot income compare to other automated crypto income for tax?

Aurum sits in a different reporting category from an exchange bot or an on-chain strategy, mostly because of what documentation exists at the end of the year. The table below compares the shapes.

Only one of those arrangements generates a tax form. A US exchange bot produces Form 1099-DA, reporting gross proceeds for 2025 sales and basis for certain 2026 sales. For the Aurum products I found no evidence either way that the operator files US information returns, and the on-chain platform reports nothing at all because the data lives on chain. In every Aurum row, the return is built from records you have to keep yourself.

How is the Aurum Partner Program referral income taxed?

Referral and partner commissions are ordinary income when received, and the open question is whether they land on Schedule 1 as other income or on Schedule C as business income subject to self-employment tax. Affiliate material describes an Aurum Partner Program with "15 Legacy Levels with up to 18.5% direct sales commissions and up to 30% Profitshare," across five streams: Direct Sales, Team Sales, Legacy Volume, Profitshare, and Compounding.

Schedule 1 or Schedule C?

A passive one-off referral bonus generally sits on Schedule 1 with no self-employment tax. Active recruiting with continuity and regularity looks like a trade or business, which puts it on Schedule C with self-employment tax but with deductible expenses against it. No authority was located applying the trade-or-business test specifically to crypto MLM referral streams. One promoter's public write-up reports receiving $955.70 in rewards from 16 referrals totalling $7,529 in volume, which is squarely on the line, and the characterisation drives roughly a 15.3% swing in self-employment tax.

Is referral income part of your theft loss?

Commissions you received and kept are income you actually got. They are not part of a Section 165 loss on your own deposit. Commissions credited but never paid raise the same phantom-income question as bot returns, with the same trade-off under Rev. Rul. 2009-9.

Does the Aurum NeoBank card create separate taxable events?

Yes. Spending crypto through a card is a disposition of the crypto at the moment of the spend, and Aurum NeoBank is described as offering crypto-powered Mastercard debit cards through a Telegram-based interface, with top-ups "directly in USDT," payment "worldwide with automatic currency conversion," Apple Pay and Google Pay support, and global ATM withdrawals across four card tiers.

Why the card is a silent basis problem

Every automatic conversion at point of sale is a disposal with its own date, amount and basis. A user who tops up in USDT and spends abroad generates a stream of small dispositions with FX legs at merchant-level granularity, with no 1099 and, on current information, no export. The same mechanics we describe in our guide to crypto payment reporting apply here.

Is there a de minimis exemption to absorb small card spends?

Not yet. Senator Lummis's standalone digital asset tax bill, filed after H.R.1 was signed on 4 July 2025, proposes a $300 per-transaction de minimis exemption with a $5,000 annual cap, inflation-adjusted beginning in 2026, and would defer tax on mining and staking income until disposition. The Joint Committee on Taxation scored it at approximately $600 million net revenue over the 2025 to 2034 window. It is pending, not law. A separate House "Less Tax Paperwork for Digital Asset Owners Act" is reported to exempt crypto network fees under $10, capped at 5,000 transactions per taxpayer per year, and does not cover everyday spending.

Where does Aurum reporting actually break down?

The reporting breaks down at the point where your evidence stops, which with Aurum is the moment your USDT leaves your own wallet. Everything after that is a number on someone else's dashboard.

No 1099 is likely to arrive

Under the final broker regulations, brokers must report gross proceeds for transactions effected on or after 1 January 2025 and basis on certain transactions effected on or after 1 January 2026, on Form 1099-DA. Whether Aurum files any US information return is unverified. Plan on receiving nothing. The absence of a 1099-DA does not reduce your reporting obligation by a dollar, a point we make at length in our piece on no-KYC exchanges.

There is no known transaction export

No public documentation of a CSV or API transaction export from the Aurum back office was located. What users describe seeing is a dashboard balance and a percentage, not a trade blotter. A dashboard figure is not a tax record. If the bot genuinely executed trades "across multiple exchanges," as the product page states, the underlying fills sit on venues you have no account with and cannot obtain records from.

Chain data gets you to the door and no further

Deposits are described as USDT and USDC across several rails: "USDC ERC20, USDC BEP20, and USDC POS" and "USDT BEP20 and USDT TRC20." The deposit leg is traceable and the withdrawal leg is traceable. Everything between them is off chain. You can prove what went in and what came out; you cannot prove what the credited profit consisted of, when it accrued, or whether a trade ever occurred. That is precisely the evidentiary gap a Section 165 claim has to survive.

Rotating deposit addresses break clustering

One walkthrough notes the funding address is only valid for a temporary window of a little over two days, after which a new one must be generated. A user with a year of monthly top-ups may have a dozen unrelated destination addresses with no on-chain link between them and no straightforward way to show an examiner that they all belonged to one platform account. Our missing data methodology is built for exactly this.

There is no price feed for the internal unit

The credited return is expressed as a percentage of a USD or USDT denominated account balance, not as delivery of a token with a market. There is no exchange quote for "an Aurum balance." If you take the position that credited returns are income when posted, you have to value income for which no independent price source exists, using a platform number that differs across the brand's own domains.

Wallet-by-wallet basis makes it worse

Rev. Proc. 2024-28 provides a safe harbor under Section 1012(c)(1) allowing taxpayers to allocate unused basis of digital assets to units held within each wallet or account as of 1 January 2025; the allocation is irrevocable and applies only to capital assets. The universal cost basis method has ended, each wallet or account is an independent ledger, and the default is FIFO applied per wallet. The Aurum account is arguably a separate account for this purpose, but you cannot produce a lot-level ledger for it. See our breakdown of universal versus wallet-based tracking.

NEYRO is the opposite problem

Aurum describes NEYRO as "a next-gen non-custodial platform for creating and copying trading agents in Web3" with "fully on-chain execution," and trade coverage describes AI agents including Quantum Alpha running on BNB Smart Chain. If execution is genuinely on chain, the data exists, but as raw BSC traces with thousands of swaps, internal contract calls, router hops and gas in BNB. That is a full DeFi reconciliation, not a CSV import, and no gas-fee de minimis rule is in force.

Screenshot the dashboard monthly

This is a record-keeping point, not a comment on the platform. Under Rev. Rul. 2009-9 your theft loss is increased by reinvested fictitious income, and to claim that increase you must show what was credited and that you reported it. If a dashboard disappears, the evidence of the credited amounts disappears with it. Dated monthly captures, kept off the platform, are cheap insurance. Our record-keeping guide covers the rest.

What are the most common Aurum trading bot taxes mistakes?

The recurring errors we see on platforms of this shape are about timing, characterisation and evidence rather than arithmetic.

Assuming nothing is taxable until you withdraw

Constructive receipt does not wait for a withdrawal button to be pressed. Where credited amounts are genuinely available to draw at any time, the regulation treats them as received. The counter-argument exists where control is subject to substantial limitations, but it is an argument you have to be able to evidence, not an assumption.

Treating the whole thing as a capital loss

Rev. Rul. 2009-9 puts criminal-deprivation losses in Section 165, not in the capital loss system. Filing a scam loss as a capital loss can bury a full deduction behind the annual ordinary-income offset limit for years.

Claiming the loss in the wrong year

Giambrone shows the Tax Court enforcing the year requirement strictly. Claiming while the platform is still online and paying some users invites a reasonable-prospect-of-recovery challenge; waiting too long risks a closed statute on the correct year.

Assuming a regulator warning is proof of theft

An FSMA listing or an FMA New Zealand page reporting the Bank of Russia's and Nigerian SEC's warnings is useful context for a file. It is not, by itself, a theft under state law, and it is not an indictment for Rev. Proc. 2009-20 purposes.

Ignoring the referral income entirely

Partner commissions are income whether or not anyone issued you a form. If you recruited actively, the self-employment question is on the table too.

Missing the card dispositions

Card spending is quiet, frequent and easy to forget. Each conversion is a disposal. There is no enacted de minimis rule to sweep them up.

Letting the deposit trail go cold

Rotating deposit addresses, multiple chains and a year of top-ups produce a fragmented record. Pull the chain data while you still remember which wallets you used.

How is Aurum bot income treated outside the US?

The loss mechanics change materially once you leave the US, and in some jurisdictions credited-but-unpaid returns sit in a worse place than they do here.

United Kingdom

HMRC's position in the Cryptoassets Manual is that being the victim of theft or fraud resulting in the loss of cryptoassets is not a disposal for CGT, because the taxpayer still owns the asset and has a right to recover it, so no capital loss arises directly. Where the individual can show they held the asset and there is no chance of recovery, a negligible value claim can be filed, producing a deemed disposal and reacquisition at nil or negligible value and therefore an allowable capital loss. Critically for this fact pattern, those who paid for a cryptoasset they never actually received may not be able to claim a capital loss under HMRC's guidance, because there was no asset to become of negligible value. Whether credited-but-unpaid bot returns are an asset for this purpose is unverified. If you have historic under-reporting to fix, see our note on HMRC voluntary disclosure.

Canada

The CRA treats cryptocurrency as a commodity and the threshold question is the characterisation of the activity. If the crypto was capital property, only half the realised loss is an allowable capital loss under paragraph 38(b) of the Income Tax Act; where the activity is a business or an adventure in the nature of trade, the loss is computed under section 9 and produces a business or non-capital loss. Allowable capital losses can be applied only against taxable capital gains, not against employment or other income. Canadian practitioner commentary notes there is no clear statutory theft-loss deduction outside a business context, and that timing is frequently disputed. Our Canada crypto tax guide has the wider framework.

Australia

The ATO's guidance on loss or theft of crypto assets states that where the asset cannot be replaced a capital loss may be claimed, that any compensation or insurance payment reduces the capital loss, and that a capital gain arises where compensation exceeds the cost base. A rollover may be available where compensation is received and a replacement crypto asset is acquired within a year of the end of the income year, or a longer period the Commissioner allows. The ATO's evidence list covers when the asset was acquired and lost, the wallet address, the acquisition cost, the amount in the wallet at the time of loss, and proof the wallet was controlled by the taxpayer. That list is built for a wallet you controlled and maps poorly onto a balance held on someone else's server. See also our Australian trading business guide.

Germany

The governing guidance is the BMF letter dated 6 March 2025, which replaced the May 2022 letter. Private investors are taxed on disposals under Section 23(1) no. 2 EStG where acquisition and sale fall within one year, at personal rates; beyond one year the gain is tax free, and that remains true even where the crypto was previously lent or staked. From 2024 gains remain tax free if total private disposal gains in the calendar year are under 1,000 euros. Staking, lending, mining and referral rewards are other income under Section 22 No. 3 EStG, or business income where the activity is commercial, and repeated or extensive trading may itself be treated as commercial. German treatment of a fraud loss on a bot platform specifically is unverified. Our Germany guide covers DAC8, which is described as starting 1 January 2026.

Do you need to file an FBAR or Form 8938 for an Aurum account?

Under FinCEN Notice 2020-2, a foreign account holding only virtual currency is not a reportable account under 31 CFR 1010.350(c), and FinCEN stated its intent to propose an amending rule; as of the 2026 filing season no final rule has been issued. That is the starting point, not the end of the analysis.

When the account becomes reportable anyway

FBAR on FinCEN Form 114 is generally required where the aggregate maximum value of foreign financial accounts exceeds $10,000 at any time in the year, due 15 April with an automatic extension to 15 October. A foreign account holding virtual currency alongside fiat or other reportable assets remains reportable in full once the threshold is met. A product marketed as a neo-bank with card and fiat conversion features is exactly where that distinction gets tested, so this one is worth confirming with a specialist on your specific account setup.

Do You Need Help With Aurum Trading Bot Taxes?

If you have a year of credited returns on an Aurum dashboard, a locked principal, a partner commission stream and a card you have been spending from, you have four separate reporting problems that interact. The phantom-income choice you make for 2026 shapes the size of any Section 165 loss you can claim later, and the evidence you preserve now decides whether that loss survives examination. If you have already filed returns that treated credited amounts one way and now want to change position, amended returns and the catch-up process are the mechanism.

CountDeFi Is Your Aurum Trading Bot Taxes Solution

We are not just accountants at CountDeFi, we are data scientists who work exclusively on crypto. Headquartered in Oregon, we have worked with more than 1,000 clients globally since 2017, rebuilding deposit and withdrawal trails across BEP20, TRC20, ERC20 and Polygon, valuing credited amounts where no price feed exists, and preparing Form 4684 positions that hold up. If your platform has gone quiet or you are not sure what to report for the year, book a free call with one of CountDeFi's crypto tax specialists.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I pay tax on Aurum bot profits if I never withdrew them?

Possibly. Treas. Reg. Section 1.451-2(a) treats income as constructively received when credited and available to draw at any time, which is how Aurum describes its profit balances, but the same regulation says there is no constructive receipt where control is subject to substantial limitations or restrictions.

Is Aurum trading bot income taxable?

Yes, in one form or another. Either the bot's trades are your dispositions reported on Form 8949, or the credited return is ordinary income under Section 61, depending on whether Aurum trades assets you still own or holds your funds.

Do I owe tax on crypto I cannot withdraw?

If your control of the amount is subject to substantial limitations or restrictions, there is an argument against constructive receipt for that period under Treas. Reg. Section 1.451-2. You need contemporaneous evidence of the block, not just a recollection of one.

Aurum trading bot taxes: how do I report it?

Credited returns generally go on Schedule 1 as other income under the deposit reading, individual trades go on Form 8949 and Schedule D under the agency reading, referral commissions go on Schedule 1 or Schedule C, and a theft loss goes on Form 4684.

Do I have to report Aurum if they never sent me a 1099?

Yes. The absence of a Form 1099-DA does not reduce your reporting obligation by a dollar, and no evidence was found either way that Aurum files US information returns.

Is the 18.5% monthly return Aurum advertises taxable income or capital gains?

That advertised figure is a marketing claim, not a tax input. Depending on the custody position, credited amounts are either ordinary income or the net result of many short-term capital transactions you would have to report individually.

Do I pay tax on money that is still locked for a year?

Treas. Reg. Section 1.451-2 provides that where a credited portion may not be withdrawn until the maturity of the plan, crediting it does not constitute constructive receipt, and it is income in the year the plan matures. Aurum states principal is locked for one year while profits are withdrawable at any time.

What if my Aurum balance is fake, do I still owe tax on it?

Rev. Rul. 2009-9 treats amounts reported to an investor as income and left in the arrangement as phantom income that increases the deductible theft loss. Reporting it costs tax now and buys a larger loss later; not reporting it does the reverse.

Can I just not report Aurum since it is offshore?

No. US taxpayers report worldwide income regardless of where a platform is based or whether it issues any form.

Does Aurum Foundation send a 1099-DA?

Unverified; no evidence was found either way. Plan on receiving nothing and self-reporting the full position.

Does the Aurum EX-AI Bot hold my crypto or do I?

Aurum's product page says funds remain in your custody with trading permissions only, while third-party walkthroughs describe sending USDT to a platform-generated deposit address and an affiliate FAQ says the bots run on corporate servers. Treat the custody question as unresolved on the public record.

Is transferring USDT to my Aurum deposit address a taxable event?

It depends on whether ownership passes. A transfer between accounts you control is not a disposal; a transfer to an operator in exchange for a contractual claim generally is.

How do I export my Aurum transaction history for taxes?

No public documentation of a CSV or API export from the Aurum back office was located. In practice you rebuild from chain data on the deposit and withdrawal legs plus dated screenshots of the dashboard.

Is the Aurum 35% early withdrawal penalty tax deductible?

No authority was found on this point. Candidate treatments include a reduction of amount realised on the principal withdrawal, a Section 212 expense, or no deduction at all, so treat it as an open question.

Is the $20 Aurum annual subscription fee deductible?

Also unresolved. It may be an expense of a profit-seeking activity, an addition to basis, or non-deductible, and Aurum's own pages quote it variously as $20 per year while walkthroughs quote $19.99 and $19.95.

How do I value Aurum daily profit credits for taxes?

There is no exchange quote for an Aurum balance, so you would be relying on the platform's own number. That is a real weakness in any position that treats credited amounts as income when posted.

Does the Aurum one-year lockup delay when I owe tax?

On principal, arguably yes, under the maturity-of-the-plan language in Treas. Reg. Section 1.451-2. On profits, Aurum's own FAQ says they are withdrawable at any time, which cuts the other way.

Is there a tax difference between Aurum EX-AI PRO and the EX-AI Bot?

Affiliate material describes EX-AI PRO as having no lock-up with funds fully accessible at all times. Fewer withdrawal restrictions weakens any substantial-limitations argument against constructive receipt.

Is NEYRO taxed differently from the Aurum EX bot?

If NEYRO agents execute genuinely on chain and non-custodially on BNB Smart Chain as described, each swap is your own disposition reported on Form 8949, with gas in BNB. That is a heavier reporting burden than a single credited income line, but the data at least exists.

Do I report every trade the Aurum bot makes on Form 8949?

Under the agency reading of the platform's custody claim, yes. Under the deposit reading, no, and you report the credited return as ordinary income instead.

How do I get cost basis for Aurum bot trades I cannot see?

You generally cannot. If the fills sit on exchanges you have no account with, the only defensible record is the deposit and withdrawal legs plus whatever the dashboard showed at each date.

Is the Aurum NeoBank card a taxable event every time I spend?

Yes. Each automatic conversion at point of sale is a disposition of the underlying crypto, and there is no enacted de minimis exemption to absorb small spends.

Is Aurum Partner Program referral income taxed?

Yes, as ordinary income when received, valued in USD at receipt.

Do I pay self-employment tax on Aurum Profitshare commissions?

If the recruiting activity has continuity and regularity it looks like a trade or business on Schedule C, which carries self-employment tax. A passive one-off bonus generally sits on Schedule 1 instead.

Aurum stopped paying withdrawals, can I claim a theft loss?

Potentially, under Section 165(c)(2) as a loss from a transaction entered into for profit, which is the route CCA 202511015 identified for investment-type scams. You must show a theft under state law, no reasonable prospect of recovery, and the amount of the loss.

Can I use Revenue Procedure 2009-20 for an Aurum loss?

The safe harbor requires an indictment, information or criminal complaint against the lead figure, and no US criminal action against Aurum was located. Absent one, you are on general Section 165.

Do I need an indictment before I can claim a Ponzi theft loss?

For the Rev. Proc. 2009-20 safe harbor, yes, subject to the Rev. Proc. 2011-58 modification where the death of a lead figure has foreclosed criminal charges. For a general Section 165 theft loss, no, but you carry the full burden of proof instead.

What tax year do I claim the loss if Aurum is still online?

This is contested. While a platform is still operating and paying some users, the IRS may argue a reasonable prospect of recovery exists and the loss is not yet sustained.

Form 4684 Section B or Section C for a crypto bot scheme?

Section C is the Rev. Proc. 2009-20 computation, and its result carries to Section B, line 28 with lines 19 through 27 skipped. Outside the safe harbor you use Section B, with income-producing property coded "I".

Can I deduct the phantom profits Aurum credited me but never paid?

Rev. Rul. 2009-9 holds that amounts reported to the investor as income and reinvested in the arrangement increase the deductible theft loss. The catch is that you must show you actually reported them.

Is a crypto scam loss a capital loss or an ordinary theft loss?

Rev. Rul. 2009-9 holds that where a promoter deprived investors of money by criminal acts, the losses are theft losses under Section 165(a), not capital losses.

Does the $3,000 capital loss limit apply to a Ponzi theft loss?

Rev. Rul. 2009-9 treats these as theft losses rather than capital losses, and holds they are not subject to the Section 165(h) personal loss limits nor to the itemized deduction limits of Sections 67 and 68.

Can I amend prior year returns if I paid tax on Aurum profits that were fake?

Amending is one route, but note the interaction: Rev. Rul. 2009-9 increases the theft loss by phantom income you reported, so removing the income may reduce the loss. Model both before choosing.

Is a regulator warning enough to prove no reasonable prospect of recovery?

Not by itself. The FSMA warning of 6 July 2026 and the FMA New Zealand page recording the Bank of Russia and Nigerian SEC warnings are useful file evidence, but they are not an adjudication of theft or an indictment.

Does the One Big Beautiful Bill Act stop me deducting crypto scam losses in 2026?

Section 70109 made the Section 165(h)(5) personal casualty and theft loss limitation permanent, which affects personal-use theft losses. Investment losses under Section 165(c)(2), the route CCA 202511015 pointed to for investment scams, sit outside that limitation.

UK tax on Aurum trading bot profits: what does HMRC say?

HMRC treats theft or fraud losses as not a disposal for CGT, with a negligible value claim as the route to an allowable loss where recovery is impossible. Those who paid for a cryptoasset they never received may be unable to claim, because there was no asset to become of negligible value.

Can I claim a negligible value claim for money lost on Aurum in the UK?

Only if you can show you held an asset that has become of negligible value. Whether a credited-but-unpaid bot balance qualifies as an asset for this purpose is unverified.

Aurum trading bot tax in Canada: capital loss or business loss?

It depends on characterisation. Capital property produces an allowable capital loss of half the realised loss under paragraph 38(b), while a business or adventure in the nature of trade is computed under section 9 and produces a business or non-capital loss.

Can I claim a capital loss in Australia for an Aurum scam?

The ATO allows a capital loss where a crypto asset is lost or stolen and cannot be replaced, reduced by any compensation received, with a capital gain arising if compensation exceeds the cost base. The ATO's evidence expectations are built around wallets you controlled.

Germany: are Aurum bot returns taxed under Section 22 or Section 23 EStG?

Staking, lending, mining and referral rewards are other income under Section 22 No. 3 EStG, or business income if the activity is commercial, while disposals within one year fall under Section 23(1) no. 2 EStG. The BMF letter of 6 March 2025 governs.

Do I need to file an FBAR for my Aurum account?

Under FinCEN Notice 2020-2 an account holding only virtual currency is not reportable under 31 CFR 1010.350(c), and no final amending rule has been issued as of the 2026 filing season. An account holding virtual currency alongside fiat or other reportable assets is reportable in full once the $10,000 aggregate threshold is met.

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