Best Startup
Recap makes crypto taxes simple. We help users calculate crypto taxes in our simple-to-use, privacy-focused app. With thousands of transactions across different wallets, blockchains and exchanges, crypto taxes can be messy. With Recap users can easily track their crypto portfolio, optimise their tax position and automatically calculate their crypto taxes.
Tell us about yourself?
I’ve worked for a number of startups over the last 15 years of my career and love to be involved in early-stage companies. Recap is solving a real-world problem in the crypto space, helping users to compile their tax returns in a streamlined way. I was interested in working to help solve the crpyto-tax headache and help more users discover Recap.
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Buy more Bitcoin – crypto is here to stay and it’s going to gather traction.
What problem does your business solve?
Most crypto activity is taxed, and as such, users must account for every transaction they have ever made across multiple exchanges, wallets and blockchains. Assets need to be valued in the user’s domestic currency with historical pricing information and processed in accordance with their local tax rules.
Collating this data and calculating a tax position is incredibly complex and time-consuming for a basic user and near impossible for a sophisticated trader. There’s no room for error; individuals, businesses and accountants are exposed to unknown tax liabilities and large fines if they get it wrong.
Recap solves this problem in three steps:
- We collate a user’s transactions across their exchanges, wallets and on-chain activities
- We apply a fair market valuation (FMV) to any assets traded
- We calculate a user’s tax position and provide them with downloadable tax reports to help them file a return or connect them with one of our crypto-specialist partner accountants for assistance.
What is the inspiration behind your business?
Barriers to the adoption of crypto have been steadily falling as more and more users embrace this new technology. One area of crypto is still horribly complicated; taxes.
Almost every transaction made with cryptocurrencies, such as buying, selling, and spending, are all taxable events and keeping track of them is horrible. As legislators scramble to keep pace with this rapidly changing industry we can expect increasing pressure on individuals to get their crypto tax affairs in order.
Founder Dan Howitt spent 40 hours calculating his cryptocurrency tax position in November 2017, which was simply not possible on a spreadsheet and started Recap. Our platform bridges traditional accounting and taxes with blockchain technology, enabling users to take control of their cryptocurrency and sort out their crypto taxes.
We champion user privacy and go beyond any other system to provide the most secure, most private and more accurate crypto tax reporting solution on the market.
What is your magic sauce?
Recap offers users a globally-unique approach to privacy and security by utilising user custody of data and end-to-end encryption to keep transaction and trading history private. Our privacy-first approach gives accountants the peace of mind they need to recommend the Recap platform to their clients and ensures that users are safe from legal demands for information about their trading history from regulators.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
Recap wants to be the biggest, most accurate, most loved crypto tax app with more users in the UK than any other crypto-tax platform.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Building support for DeFi has been a challenge due to the ever-growing number of projects that we need to support – we’re really proud of what we’ve built.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
We want users looking to file their crypto taxes and Accountants looking to get started with crypto-tax – it’s free to get started. You can sign up at recap.io
