Published 21 August 2026

5 min read

Written and maintained by the CryptoKar team

Portfolio guide

Unrealised Gains Explained

An unrealised gain is the difference between what your coins cost and what they are worth right now. It is profit on paper. Nothing is owed on it until you dispose of the coin, and until then it moves every time the market does.

Profit on paperTaxed on disposal, not on holdingSection 115BBH

What unrealised means

Current value of the coins you still hold, minus what those coins cost you. The card on Insights shows the rupee difference and the percentage it represents.

The arithmetic

  • You bought 145.99 NEAR for ₹46,718.78.
  • At ₹177.01 a coin, that holding is worth ₹25,842.71 today.
  • The unrealised figure is −₹20,876.07, which is −44.68% of what you paid.
  • Nothing has been bought or sold to produce that number. It changes with the price alone.

When it becomes realised

This realises the gain

  • Selling a coin for rupees.
  • Swapping one coin for another, which disposes of the first.
  • Trading into a stablecoin, which is a disposal like any other.
  • Spending crypto on goods or services.

This does not

  • Holding through a rally or a crash.
  • Moving coins between your own exchanges or wallets.
  • Watching the price of something you own change.
  • Depositing coins into your account from outside it.

On a disposal, CryptoKar matches the coins to your oldest lots, works out the gain against what those lots cost, and moves the result from unrealised into realised profits.

Whether it is taxable in India

  • Section 115BBH charges tax on income from the transfer of a virtual digital asset. Holding is not a transfer, so an unrealised gain is not taxed.
  • On disposal, the gain is taxed at 30%, with 4% health and education cess on the tax rather than on the gain.
  • Cost of acquisition is the only deduction. A coin still held keeps its cost until it is sold.
  • Losses do not set off against other gains and do not carry forward, so an unrealised loss cannot shelter a realised gain elsewhere in your portfolio.
  • Your tax report is built from disposals only. The portfolio value on Insights never reaches Schedule VDA.

The rate and the sections are covered in Section 115BBH.

A very high unrealised gain

An implausible number is nearly always missing cost, not a windfall. Work down this list before believing it.

  1. Check the Transactions page for rows flagged with missing purchase history. Coins held at nil cost read as pure profit.
  2. Import the year the coin was bought in, and the cost fills itself.
  3. Check that a coin arriving from outside your imported accounts has a real purchase behind it rather than an estimate.
  4. Confirm the ticker resolved to the coin you actually own. Two projects can share a symbol, and the wrong match prices your holding against the wrong market.
A gain inflated by missing cost is not only a portfolio display problem. The same gap raises the tax on the day you sell, so it is worth fixing while you still remember the trade.

A portfolio showing a loss

  • The card only covers what you still hold. Profit you already took sits in realised profits, so both can be true at once.
  • Current value below purchase cost simply means the market is under your average entry.
  • An unrealised loss gives you nothing to claim. Under Section 115BBH even a realised VDA loss cannot be set off or carried forward.
  • A loss that looks far too large is worth checking against your holdings table, in case a quantity came through wrong.

Frequently Asked Questions

What people ask about profit that exists only on screen.

No. Section 115BBH taxes income from the transfer of a virtual digital asset, so tax arises when you dispose of the coin. Holding an asset that has gone up creates no charge, however large the number on your portfolio.

At the moment of disposal: a sale, a swap, a trade into a stablecoin, or spending the coin. At that point CryptoKar matches the disposal to your oldest lots, works out the gain, and it moves into realised profits and into your tax report.

Usually a cost basis problem rather than a windfall. Where a purchase is missing, the coins are held at nil or near-nil cost, so today's value reads almost entirely as gain. Check the flagged rows on your Transactions page first.

The card covers coins you still hold. Profits you already took sit in realised profits instead, so a portfolio can show red on what remains while you are up overall.

No. CryptoKar reads your transactions and computes tax on them. It does not connect to your exchange to trade, and it never places an order on your behalf.

A transfer between accounts you own is not a disposal. It only looks like one when a single leg is imported, which is the usual cause of a phantom gain or loss on a transfer.

CryptoKar calculates your tax from the transaction data you import. Review your report before you file. If you have questions about your tax situation, speak with a qualified tax professional.

Last updated 21 August 2026

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