What records to keep for every crypto trade in India

Two very different institutions may ask you about the same trade: the income tax department, and a bank acting on a police request. They want overlapping but not identical things. Keep the union of both and you never have to reconstruct anything.

The six tax fields

1. 1Date and time of transfer
2. 2Asset and quantity
3. 3Consideration in INR
4. 4Cost of acquisition in INR
5. 5TDS deducted, by whom, and the challan reference
6. 6Counterparty and order reference

The two investigation fields

• The bank statement line for the INR leg, including the UTR and sender name.
• The on-chain transaction hash for the crypto leg.

Together these prove the trade happened, who it was with, and that value moved both ways. That is exactly the pairing described in what to do if your account is frozen.

A system that survives contact with reality

1. 1One spreadsheet, one row per trade

   Eight columns. Fill it the same day. Anything more elaborate gets abandoned by March.

2. 2Export order history monthly

   Platform records are the source of truth for order IDs and timestamps. Keep the file, not a screenshot of it.

3. 3Save bank statements monthly

   PDF from the bank, not an app screenshot. Statements carry UTRs; screenshots often do not.

4. 4Reconcile once a quarter

   Every row should tie to a statement line and a transaction hash. Fixing a gap in October is easy; in July it is guesswork.