Two different tax categories, two different triggers
So far this course has focused on capital gains and losses — the difference between what you paid for an asset and what you received when you disposed of it. But not all crypto activity fits that pattern. Staking rewards, mining rewards, and airdrops are commonly treated as ordinary income rather than capital gains, in many jurisdictions including under IRS guidance, and the distinction matters for two separate reasons: the tax treatment can differ (ordinary income rates versus capital gains rates), and the taxable moment happens earlier than you might expect.
The general logic is that when you receive newly created value — a staking reward, a mined block reward, a token that shows up in your wallet from an airdrop — you're often treated as having received income at that moment, valued at the fair market price when you gained control of it. That income amount then becomes your cost basis in the new token going forward. If you later sell that token, you calculate a separate capital gain or loss using that basis, meaning a single token can pass through two different taxable events over its lifetime: first as income when received, then again as a capital gain or loss when eventually sold.