FinTax founder Calix said the crypto tax and accounting company is keeping its attention on infrastructure for enterprise and government clients after receiving investment from YZi Labs, while also preparing a new $10 million fundraising round.
Speaking on a WuBlockchain podcast, Calix said the company plans to use the new capital for product development, global business expansion and team upgrades. The conversation centered on crypto tax compliance, global tax oversight and the practical financial, tax and audit issues facing Web3 companies.
How Calix arrived at crypto tax
Calix said he started working in 2014 and had long wanted to build a company, but did not find the right direction for years. He said the opportunity in crypto tax became clear at the end of 2022, when he met people in the crypto industry who were being pursued by tax authorities over OTC activity or investment-related issues.
That, he said, showed him that demand for crypto tax services was already real, while the market still lacked enough service providers and teams that could handle the work. After doing more research, he concluded that related infrastructure in Europe and the United States was developing faster, while much of the Asia-Pacific region remained relatively blank. Because he came from a tax and finance background, he said he could begin mainly by investing his own time. He founded FinTax in 2023 to build crypto tax infrastructure.
Why YZi Labs invested
Asked why YZi Labs would back a crypto tax company rather than a blockchain or onchain application project, Calix pointed to two reasons. First, he said FinTax operates in the broader compliance segment, and compliance has become an important part of the crypto industry. In that structure, FinTax fills the role of a basic tax and finance service provider.
Second, he said FinTax was among the earlier Chinese-speaking teams to work in this niche and had stayed with it for a relatively long period. He added that while the company’s direction did not fully match the investment theme of EASY Residency S4, projects can still win support if they stay focused on what they actually want to build. According to Calix, YZi Labs has helped with business development, refining the business model and offering directional advice.
The biggest problem: unclear legal and regulatory frameworks
Calix said the biggest tax and compliance issue affecting crypto operators and companies today is still the broader institutional, legal and regulatory framework.
Crypto business has moved quickly, he said, and many economic activities happen directly onchain. For a long time, that has left the sector out of sync with older legal systems and regulatory structures. Even with the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets framework, or MiCA, and with anti-money laundering, financial compliance and tax rules emerging in the United States and other jurisdictions, the overall picture remains fragmented. In his description, there is both overlapping regulation and empty space where rules are still missing.
That creates a practical problem for companies. They often do not know what counts as compliant conduct, or even whether a business line can be carried out at all. In some cases, he said, a company starts operating in a place where no clear rule exists, only to face scrutiny later when regulators decide the earlier approach was problematic and ask the company to take responsibility for past conduct. He said similar situations also appear in tax matters.
For that reason, Calix said the industry needs a clear and explicit legal and regulatory framework. Only then can operators reduce uncertainty and cost and build compliant businesses over a longer period. He said FinTax’s products and services are ultimately aimed at helping crypto activity fit more cleanly into traditional tax and financial oversight systems.
Why FinTax moved from retail users to businesses and governments
Calix said FinTax originally started with a consumer-facing tax filing product. After working on it for a period, the company did not see the result it wanted. It then moved toward business clients and has now also begun serving governments. He described that as a stage-based choice rather than a permanent abandonment of the retail market, saying the company may still look for another route back into To C later.
His explanation was straightforward. When the crypto industry starts dealing with tax compliance, large institutions are usually the first to face pressure. They are easier for regulators to see, whether through financial disclosure or tax compliance obligations. That makes their demand more urgent, their pain points sharper and their ability to pay stronger. He said FinTax’s first-generation product was largely validated with crypto-listed companies and large multinational firms.
He said the same logic applies on the government side. In traditional finance, accounting and tax administration, countries and regions already have regulatory platforms, tools and methods. In crypto, many places still do not. New legal and regulatory frameworks have only just started to take shape, and they still need time to be refined through case law and legal revisions. During that process, governments also need tools and platforms.
Retail demand exists, he said, but it is not as urgent at this stage. Outside a small number of jurisdictions such as the United States, where oversight is relatively strict, many places still have limited enforcement around personal crypto tax matters because authorities have not yet found a low-cost, efficient way to supervise large numbers of individuals. If the pressure on individuals is weak, demand and willingness to pay will also be weaker. At this stage, he said, the strongest retail demand tends to come from high-net-worth users holding large amounts of crypto and needing significant fiat conversion.
A crypto version of CRS, but still early
The podcast spent considerable time on the crypto asset tax information exchange framework. Calix compared it to a crypto version of the Common Reporting Standard, or CRS. In his view, if the discussion is limited to tax oversight, CRS is the right starting point.
CRS has been in place for more than a decade and has been refined over time, he said, yet the range of assets and business scenarios it covers is still limited. He described it as a large but loose net, one that still leaves room for arbitrage.
He said the same is true, and even more so, in crypto. The current tax information exchange framework for crypto assets largely follows the logic of CRS and mainly covers centralized exchanges, centralized trading platforms and payment companies. That means it only reaches part of the crypto ecosystem. Many scenarios remain outside the framework, including a large number of DeFi cases.
Calix also said there are many points where the traditional CRS framework does not fit neatly with crypto itself. Because of that, he sees crypto tax regulation as only just beginning. CRS has been running for more than 10 years. The crypto tax information exchange framework may also need at least 10 years before its basic form, operating mechanism, process and data validity can really be tested, after which more adjustments would still be needed.
On that basis, he said tax-related regulatory arbitrage in crypto will remain for a long time rather than disappearing quickly. In his description, regulators and the market will stay in a process of ongoing contest and balance.
He broke the structure into three layers:
- The first layer is the international tax information exchange framework, which mainly handles information collection and exchange and does not itself determine who should pay what tax.
- The second layer is local tax law. Once information reaches national tax authorities, they decide under domestic law what taxes local tax residents should pay, how they should pay and which cases may not require payment.
- The third layer is the taxpayer, whether an individual or a company, which then fulfills its own compliance obligations under the combined effect of international information exchange and local tax law.
According to Calix, both the first and second layers are still in an early phase, leaving the overall regulatory net relatively loose for now.
How FinTax would work with a Web3 company heading for an IPO
When asked how FinTax would participate if a Web3 company were preparing for an IPO, Calix used a crypto payments company as an example and said that type of client could use nearly all of the company’s products and services.
The first step, he said, is to sort out the financial, legal compliance and tax structure. At that stage, FinTax can provide IPO-related financial and tax consulting to help the company build a clearer framework.
Then comes the actual accounting work. A payments company’s books are often complicated, involving both crypto and fiat, and many of the transactions are cross-border. That requires an accounting system that can handle crypto business and traditional fiat business at the same time. Calix said FinTax Suite is the company’s ERP system for crypto financial processing and can take on the later accounting and finance work.
He added that a payments company may also be involved in token exchange, OTC activity or asset management, which can create tax information reporting obligations. FinTax’s tax solutions can handle that part as well.
The company also has an audit platform for auditors. Auditors for listed companies need to verify crypto transactions and financial data, Calix said. Without specialized tools, they may need to build blockchain nodes themselves and obtain and verify onchain data on their own, something traditional CPAs usually are not equipped to do. FinTax’s audit platform is designed to help auditors verify crypto transactions and financial data on the books and form audit opinions more efficiently. For an IPO, he said, that step is critical because the filing materials ultimately depend on reliable financial disclosure.
Exchanges and traditional brokerages may keep converging
Looking five years ahead, Calix said crypto exchanges currently perform a broader set of functions than traditional brokerages. In his description, an exchange may combine part of a bank’s role, asset issuance capability, asset distribution capability and some of the trading and verification functions associated with brokerages.
At the same time, he said, the regulatory system around exchanges is still less mature than the one governing traditional brokerages. Brokerages usually operate under clear rules tied to national or regional licensing, business scope and customer categories. Crypto exchanges are still adapting to different local regulatory systems.
Even so, he said the two sides are already moving toward each other. Exchanges are entering traditional financial assets such as stocks and bonds, while traditional brokerages are moving into crypto, ETFs, Bitcoin and Ether. If the assets and services offered by both sides continue to converge, competition may come down to several factors: whether regulation provides more support or more restriction, who reacts faster, who has better liquidity, who can launch new business lines more quickly and who wins more user recognition.
He said that process could produce intense competition, mergers and acquisitions, or exits from certain business lines. On balance, he said he is relatively more optimistic about crypto exchanges. Traditional brokerages already have mature and stable business frameworks, but those frameworks were not designed for crypto. Moving into crypto would require major changes in management understanding, strategy, underlying processes, systems and settlement methods. For crypto exchanges, he said, adapting to traditional financial rules may be easier because crypto trading systems are already relatively efficient and exchanges are already composite institutions.
What governments need from crypto tax tools
Calix said governments and companies are solving different problems. From a regulatory perspective, companies and individuals are the objects of supervision, so governments need systems that can identify situations, organize data, collect information and manage cases.
He used tax authorities as an example. They need channels through which taxpayers can submit information, but they also need systems that let officials view and analyze that information, identify leads and carry out case supervision and follow-up. That means governments need regulatory-side software and platforms, which is different from the products companies need as regulated entities.
He added that governments can also have needs similar to those of companies. Some governments hold Bitcoin or participate in mining, and those crypto assets also require financial management tools, though the applicable rules may differ.
Calix said FinTax had spent time exploring which country or region to use as an entry point for government business and had spoken with many places without settling on a path. Later, after joining Bhutan’s EASY Residency and working through local offline cooperation, the company began contacting the Bhutanese government and advancing related business.
From technical consensus to social consensus
Asked what kind of company FinTax ultimately wants to become, Calix said the firm’s vision is to help move blockchain from what he called “technical consensus” to “social consensus.” He said FinTax wants to become a strong infrastructure provider in that process, using products and professional services to meet the needs created by that transition.
He pointed to several directions that matter now: accounting and management for crypto assets, tax supervision and tax compliance, and the large amount of demand created on both the government side and the regulated-entity side as policy is made and evolves.
If crypto becomes a major asset class in human economic activity, he said, much more inclusive financial infrastructure will be needed to support it. FinTax is starting with more concrete products and services, including accounting, audit, tax and professional services, while covering both To B and To G. He described those as starting points rather than the end state. If blockchain eventually becomes a mainstream transaction form or mainstream asset class, many more product and service needs will emerge along the way.
The next round: $10 million for AI, global business and team upgrades
As government-side business expands, FinTax has also started a new fundraising round. Calix said the company plans to raise $10 million and use the money in three main areas.
The first is product development. Both To B and To G systems need substantial iteration, he said, and government products are especially heavy because different governments and business scenarios require different workflows. The enterprise product is already relatively mature, but AI is now lowering costs and customers are increasingly asking for AI to be combined with software. FinTax is therefore carrying out a large-scale AI overhaul of its business-side products, introducing AI into underlying capabilities, business processes and user interaction so that users can eventually interact directly with AI, which would then call the product and return results.
The second area is global business development. Because FinTax operates across multiple countries and regions, Calix said the company needs to keep strengthening commercial capabilities in different markets, especially in Europe and the United States.
The third is team upgrades. If the company is going to serve more governments and large enterprises, he said, team capability has to rise in parallel. In his words, the round is still fundamentally driven by business needs.
The early team nearly fell apart in 2023
Calix also looked back on the company’s early operating period. FinTax started working in the middle of 2023, he said, but by the end of that year the first team had basically fallen apart. The company had only four or five people at the time, and in the end only Calix and one or two interns were still pushing the work forward.
He said the original team was built mainly from former colleagues and partners, but most of them had worked in established companies and did not have a deep understanding of startup life. The early stage was difficult, fundraising was not going well and the first small team quickly ran into trouble.
When rebuilding, he again relied first on strong former colleagues and friends he had worked with before. But he said existing personal connections can only get a company to a three-to-five-person core team. Beyond that, hiring has to come from the market, and the market offered almost no candidates who could directly do this kind of work.
That left FinTax with two main approaches. One was to recruit people with work experience and strong ability in one area, such as coding or tax, and then train them on the other side through real work. The other was TaxDAO.
How TaxDAO became a talent pipeline
Calix said FinTax built an early community called TaxDAO that brought together more than 100 business students, many from strong universities. What they had in common, he said, was a strong interest in blockchain but no clear path into the industry.
At the time, the company needed young talent but could not afford to attract large numbers of full-time employees with high salaries. Through TaxDAO, FinTax gathered those students and had them participate in projects, research and industry topics.
He said that helped the company explore frontier issues in crypto tax, taxation, finance and policy while also accumulating a large body of research. Even now, many of the research outputs associated with TaxDAO and FinTax are still completed with participation from that group.
More importantly, he said, the process trained a cohort of younger people. As they graduated and the company entered a new stage, some of the firm’s important roles came to be filled by people who had joined TaxDAO in 2023. After graduation, they formally joined FinTax and became core employees and part of the founding team.
From cash flow to fundraising
Calix said the company badly needed financing in its first year to build products, but fundraising was very difficult. After several months, the team decided to stop fundraising efforts for the time being because the business was close to becoming unsustainable.
In 2023, he said, the market was paying more attention to altcoins, memes and other hot themes, while tax compliance was not a particularly popular direction. FinTax then decided to prove its value through professional services first and generate cash flow to keep the company alive.
That decision quickly mattered. Calix said the company’s first business order was worth $150,000, and that money gave FinTax a meaningful operating runway. After seeing the team’s value, that first client also became its first investor and put in a sizable amount of money to support development of the first-generation product.
In the second financing round, support again came from clients, friends and entrepreneurs and businesspeople the team knew. After seeing the company’s value, they helped make the second-generation product possible and supported the completion of a commercial loop and validation. Only after that did FinTax move into its seed round. By then, Calix said, investors could already see that the product logic and business model had been validated, and the market environment had also changed, with tax compliance becoming a more closely watched area than before.
His takeaway for early-stage founders was that one of the most important things is whether a team can validate its own value and the value of its project with a degree of independence, while also generating its own cash flow. Early supporters do not have to be famous venture capital firms or even professional financial investors, he said. They may be friends, former colleagues, former bosses or simply the first customer. Recognition from people who genuinely understand the value of the work matters. After that, founders should move quickly to validate the product and business model before approaching VC firms and professional investment institutions.
Advice for students and younger Web3 workers
At the end of the podcast, Calix also offered advice to students studying accounting and auditing, as well as younger people entering Web3. He said each person’s path is different and hard to copy, but if he had to offer one suggestion, it would be to take every job seriously and treat it as if it were one’s own business.
In his view, a job does not simply end once someone leaves it. The experience, skills and accumulation built there continue to shape the rest of a career. Whether someone stays in employment or later starts a company, the work in front of them should be done as well as possible.
For students from accounting, law and auditing backgrounds, he suggested paying more attention to emerging sectors such as AI and crypto. He said more new opportunities may appear in those fields, while competition in many traditional sectors is already intense, meaning younger people may need to spend more time and bear higher costs if they want larger room for growth there.
WuBlockchain noted in the original article that the guest’s comments do not represent WuBlockchain’s views and do not constitute investment advice. It also said the audio transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.