Rise has become the default payout method at most major prop firms. FTMO, Funding Pips, FundedNext, The 5%ers, and dozens of others now pay out via Rise — which means most funded traders are receiving income in USDC on the Arbitrum network without necessarily understanding what that means for their financial records.
Here's how to handle it correctly.
What Rise Actually Is
Rise is a payment platform built on Arbitrum (an Ethereum Layer 2 network). When a prop firm pays you via Rise, you receive USDC — a USD-pegged stablecoin — in a wallet address linked to your Rise account.
From a record-keeping standpoint, this matters because:
- The payout lands in a crypto wallet, not a bank account
- The transaction is on-chain (permanently recorded on the blockchain)
- The value is in USDC, which is pegged to USD but is technically a crypto asset
- You need to record the fiat value at the time of receipt, not when you eventually convert or withdraw
How Rise Payouts Are Taxed
In most jurisdictions, a Rise payout from a prop firm is treated as self-employment income or business income — the same as if you'd been paid by bank wire. The fact that it arrived in USDC on Arbitrum doesn't change the fundamental tax character of the income.
What it does change is the record-keeping requirements:
United States: The IRS treats USDC like any other crypto asset for record-keeping purposes. You must record the fair market value in USD at the time of receipt. Since USDC is pegged 1:1 to USD, this is straightforward — 1,000 USDC received is $1,000 in income (accounting for the minor peg variance, typically within fractions of a cent).
United Kingdom: HMRC follows the same principle — the sterling value at the time of receipt is what counts as income. Use the GBP/USD exchange rate on the date of the transaction.
European Union and elsewhere: Generally the same principle — local currency equivalent at time of receipt.
What Records You Actually Need
For each Rise payout, you need:
| Field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Date | The date the USDC arrived in your wallet |
| Amount | The USDC amount received |
| Fiat value | The USD equivalent (usually 1:1 with USDC) |
| Reporting currency value | If you report in EUR/GBP/AED, the converted amount at that day's rate |
| Prop firm | Which firm paid you |
| Transaction hash | The on-chain transaction ID (for verification if ever needed) |
The transaction hash isn't strictly required for tax purposes in most countries, but it's useful to have — it's your on-chain proof that the payment happened on the date you claim.
Where to Find Your Rise Transaction History
Rise provides a transaction history in your Rise dashboard. You can also look up your wallet address directly on Arbiscan (the Arbitrum block explorer) to see every USDC transaction received.
Key information you can find on Arbiscan:
- Exact timestamp of each transaction
- USDC amount
- Sending wallet address (which you can verify against known prop firm wallets)
- Transaction hash
This is a permanent public record — it cannot be altered after the fact, which is useful if you ever need to prove when a payout was received.
The Multi-Currency Problem
If you report your taxes in a currency other than USD, every Rise payout needs to be converted to your reporting currency at the exchange rate on the day it was received.
This is where most traders run into trouble. You can't just convert your total USDC received at the current exchange rate — you need the rate from the date of each individual transaction.
For a UK-based trader receiving 10 Rise payouts over the year, that means 10 different GBP/USD exchange rates. HMRC accepts the rates published on their website (available for download as a spreadsheet), or you can use the actual bank rate from the day.
The same logic applies for EUR, AED, AUD, and any other reporting currency.
The Manual Way vs the Automated Way
Doing it manually:
- Download your Rise transaction history (or export from Arbiscan)
- For each transaction, look up the exchange rate on that date
- Calculate the reporting currency equivalent
- Enter each transaction into a spreadsheet
- Repeat this every time you receive a payout
This works. It's just tedious — especially if you're getting payouts from multiple firms every month.
The automated way: PropFirmTerminal monitors your Rise wallet address. When a new payout arrives from a known prop firm wallet, it's automatically recorded: date, USDC amount, USD value, and your reporting currency equivalent using the historical exchange rate from that day. Nothing to do on your end.
At tax time, you export a report with all Rise payouts listed — firm, date, amount, reporting currency value — ready to hand to your accountant.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Recording the conversion date instead of the receipt date. Your taxable income is the value when you received it, not when you moved it to an exchange or converted it to fiat.
Forgetting small payouts. Rise sometimes pays out partial amounts or splits across multiple transactions. Every transaction is income.
Using current exchange rates. If you received a payout in January and you're doing your taxes in April, you can't use the April exchange rate — you need the January rate.
Treating Rise as "not real income" because it's crypto. It's income. The fact that it sits in a stablecoin wallet until you convert it doesn't defer the tax event in most jurisdictions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to report Rise payouts if I haven't converted them to fiat yet? In most countries, yes. The taxable event is receipt of the income, not conversion to fiat. A USDC balance sitting in your Rise wallet is still income you received.
What if two prop firms both pay via Rise — how do I separate them? Prop firms use different sending wallets. PropFirmTerminal identifies payout sources based on known firm wallet addresses. If you're doing it manually, check the "from" address of each transaction on Arbiscan and match it against the firm's known payout wallet.
The exchange rate on the day of my payout was $1.12 USD/EUR. Do I use that? Yes — the rate on the day of the transaction is what you use to calculate the EUR value of that specific payout.
I received Rise payouts in both 2025 and 2026. Can I just do one calculation for all of them? No — you need to split them by tax year and apply the correct exchange rates for each transaction within each year.
Rise showed a fee deducted from my payout. Do I record the gross amount or net? Record the net amount you actually received — the USDC that landed in your wallet. Rise transaction fees are a cost of the payment method, not separately deductible in most cases.
PropFirmTerminal monitors your Rise wallet address and records every payout automatically — with the correct reporting currency conversion applied at the date of each transaction. Start your free 5-day trial →