Our single-member LLC mined crypto this year. Is that just ordinary income, or can self-employment tax also apply?

The LLC is foreign-owned but disregarded, and the owner personally runs mining equipment outside the U.S. The finance file already reflects gross income when coins were received, but a second adviser said mining that rises to a trade or business can also create self-employment tax exposure. That made the return much more complicated than expected.

I want to know whether the IRS really treats mining this way and whether the answer depends on the activity being a business rather than a hobby or passive holding pattern. If self-employment tax is genuinely part of the picture, we need to model it explicitly instead of focusing only on ordinary income.