德国拟取消加密12个月免税期并强化税务透明

Saxony, Germany, June 2024. 49,858 Bitcoin seized by the German government from a criminal network dumped onto the open market inside 3 weeks at an average of 52,000 euros a [music] coin. Total proceeds about 2.6 billion euros. Prosecutors said they had no choice, that volatile assets have to be liquidated. And in fairness, that was Bitcoin taken from criminals, and you could argue the state was just doing its job. But what's coming next isn't a bit criminals at all.

You see, Germany isn't only selling seized Bitcoin, far from it. And this time, the government is also looking at everyday people who simply chose to hold crypto. So, today, we're looking at how much Bitcoin Germany is about to [music] sell, why the German government has already spent money from a tax that doesn't legally exist yet, [music] and who stands to benefit from a government pushing its powers too far. My name is DC, and this is The Coin Bureau.

Now, let's start in a courtroom in Leipzig, because Germany dumping 2.6 billion euros back in 2024 was not the end of that story. The coins came from the operators of an illegal streaming network called movie2k. And the case against them opened at the Leipzig Regional Court on the 24th of February 2026. The lead defendant faced up to 13 years. Then, the court floated a deal in April. A full confession, a suspended sentence of around a year and a half, and in exchange, the defendant hands over access to another huge stash of Bitcoin still in wallets under his control.

How much exactly? Well, roughly 57,000 coins. That's even more than the state sold in 2024. Between the euros Saxony already banked and the coins it's set to receive, you're looking at a combined pot reported at up to 6.2 billion euros. Now, because we already know what Germany does when it's holding Bitcoin, or rather, what it does the second it gets hands on some Bitcoin, it sold 49,858 of them in 21 days without pausing to ask anyone whether that was a good idea.

So, the state's Bitcoin policy isn't a mystery, and there's no room for debate. It just sells. And everything from here is that same reflex, only it's directed at citizens instead of criminals. Okay, so what exactly are German citizens facing? Well, right now, technically speaking, Germany has arguably the best deal in Europe for anyone who actually holds their own coins. Under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Code, if you buy crypto and hold it for more than 12 months, you can sell it and pay nothing.

No capital gains tax at all. Now, that's a deliberate rule confirmed by Germany's Federal Finance Court in ruling back in February 2023, which classifies crypto as an ordinary private asset in the same family as gold and foreign currency. Hold it a year, and it's yours. However, on the 3rd of July this year, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil published his draft federal budget, and the cabinet signed it off 3 days later.

Inside that draft is a proposal to strip the 12-month rule out entirely and tax crypto gains like ordinary investment income, no matter how long you've held. Klingbeil said, when asked what this would raise, that it would result in additional revenue in the billions. And that's the key detail here, because remember what a government budget is. It's a document where money is allocated against income the government expects to receive.

So, the revenue from taxing German Bitcoin holders is already sitting on the ledger, penciled against spending. Now, as I make this video, no statutory text amending that section of the tax code has been introduced, let alone passed. The 12-month rule is still law today as things stand. So, there's no start date, and there's no answer at all on the single question every German holder is asking, which is whether coins you already own would be protected.

That protection has a name in German law, and lawyers have been referring to a 1999 constitutional case about property holding periods as the president that ought to apply here. But nobody in government has committed to it, which is a very strange way to run a tax change, if you think about it. So, basically, the German government has booked the income before writing the law that creates it. Dr. Ingo Holl, a German tax specialist, said that if you pull crypto out of the private asset rules, you then have to explain why gold and foreign currency gets to keep their 1-year rule, which might be a little tough.

Germany's Bitcoin industry association has been calling the 12-month rule, and I quote, "Not a tax loophole, but a deliberate incentive to hold long-term." Which, by the way, I totally 100% agree with. But regardless of what anyone might say, the decision has effectively been made. The paperwork is just taking some time being processed and finalized. Okay, so keeping up with a story like this, where the law hasn't changed, but the money has already moved, it's tricky.

And that's before you work out what any of that means for your own portfolio. So, we've made things a lot easier for you, because right here on YouTube, you can join the Coin Bureau Club Light Plan. You'll get daily updates across crypto and traditional markets, and our team's read on what's actually worth your attention. And if you sign up now, your first month is absolutely free. Just tap the join button below this video to get started.

Okay, back to Germany, because while the tax bill doesn't exist yet, something else already does. On the 1st of January this year, Germany's crypto tax transparency act came into force. That's the German implementation of the EU's DAC8 directive and the OECD's crypto asset reporting framework, or CARF, which is the global standard for exchanges handing customer data to tax authorities. So, in the simple terms, here's what it does.

Every crypto exchange serving a German resident, domestic or foreign, now has to collect your tax identification number, track your transactions and balances, and report all of it directly to the Federal Central Tax Office in Bonn. Not the exchange's home regulator, but the German taxman. And that's live right now, running on every single account. The data is being collected continuously through this calendar year, and the first formal handover to the tax office falls due by the 31st of July 2027.

Now, do you notice how they built a reporting pipe first and then they started pricing the tax? The reporting obligation applies regardless of whether the 12-month exemption survives or gets abolished, which is another way of saying the system didn't actually require the policy to work. Nobody spends 2 years wiring every exchange in Europe into a German tax database without a fairly clear idea of what they intend to do with the output.

But then, if Berlin is making it harder and more expensive for you to buy and hold Bitcoin on your own, the obvious question is who's supposed to sell it to you instead? Well, in late December 2025, DZ Bank, the central institution for Germany's cooperative banking network, got full authorization from the regulator. By the 12th of January this year, it had launched a crypto trading product called "Mein Crypto", built into the banking app that Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank customers already have on their phones.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Cardano right there next to your current account. It's not one big switch, mind you. Each of roughly 650 local cooperative banks has to file its own notification with the regulator before turning it on. But a survey of those banks last September found over 71% intended to offer it. Then there are the Sparkassen, Germany's savings bank network, working through their central asset management arm.

Their rollout is phased across this year, restricted at launch to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and wrapped in total loss warnings. Conservative, but reaching roughly 50 million retail customers. Combine those two networks together and you're looking at something like 80 million customers relationships in a country of 84 million peo