ING and Bitcoin: Crypto ETNs in Your Portfolio

You can buy Bitcoin at ING, but not as a coin. What ends up in the bank's Direkt-Depot are crypto ETNs: exchange-traded notes that track the price of a cryptocurrency. The bank lists around 50 of them in a promotional offer, from five issuers, as a one-off purchase or as a savings plan from one euro per instalment. You need no wallet for this and no private key. What you hold at the end is a security, not a cryptocurrency, and two things hang on that distinction that cost or save more money over the years than any order fee: the ongoing product costs and the question of whether the one-year holding period applies to you.

This article sorts out ING's crypto investments: what is tradable, what trading costs, who really pays the zero-euro order fee, and what the tax treatment equal to a direct purchase of Bitcoin actually depends on.

Can you buy Bitcoin at ING? Crypto ETNs yes, coins no

ING lists crypto as a separate product group within its securities offering, not as a crypto exchange. On its product page the bank describes the offer as access to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without a wallet and without private keys, traded through the existing Direkt-Depot. No account at a crypto exchange is needed for this, and no custody solution either: these securities sit in the portfolio like a share or an ETF, with the same settlement and the same tax statement.