Exchange Insolvency and Crypto Tax in Germany

If a crypto exchange becomes insolvent and you later get something back, what decides the crypto tax is not the size of the payment but its form. If the same coins return into your control, nothing has happened for tax purposes: acquisition date and acquisition cost run on unchanged, and a holding period that expired long ago stays expired. If money arrives instead on a filed insolvency claim, the event is an entirely different one, and the tax authorities have not expressly regulated it to this day.

That difference is the whole article. It concerns many German investors right now, because several large proceedings are stuck in the wind-up phase and a deadline at Mt. Gox expires on October 31, 2026. Both routes are set out below in detail, along with the evidence question on which most cases turn in practice.

Two Routes Out of the Proceedings: Segregation in Coins or an Insolvency Claim in Euros

When insolvency proceedings open, the assets split into two pots. Everything belonging to the debtor forms the insolvency estate and is distributed among the creditors. What belongs to a third party, even though it sits with the debtor, is not part of it. For that case the German Insolvency Code provides for segregation: under Section 47 InsO, a person holding a right in an object that does not belong to the estate may demand its surrender. They are then not an insolvency creditor but an owner reclaiming their property.