Crypto Holding Period Wobbles: What to Check Now

The coalition agreement does not protect the one-year holding period for crypto assets. Since September 25, 2026 that is no longer a supposition but the statement of a Union member of parliament himself: replying to a citizen’s question on abgeordnetenwatch.de, CDU Bundestag member Lars Ehm wrote that the agreement contains “no concrete undertaking on the unchanged continuation of the one-year holding period for crypto assets”. He went on: a commitment to abolish it can “no more be derived from it than a binding promise of its unchanged continuation”. Anyone who has assumed until now that the coalition had written tax exemption after one year into stone was relying on something that was never there.

In the short term that changes nothing about the legal position for you as an investor, but a great deal about the basis on which you plan. The one-year period still applies, and it applies for the whole of 2026 as well. What matters is the cutoff date set out in the draft bill from the Federal Ministry of Finance: anyone buying after December 31, 2026 is to fall under the new system. That leaves less than four months in which you can still place purchases under the old rule. This article sorts out what is documented, what remains open, and which three things can actually be checked right now.