Buying IOTA with PayPal: Bitpanda and Bitvavo list the coin, Kraken and Coinbase do not

You can buy IOTA with PayPal in Germany, just not from PayPal itself. PayPal does not sell cryptocurrencies there. Instead, you use PayPal to deposit euros with a crypto exchange that offers IOTA and buy the coin there. On November 10, 2026, two regulated providers met both conditions in our check: Bitpanda and Bitvavo. Kraken and Coinbase accept PayPal but do not list IOTA.

There is also a trap that exists only with IOTA. Since the switch to IOTA Rebased in May 2025, a new network has been running, and some platforms still show the coin under two names. If you pick the wrong listing or follow a guide from 2021, you end up with an outdated price or a wallet that is no longer supported. This guide shows you the providers, the fees with a worked example, the purchase step by step and what applies afterwards to custody and tax.

Can you buy IOTA directly on PayPal?

No. PayPal runs its own crypto trading only in a few countries, mainly the United States. Even there, IOTA is not on the list of coins you can hold in a PayPal account. With a German PayPal account there is no buy button for cryptocurrencies, whatever the coin.

What works in Germany is PayPal as a payment method. A payment method is simply the route by which your money reaches the platform, like a SEPA transfer or a credit card. Your contract for the coins is with the exchange. The exchange holds your IOTA, needs the licence and is your point of contact if there are problems. PayPal has nothing to do with the actual purchase of IOTA.

The situation is the same as with other coins. We described it in detail for XRP on November 9: buying XRP with PayPal. With IOTA, however, the choice is smaller, because many large providers do not list the coin at all. Which platforms accept PayPal in general is shown in our comparison of providers that take PayPal.

Bitpanda and Bitvavo: two crypto exchanges with IOTA and PayPal deposits

To buy IOTA with PayPal you need a provider that can do both: trade the coin and accept PayPal. Among the regulated platforms for customers in Germany, two fit the bill.

Bitpanda

The Vienna-based provider offers PayPal as an instant deposit in euros and Swiss francs. According to Bitpanda, a PayPal deposit costs nothing; the cost is built into the purchase price. Bitpanda shows you a fixed price including a spread, and the standard app has no order book like a traditional exchange. That is convenient for beginners but rarely the cheapest route for larger amounts. For its German business Bitpanda is supervised directly by BaFin and holds a licence as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU's MiCA regulation.

One detail you should know: on November 10, Bitpanda's public price list shows two entries. IOTA costs €0.0309 there, which matches the market price. Under the old ticker MIOTA, by contrast, there is a price of €0.1079, almost three and a half times as much. That value dates from before the network switch and does not reflect the market. In the app, check which listing is tradeable and buy only the one with the current price.

Bitvavo

The Dutch exchange lists IOTA against the euro and names PayPal as a payment method on its country page for Germany. Bitvavo's help page adds a restriction: PayPal works only for deposits. Withdrawals go back to your bank account by SEPA transfer. Comparison sites put the fee for a PayPal deposit at 2 percent, while a SEPA transfer is free. Trading fees start at 0.15 percent for makers and 0.25 percent for takers. A maker adds liquidity to the order book with a limit order; a taker executes an existing order immediately. Bitvavo operates under a MiCA licence from the Dutch regulator AFM.

Both providers also feature in our overview of the best crypto exchanges. There you can see how they compare with other platforms on coin selection, savings plans and security.

Kraken, Coinbase and eToro: where buying IOTA with PayPal falls short

Many guides list a handful of exchanges that take PayPal across the board. For IOTA that is of little help, because the payment method alone is not enough.

• Kraken lists PayPal among its deposit methods in its own comparisons, but its price page itself states: "IOTA is not available on Kraken". The coin cannot be traded there.
• Coinbase enabled PayPal for customers in Germany in 2023. IOTA is not among the coins you can buy there, even though Coinbase shows a price page for it.
• eToro accepts PayPal for deposits and shows IOTA under the old ticker MIOTA. According to a report by PC-Welt, however, customers in Germany now get cryptocurrencies there only as CFDs. A CFD is a contract for difference: you bet on the price movement but do not own a single real coin and cannot transfer it to your own wallet.

If an offer promises you real IOTA, check whether the order says "Buy" or "CFD". If you want to speculate on prices deliberately, our broker comparison sets out the differences between an exchange and a crypto broker. A CFD is not suitable for long-term holding, because it incurs overnight financing fees and the coin never passes into your ownership.

We have deliberately left Binance out here. The exchange appears in many older guides, including our own from 2021, but it is not needed for the PayPal route, because Bitpanda and Bitvavo cover purchases in euros under European supervision.

Buying IOTA with PayPal: a five-step guide from sign-up to order

The process is almost the same at Bitpanda and Bitvavo. PayPal only comes into play in step three; you do everything else on the platform.

1. Open an account. Register with your email address in the app or browser. Use the same name your PayPal account is registered under. Exchanges reject payments from someone else's PayPal account.
2. Verify your identity. KYC stands for "Know Your Customer" and means the exchange checks you with an ID document and photo or video identification. Anti-money-laundering law requires it, and without this check you can neither deposit nor buy. The platform will also ask for your tax identification number.
3. Deposit euros via PayPal. Under "Deposit", choose PayPal as the payment method, enter the amount and confirm in the PayPal window. The platform shows you the fee before you confirm. Check it there, because terms change.
4. Choose the right IOTA listing. Search for IOTA and compare the price shown with the current IOTA price. On November 10 it is around €0.031. A listing with a clearly different price belongs to the old network.
5. Complete the purchase. At Bitpanda, you enter a euro amount and buy at the price shown. At Bitvavo, you can also place a limit order that is only executed at your target price and incurs the lower maker fee.

Because IOTA trades so cheaply, even small amounts get you thousands of coins. That says nothing about value: what counts for an assessment is market capitalisation, the price multiplied by the number of coins in circulation, not the price of a single token.

Fees compared: what PayPal costs versus a SEPA transfer

PayPal is the fastest payment route but not the cheapest. The calculation for €100 at Bitvavo shows the difference, using the fees cited by comparison sites in autumn 2026 and a price of €0.031:

The difference is about 65 IOTA, or around two euros per €100. On a one-off purchase of €50 that hardly matters. If you top up regularly, though, you pay the two percent every time, and on €1,000 that is already €20. At many exchanges, credit cards cost roughly the same as PayPal.

At Bitpanda the calculation looks different: according to the provider the PayPal deposit is free, but the purchase price includes a spread, which you see in the order before every purchase. So do not compare only the deposit fee, but always the sum of deposit, trading fee and spread.

One more point concerns withdrawals. Some platforms hold back coins paid for with PayPal or a credit card for a few days before you may transfer them to your own wallet. The reason is the risk of a chargeback. If you want to move your IOTA off the exchange straight after buying, read this rule in your exchange's terms before depositing.

IOTA Rebased: what has changed in the network, technology and token supply

Many guides to buying IOTA date from a time when the network worked very differently. The IOTA Foundation completed the upgrade to IOTA Rebased on May 5, 2025. Since then IOTA has been a conventional layer-1 blockchain with validators and smart contracts in the Move programming language. The Tangle, the former blockless data structure, and the central coordinator are history. The old network was called Stardust.

For you as a buyer this has three consequences:

• The name: the coin is now called IOTA. Some providers still list the old ticker MIOTA, in some cases with an outdated price.
• The supply: according to the IOTA Foundation's documentation, 4.6 billion IOTA were carried over from the old network at launch. Each epoch, roughly one day on the IOTA network, creates 767,000 new tokens. There is no longer a fixed maximum supply; part of the transaction fees is burned and acts as a counterweight. On November 10, around 4.73 billion IOTA are in circulation.
• The yield: the new tokens go as staking rewards to validators and to everyone who delegates IOTA to them. If you do not stake, you are diluted, because your share of the total supply falls with every epoch.

The technical relaunch has so far done nothing for the price. Compared with a year ago IOTA has lost around 76 percent, and the coin is more than 99 percent below its all-time high of €4.43 in December 2017. With a market capitalisation of about €146 million, IOTA no longer ranks among the large cryptocurrencies. A total loss is possible with a coin of this size, so invest only money you can afford to lose.

IOTA wallet after the purchase: Firefly has been replaced, and hardware wallets need the new app

After the purchase your IOTA sit with the exchange. That is fine for small amounts you want to trade. If you hold for longer or want to stake, transfer the coins to your own wallet. This is where most mistakes happen since the network switch.

• Firefly no longer exists. The IOTA Foundation discontinued the old wallet with Rebased. Its successor is the IOTA Wallet as a browser extension, supplemented by a web-based wallet dashboard.
• Ledger needs the new IOTA app. Ledger hardware wallets are still supported, but only with the new IOTA app for the Rebased network. On the older Nano S you have to install it manually.
• The network must be right. When withdrawing, select the IOTA mainnet. Addresses on the new network start with 0x, old Stardust addresses with "iota1". If a guide shows an address starting with iota1, it is out of date.

Before your first large transfer, send a test transaction with a small amount. A transaction on the blockchain cannot be reversed, and a wrong address means losing the coins.

Tax on IOTA in Germany: holding period, exemption limit and staking income

For tax purposes, IOTA is subject to the rules for private sales transactions under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. If you sell your coins at a profit within one year of purchase, the gain is taxable as soon as all private sales gains in a year exceed the exemption limit of €1,000. After a holding period of one year, the sale is tax-free. The payment route plays no role: whether you deposited via PayPal or SEPA transfer makes no difference.

Staking rewards are treated differently. For tax purposes this income counts as other income at the time it is received, and here the exemption limit is €256 a year. Staking does not extend the one-year holding period for the staked coins themselves, as the Federal Ministry of Finance has clarified. Because IOTA staking pays out small amounts daily, a portfolio tracker that records each receipt at the day's price is worthwhile.

That said, gains on IOTA have been rare over the past twelve months. Losses are relevant for tax too: losses realised within the holding period can be offset against gains from other private sales transactions.

IOTA with PayPal: on €100 the payment route costs around two euros

Buying IOTA with PayPal works in Germany through two regulated exchanges, and the choice depends mainly on how you buy. Bitpanda accepts PayPal with no deposit fee and charges through the purchase price; Bitvavo charges a deposit fee for PayPal but offers an order book with low trading fees in return. At both, choose the current IOTA listing, not the old MIOTA one.

1. Choose a licensed provider: check in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges which platform holds a MiCA licence and lists IOTA.
2. Decide on custody: if you hold for longer, pick a device from our hardware wallet comparison that supports the new IOTA app.
3. Prepare for tax: record purchase dates, prices and staking income; a tool from our comparison of crypto tax tools does this automatically.

(As of November 10, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)