Revolut wins a crypto licence in Gibraltar, but your German account stays with Cyprus

Revolut has a new crypto licence, and it does not cover your account. The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission has authorised the subsidiary Revolut Global Digital Assets Limited as a distributed ledger technology provider, and Revolut announced the approval on October 19, 2026. If you buy Bitcoin or Ether through Revolut in Germany, you will notice nothing at first: your counterparty remains the EU entity licensed in Cyprus. That split is the real substance of the announcement, because it decides which regulator is responsible for your balance and whom you turn to in a dispute.

For investors in Germany this is no formality. Any authorisation says two things: what a provider may do, and where it may do it. The second half tends to drop out of the coverage, and that is where the mistaken belief comes from that a group licence applies everywhere the logo appears.

What the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission has actually authorised

The permission is called a DLT provider licence. DLT stands for distributed ledger technology, the technology of distributed registers on which a blockchain runs. Gibraltar operates its own regime for such providers, and that regime works independently of EU law.

According to a report by TokenPost, the licence covers three activities: the reception and execution of orders in crypto assets, custody, and staking. The company itself was incorporated in Gibraltar back on June 27, 2024. This is no vehicle set up last week but a building block prepared long in advance.

DLT provider: the licence type behind the headline

A DLT provider licence is neither a banking licence nor an investment firm authorisation. It permits crypto asset business under the supervision of the Gibraltar regulator, with that regulator's rulebook and complaints procedure. What it does not permit is offering the same services in the European Union automatically.

What is missing from the announcement is just as telling. TokenPost records that the licence names no launch markets, no supported crypto assets and no design for the staking product, and that there is no start date, no fee schedule and no information on customer eligibility. In its words, the licence sets out which services the Gibraltar entity may provide but says nothing about when or where customers can use them. The rights attach expressly to this one company and amount to no group-wide approval.

So if you are waiting for a staking product in the German app, this licence has not won you a date. The paperwork describes a possibility, not a timetable.

Why a Gibraltar licence carries no MiCA passport into the EU

Since the United Kingdom left, Gibraltar has been outside the European Union, and it is not part of the European Economic Area either. That removes the basis for the mechanism which holds the EU single market for financial services together: the passport.

The passport works like this. A firm authorised in one member state notifies the regulators of the other states and may do business there without applying for a second licence. Under the EU regulation on markets in crypto assets, MiCA for short, that applies to crypto service providers as well. We have gathered the obligations that come with it in our overview of the MiCA requirements for crypto companies.

A Gibraltar authorisation takes no part in that procedure. It is neither worse nor better; it sits outside. The practical consequence is simple: as long as your account sits with the EU entity, the MiCA rules apply. Were your account moved to the Gibraltar entity one day, they would no longer apply, and you would have to be told of such a change in advance.

Your German crypto account runs through Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd

Revolut has moved the crypto business for customers in the European Economic Area into a separate company based in Cyprus: Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd. According to a report by Decrypt, it holds a MiCA licence from the Cypriot securities regulator CySEC. Costas Michael, chief executive of Revolut Digital Assets Europe, commented there on the authorisation.

Decrypt also describes the reach: the licence could allow Revolut to offer and market crypto services in all 30 markets of the European Economic Area, through the procedure known there as passporting. The report notes at the same time that individual EU states can require additional checks. Germany is one of those 30 markets.

In practice that means a supervisory chain with two links. Primary responsibility sits with the home state regulator, CySEC in Nicosia. BaFin is the host state supervisor and watches distribution in Germany. To compare the authorisations other providers work with in the German market, see our review of regulated crypto exchanges.

The rights MiCA gives you as a German customer, and the ones it does not

MiCA is no investor protection in the sense of a guarantee. The regulation works on the provider's obligations, not on market risk. Four points count for you day to day.

First, segregation of holdings: an authorised crypto service provider must keep clients' crypto assets and money separate from its own. Second, liability in custody: if custodied client holdings are lost, the custodian answers for them. Third, an orderly complaints procedure, which the provider must set up and disclose. Fourth, the disclosure duties: marketing must be fair and clear and must not mislead.

What MiCA expressly does not deliver is deposit insurance. The 100,000 euros you know from your current account cover bank deposits, not crypto assets. If a custodian fails, segregation of holdings helps you, and no compensation fund does. No new licence changes that gap, in Gibraltar as little as in Cyprus.

Your statement and app settings name your counterparty

You do not have to rely on press releases to know who holds your balance. Three places give the answer.

The legal notices in the app set out which company provides which service; Revolut lists that allocation in its help centre under the question of who provides the crypto services. The provider blocks automated requests to those help pages, which read normally in a browser. Second, the terms of service for crypto assets name the counterparty with its registered office and company number. Third, the company name appears on the statements and tax reports you export.

If you find Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd there, your account hangs on the Cypriot authorisation. If you find another company, look closely: for legal recourse what counts is the legal person in the contract, not the brand.

Custody at the exchange or in your own hands: two different risks

The licence question disappears the moment you hold your coins yourself. If they sit in a wallet whose keys only you know, no group company is your custodian, and no regulator stands between you and your balance. That takes one risk out and puts another in: a lost key is final, and there is no complaints desk.

In between lies the trade-off every investor makes alone. If you trade often, you need the balance on the trading platform. If you hold for the long term, you do not. We have set the devices and their differences side by side in our hardware wallet review.

One practical note on moving funds: if you transfer holdings from a platform into your own wallet, record the date, the amount and the address. You will need those records later for the tax office, and they are hard to reconstruct after the fact.

The holding period and the 1,000 euro threshold survive a change of entity

For tax purposes in Germany nothing turns on where the platform is based; what counts is your own tax liability. Crypto assets rank among other assets, and gains on a sale are private disposals under the Income Tax Act.

Two figures follow from that, and you should know them. If more than twelve months pass between purchase and sale, the gain stays tax free. Below that, the 1,000 euro threshold for the calendar year applies: if the total of all private disposal gains stays under it, no tax is due; once it is exceeded, the whole amount is taxable. A threshold is no allowance, and that difference costs people money regularly.

Staking rewards fall outside that rule. They count as other income and are assessed in the year they are received. That is also why the new Gibraltar permission, with its explicit staking item, would be interesting for tax purposes if it ever applied to EU customers.

Complete records therefore matter. When a provider changes the entity, the history in the export often breaks off. Back up your data as you go and you need not ask support in a dispute; our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers shows which tools handle it.

The licence says nothing about fees, spread or withdrawal routes

An authorisation tests a provider's fitness and organisation, not its prices. Yet that is exactly where the cost of your purchase is decided. Three items are worth a look before you pick a platform.

The first is the spread, the gap between the buy and the sell price. It rarely appears in the fee schedule and still bites on every purchase. The second is the order fee, which at many providers depends on the account tier. The third is the way out: not every platform lets you send crypto assets to an address of your own. Where that is missing, selling is the only option, and a technical question turns into a tax question.

Revolut keeps building out its crypto offering for Europe, as its own euro stablecoin showed most recently; we set out separately what that launch in three markets means for customers.

The next dates in Revolut's crypto business

One question above all stays open after this licence: which countries the Gibraltar entity will serve. As long as Revolut names no launch markets, any allocation is speculation, and we make none here.

Concrete things can be watched instead. First, the legal notices in the app: a change of counterparty becomes visible there before it reaches a press release. Second, the notifications Revolut has to send when its terms of service change. Third, the registers of the supervisory authorities, which list authorisations and the services they cover.

Until then the sober reading holds: a subsidiary in Gibraltar may now execute orders, provide custody and offer staking. Whether and when anyone can use that offering is undecided.

Revolut's Gibraltar licence: Cyprus still governs your portfolio

The announcement leaves your balance unchanged. It is a good occasion to look up three things that are due anyway.

1. Identify your counterparty. Open the legal notices in the app and the terms of service for crypto assets, and note the company and its registered office. What the authorisations of other providers in the German market look like is set out in our comparison of regulated crypto exchanges.
2. Decide on custody. Set out which part of your holdings stays on the platform and which moves into your own custody; the hardware wallet comparison names the differences between the devices.
3. Secure your records. Export transactions and statements for the current year before anything changes at the entity level; the right tax tools and portfolio trackers handle that continuously.

(As of October 21, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)