Does swapping Bitcoin for WBTC restart the one-year holding period?

Anyone converting Bitcoin into Wrapped Bitcoin usually wants just one thing: to make their holding usable on Ethereum. In tax terms this step has still not been settled in Germany. The short answer to whether swapping into WBTC is taxable is therefore: there are two defensible readings, and they lead to entirely different outcomes. Under one, the switch is a swap and therefore a private disposal transaction that restarts the one-year clock on your coins. Under the other, economic identity is preserved and the transaction stays tax-neutral. Which reading counts in the end depends on what you can document.

This guide sets out the legal position under German law, meaning the Income Tax Act, the administrative view of the Federal Ministry of Finance and the case law of the Federal Fiscal Court. It names the points on which the tax authorities have so far stayed silent, and it says which documents carry the same weight under both readings.

What Wrapped Bitcoin is and why WBTC is needed on Ethereum

Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) is a token on the Ethereum blockchain that tracks the value of one Bitcoin. That is the one-sentence definition. Technically, the real Bitcoin sits with a custodian, which issues an ERC-20 token against it at a ratio of 1:1. Only that makes it possible to deploy Bitcoin in applications that know nothing but Ethereum tokens.

The construction has a cost, on a level other than the price: you have to trust the custodian holding the backing, and the smart contract issuing the tokens. In mid-October around 116,100 WBTC were in circulation, which at a Bitcoin price of roughly $81,300 corresponds to a value of a good $9.4 billion. How wrapped and staked holdings differ from one another we set out at length in our piece on whether your Bitcoin is really Bitcoin.

What matters for tax is that WBTC and BTC are two different assets on two different blockchains carrying the same value. That dual nature is precisely where the two readings take hold.

Why section 23 of the Income Tax Act applies to swaps of crypto assets at all

Crypto assets held privately count as other assets. Gains on their sale therefore fall under the private disposal transactions of section 23 of the German Income Tax Act. The provision ties the tax charge to a single period: the transaction is taxable if the interval between acquisition and disposal is "not more than one year". Hold for longer than a year and you sell tax-free.

That one-year period is the core of every crypto tax question in Germany. An exemption threshold applies alongside it: if total gains from all private disposal transactions in a calendar year stay below 1,000 euros, they are tax-free. An exemption threshold is not an allowance. Breach it, and the entire gain is taxable, not merely the part above the line.

Important for the subject of this article: a disposal is not only a sale for euros. Swapping one crypto asset for another is also, in tax terms, a disposal of the one and an acquisition of the other. If you would rather sell Bitcoin for euros outright than wrap it, the venues for that are in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

The first reading: the switch into WBTC counts as a swap and therefore a disposal

The obvious classification follows directly from the previous paragraph. You give up Bitcoin and receive a different token that lives on a different blockchain, is issued by a custodian and carries its own risks. Two different assets with one transaction in between: that fits the picture of a swap.

The consequences of this reading are uncomfortably concrete. If the wrap falls within a year of buying the Bitcoin, a taxable gain arises equal to the difference between acquisition cost and market value on the day of the wrap. And the holding period for the new WBTC starts again from that day. Wrapping shortly before the first anniversary of your Bitcoin purchase therefore pushes tax exemption out by another twelve months. How tight that link becomes when a wrapper steps in between is shown by the case around cirBTC and the holding period.

The second reading: identity of the asset under Federal Fiscal Court ruling IX R 31/12

Against the swap reading stands a concept from case law: identity of the asset, known in German as Nämlichkeit. The question is whether the asset acquired and the asset disposed of are essentially the same thing. The Federal Fiscal Court described the standards for this in its ruling of June 12, 2013 in case IX R 31/12. What counts, on that basis, is equivalence of function, of kind and of value. The case itself concerned a plot of land whose heritable building right had been cancelled before the onward sale. The court held partial economic identity to be sufficient there.

On that basis, several law firms specialising in crypto assets argue that the switch from BTC to WBTC should not be a private disposal transaction. The tax firm Winheller writes that the economic identity of the tokens remains "largely intact", because WBTC is backed by BTC and represents the same value; it is therefore likely, in the firm's view, that the swap will not be treated as a private disposal transaction. The firm Ruge Fehsenfeld reaches the same conclusion in its analysis of wrapped tokens and considers the transaction possibly tax-neutral, while expressly urging readers to follow developments and any statements from the tax authorities.

Both are advisers' legal opinions, not confirmed administrative practice. There is as yet no tax court ruling on wrapped tokens and no position from the tax authorities that you could invoke in a dispute.

A worked example shows how far apart the two readings are

The figures in the following example are rounded and freely chosen; the mechanism behind them is not. Suppose you buy one Bitcoin on March 1 for 60,000 euros. On October 1 of the same year you wrap it into WBTC, with the price that day at 70,000 euros.

Under the swap reading you completed a private disposal transaction on October 1. The gain is 10,000 euros, the transaction falls inside the one-year period, and the 1,000 euro threshold is breached by a wide margin. The full amount is charged at your personal income tax rate, and a new holding period begins for the WBTC that only runs out on October 1 of the following year.

Under the identity reading, nothing happened for tax purposes on October 1. The clock keeps running from March 1, and a sale after March 1 of the following year stays tax-free, even though WBTC sat in the account in the meantime. The gap between the two outcomes covers, in this example, the entire tax on a 10,000 euro gain, which at the top rate means a four-figure sum.

What the Finance Ministry circular of March 6, 2025 says about wrapped tokens

The administrative view on taxing crypto assets is set out in the circular of the Federal Ministry of Finance of March 6, 2025, titled "Individual questions on the income tax treatment of certain crypto assets" (file reference IV C 1 - S 2256/00042/064/043). It replaces the circular of May 10, 2022 and classifies crypto assets by their function. For currency and payment tokens it clarifies, among other things, that the extended disposal period of section 23(1) sentence 1 no. 2 sentence 4 of the Income Tax Act does not apply. Lending or staking your coins therefore does not drop you into a ten-year period.

What is not in it matters more for this article: the circular contains no express statement on wrapped tokens. The tax authorities have so far said nothing on whether a wrap is a disposal. For you that means a case officer can take either reading, and that in case of doubt you have to bring the reasoning yourself.

A second part of the circular concerns duties of cooperation and record-keeping. Those duties are the reason documentation gets so much room further down: the effort involved is the same under both readings.

Why tax software usually books the wrap as a disposal

The common crypto tax reporting programs treat every transaction in which one token leaves and another arrives as a swap by default. A wrap looks exactly like that in the imported data. Winheller points out that in the programs available on the market, representing equivalence of kind without assuming a private disposal transaction means extra work.

That has a practical consequence which surprises many crypto investors: your tax report does not give you the legal position, it gives you a default setting. If you want to rely on the identity reading, you have to flag the transaction accordingly in the tool and justify the departure to the tax office. Not every program allows that intervention, and some discard it at the next import.

The reverse also holds: simply accepting the default means paying too much if the wrap fell inside the first year. A transaction overlooked in the gain calculation therefore feeds straight through to the tax bill.

FIFO applies per wallet, and the wrap shifts the order

If you have bought Bitcoin several times at different prices, the tax office needs a rule for which unit you disposed of first. In Germany that is usually the first-in-first-out method, and it is applied per wallet, meaning per address or account rather than across all holdings. Which unit counts as sold first decides the size of the gain.

A wrap intervenes in that order. When Bitcoin leave a wallet to reappear as WBTC at a different address, the oldest acquisition costs of that wallet leave the calculation with them. Even under the identity reading you have to be able to show which acquisition costs and which acquisition date attach to the new token. Without that evidence, the tax office may estimate the acquisition costs.

DeFi with WBTC creates its own taxable events: lending, staking, liquidity pools

The wrap is rarely the end point. Holders of WBTC generally use it in DeFi applications, and each of those steps can trigger a taxable event of its own. Income from lending or staking in private holdings is regularly other income under section 22 no. 3 of the Income Tax Act and is therefore treated differently from a disposal gain. Such income falls under your personal tax rate and is untouched by the flat withholding tax; it has its own exemption threshold of 256 euros a year.

Depositing into a liquidity pool is a further case: there you hand over WBTC and receive a pool token back, which raises the same disputed question once again, one level higher. To settle the yield side before working through the tax part, the providers are in our comparison of the best staking platforms.

For the holding period of your actual stake, what was said above is reassuring: lending or staking alone does not extend the one-year period under the administrative view.

What evidence the tax office wants to see on Wrapped Bitcoin

Private disposal transactions belong in the Anlage SO annex of the tax return. Whichever reading you take, you need four details for every transaction: the acquisition date of the original Bitcoin, the acquisition cost, the date of the wrap and the market value on that day. Add to that the transaction identifiers on both blockchains, with which the route can be traced.

Anyone claiming identity of the asset also carries the reasoning: that the token is backed 1:1, tracks the same value and serves the same function. There is no form for it; you attach the explanation to the return in your own words. Which records support a holding period of more than a year we have described using the example of Bitcoin held for longer than a year.

That the tax office learns of crypto transactions is no longer a matter of conjecture. Trading venues in the European Union report user data to the tax authorities; what is transmitted, and why the reported sum is not your gain, is explained in our article on crypto reporting duties. A wrap on a decentralised application does not show up in those reports, but the preceding purchase on an exchange does.

The way back: what happens for tax when WBTC is unwrapped into Bitcoin

The question applies in mirror image on the way back. Under the swap reading, unwrapping is again a disposal, this time of the WBTC, with a fresh period starting for the Bitcoin received back. Under the identity reading nothing happens again, because economic identity persisted throughout.

From that comes a rule that works under both readings: switching back and forth without compelling reason multiplies the number of transactions you later have to explain. Every wrap and every unwrap is one more date, one more price and one more justification. If you intend to hold your stake for a long time anyway, the easier route is to leave the Bitcoin where they are.

The second point concerns timing. While the question remains open, the day shortly before the first anniversary is the worst moment for a wrap. A few weeks of patience cost nothing and take the sting out of the whole dispute for that holding.

Wrapped Bitcoin: wrap before the anniversary and you pay tax on the gain

The legal position is open; your preparation need not be. Three steps put you in the better position under both readings:

1. Gather the acquisition data. Note the purchase date, purchase price and wallet for each Bitcoin holding before you wrap anything. A tool that tracks holding periods per wallet can be found in our comparison of crypto tax tools.
2. Check the anniversary before you wrap. If the purchase is less than twelve months ago, the wrap pushes tax exemption out by a full year under the stricter reading. Leaving the holding untouched instead calls for reliable custody; the devices for that are in the hardware wallet comparison.
3. Justify the departure if you rely on it. Anyone applying identity of the asset attaches the reasoning to the return and documents the 1:1 backing on the relevant date. Tools with which prices and backing can be evidenced for a given date are collected in the comparison of analytics platforms.

(As of October 17, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)