Germany Provides Leadership for Bitcoin Tax Clarity
If the American IRS is looking for precedent for their upcoming tax guidelines related to bitcoin, they can now look to Germany. An inquest from the Bundestag(German Parliament) reported in the German language publication Die Welt declared that profits from the sale of bitcoins held as an investment are exempt from taxation if the coins are held for over....
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In a post published Tuesday on the Bitcoin Foundation blog, Affiliates Director at the Foundation Mark Woods today welcomed the Foundation's newest affiliates from Germany and The Netherlands. The first is Bundesverband Bitcoin (Germany) and Stichting Bitcoin Nederland (quite obviously, The Netherlands). "Home to some of the most active bitcoin communities, both Germany and the Netherlands have entire streets of local businesses that prefer to accept bitcoin. The town of Kreuzberg in Berlin made headlines in 2013 and a street in the Hague in the Netherlands has been dubbed 'Bitcoin....
The German government has passed new legislation to introduce all-electronic securities as part of the country’s wider blockchain strategy. According to the country’s finance ministry, the new law relaxes rules forcing issuers and holders of securities to document transactions with a paper certificate. Legal Clarity According to a report, the paper certificate can now be “replaced with an entry in a central securities depository or a register kept by private-sector banks.” The report also speculates that this means “an entry in a crypto securities register....
Berlin has long been seen as something of a hub of bitcoin activity, but Germany as a whole has lagged slightly behind the UK in terms of bitcoin popularity... until now. For the first six months of the year, the UK was home to a higher number of downloads of the original bitcoin client (Bitcoin-Qt) than Germany. Since then, Germany has taken the lead, with 19,248 Bitcoin-Qt downloads taking place in the country from 1st July to the time of writing, compared with 16,826 in the UK. Those based in Germany have also been giving CoinDesk more attention over the past few months. In June and....
Back in August, Germany became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as “private money.” Note this is not the same as legal tender. This, perhaps above all, is seen as legitimizing Bitcoin’s image worldwide, where prevailing narratives before mid-2013 or so focused on Silk Road and money launderers. In Germany itself, Bitcoin spenders and businesspeople are now free to engage in digital commerce without the fear that their activities put them on the wrong side of the law. But this designation has further implications in Germany and Europe. First, the currency’s decentralized....
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has obtained approval from Germany’s financial regulator, Bafin, to provide cryptocurrency trading and custody services. Coinbase Germany will launch in the coming weeks. Coinbase, a Nasdaq-listed company, announced Monday that it has secured a cryptocurrency license in Germany. The company explained: “The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin) has awarded Coinbase Germany GmbH a license for crypto custody and trading, under the new licensing regime introduced in January 2020.” According to Coinbase, the Bafin licensing....