Secure, regulated and real: bring your assets to Bitpanda and own them outright

The benefits of buying crypto assets on Bitpanda

Some brokers only offer financial products like Contracts for Difference (CFD) or Exchange Traded Products (ETP) when investing in crypto assets. This will not make you the owner of the underlying crypto assets. With many of these products, you cannot access the underlying crypto assets directly, move them to a wallet, stake them or sell them individually. But when you buy crypto assets on Bitpanda, you’re the beneficial owner of them and we hold them in custody as a trustee. Most crypto assets are held in secure offline wallets using state-of-the-art technology and they’re regularly audited by an external auditor. As a result, if something were to go wrong, you cannot be treated as an unsecured creditor. Instead, you assert the right of separation under Austrian law. So whether you want to move it, trade it, invest it or grow it; it’s your investment, and your choice. 

When you invest with Bitpanda, your crypto is kept in cold storage, which means that the funds are not connected to a web server or stored on a computer that is connected to the internet. These cold wallets can provide a high level of security for cryptocurrency as crypto keys are kept offline, meaning hackers and bad actors cannot get access to these funds without physical access to the device.

This table is not meant to provide exhaustive information or discuss a particular product. It is intended to provide an overview of key attributes only.

Investing on a highly regulated platform 

The safety of you and your assets has and always will be our top priority. The Bitpanda Group diligently follows European law and regulation. Last year we became the first European retail investment platform to receive a full licence from the German regulator BaFin for custody and proprietary trading of crypto assets. Bitpanda GmbH is a registered virtual asset service provider (VASP) with the Austrian, French, Spanish, Italian, Czech, and Swedish Financial Authorities. 

Bitpanda Payments GmbH possesses a payment service provider licence under PSD2, recently becoming an E-Money Institute and Bitpanda Financial Services GmbH holds a MiFID II investment firm licence with strict user verification processes that are fully compliant with AML5. We also operate in accordance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with strict security measures that meet high international safety standards. 

Further benefits of physically backed crypto storage

How you choose to invest in crypto can also affect how much tax you pay. For example, in Germany, gains on crypto assets are defined as private sales (“Privates Veräußerungsgeschäft”; PVG) of commodities subject to income tax before and free of tax after a 1 year holding period.

• Generally, gains from financial products (e.g. CFDs or ETPs) are subject to 25% capital gains tax (and potentially church tax)

Within that 1 year holding period, losses from physical crypto trades can be declared as “private sale transactions (of a commodity)” in the income tax return.

• Generally, losses from CFDs cannot be offset against gains from other financial products (e.g. stocks, bonds etc.). 

Please check the relevant tax concerning crypto investing in your country, or speak with your tax advisor.

Find out more about Bitpanda

Learn more about us, our values and our vision for the future of investing. Head over to our app for iOS and Android or our web app and check out the price developments of your favourite cryptocurrencies, stocks*, ETFs* and precious metals. Learn more about investing in the Bitpanda Academy and on the Bitpanda Blog. Don't want to miss our news? Follow our X and Instagram.

Disclaimer

Crypto custody services in Germany are provided by Bitpanda Asset Management GmbH (with its corporate seat at Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage 36, 60325 Frankfurt a.M., Germany, corporate registration number HRB 121696).