Germany’s Bundestag on Thursday 12 November passed a customs reform that lets the customs administration freeze crypto and other assets worth more than €100,000 for 30 days without opening a criminal case, when there are factual indications that the assets are not of lawful origin. A finance court can then extend the freeze and, on customs’ application, confiscate the assets for good. The law, known as the Zollfinanzgerechtigkeitsgesetz, was adopted with the votes of CDU/CSU, SPD and AfD, according to the Bundestag’s own report on the debate. It is due to take effect on 1 January 2027 and still needs the Bundesrat, the chamber of the federal states.
For anyone holding bitcoin in Germany, the German crypto seizure law is not a wealth tax, and a large balance alone does not trigger it. What it does create is a route to confiscation that runs outside criminal procedure, in which the owner’s ability to explain where the coins came from carries much of the weight.
What the Bundestag passed on 12 November
The full name is long: the “law for more fairness by strengthening the customs administration and fighting financial crime”. The federal cabinet adopted it on 12 August 2026, and the government bill, Drucksache 21/8282 of 30 September, runs to 390 pages. Most of it is about how customs is organised. The general customs directorate is split into a branch for customs and taxes and one for security and enforcement, the customs criminal office and the sanctions-enforcement unit are brought inside, and the customs financial intelligence unit gets more powers, according to the government’s cabinet summary.
When the cabinet approved it in August, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD) called it a clear signal to criminals that the state is getting tougher. The bill says it partly carries out the federal “Action Plan against organised crime” of February 2026 and recommendations of the FATF, the international anti-money-laundering body, and of the Egmont Group of financial intelligence units.
The Finance Committee approved an amended version on Wednesday 11 November, according to the Bundestag’s parliamentary news service, and the plenary adopted it the next day in that form, on the committee’s recommendation in Drucksache 21/9136. Die Linke voted against and the Greens abstained. Two opposition motions fell: the Greens wanted a fully digital register of real-estate deals, and Die Linke wanted the planned joint centre against tax and financial crime set up as an independent unit within customs.
The part that matters to crypto holders is a new chapter of “special measures to clarify and secure suspicious assets”. It gives customs an administrative tool, separate from the criminal courts, to deal with large sums whose origin it doubts.
How the €100,000 crypto freeze works
The government draft defines the assets it covers broadly. They include crypto-assets as defined by the EU’s MiCA regulation and “other comparable digital representations of a value or right”. A companion rule lets customs attach claims and property rights, and crypto-assets count as such rights. Bitcoin, ether and stablecoins are therefore inside the scope, whether held on an exchange or elsewhere.
The draft then sets a size test. An asset is “significant” if it is worth more than €100,000, or more than €50,000 when it has to be entered in a public register, such as land, a car, a ship or an aircraft. Crypto sits in no such register, so €100,000 is the figure that applies. The value can be estimated, and several items can be counted together. The explanatory memorandum treats the amount as a rule of thumb rather than a hard floor: the wording is “in particular”, so a holding just under €100,000 is not automatically safe.
Two further conditions have to be met. Customs must have factual indications that the assets are not of lawful origin, and the assets must be found within customs’ area of responsibility. Where there is a suspicion of a crime, the criminal procedure and the prosecutor take priority, and the new tool steps aside.
What counts as a well-founded doubt
The draft does not leave the doubt to instinct. It asks for an overall assessment and names the factors that weigh in it:
- whether the person’s income and wealth are in reasonable proportion to the asset;
- whether the source the person gives can be checked;
- how transparent the ownership is, including the use of shell companies;
- links to convicted persons or criminal organisations;
- untrue statements by the person concerned, a criterion the Finance Committee added in November.
This list is where documentation comes in. A holder who bought coins on a regulated exchange and kept the statements has an answer to most of these points. A holder who mined or bought early, on platforms that no longer exist and without records, may struggle with the first two.
Freeze for 30 days, extend by 150, then a court decides
The procedure has three steps, each with its own time limit and its own decision-maker. These are the rules of the government draft as amended in committee; section numbers may still change in the version that is finally promulgated.
First, the freeze. Customs may secure the assets and take them into custody for up to 30 days to clarify where they came from. Securing works as a ban on transfers. For a movable item, the owner can get it back by paying its value into custody instead. If the conditions fall away during the period, customs has to release the assets.
Second, the extension. If 30 days are not enough, customs can ask a finance court to extend the freeze once, by up to 150 days. The court grants it if further enquiries are not obviously hopeless and the doubts have been made plausible. Filing the request pauses the 30-day clock. A single judge decides without a hearing, and that decision cannot be appealed. Counting both periods, a freeze can last about 180 days.
Third, confiscation. Before the period runs out, customs must either release the assets or apply to the finance court for confiscation. The person concerned has a month to respond in writing. The court orders confiscation only if, in its free assessment of the whole proceedings, it is convinced the assets are “not of lawful origin”. Otherwise it rejects the application and orders release. Under the government draft, the senate would as a rule have handed the case to a single judge; the committee struck that rule, so a senate, a panel of finance judges, now decides. There is also a hardship clause: no confiscation if it would put the owner’s economic existence at risk.
The person concerned can go to the finance courts against the freeze itself, including in urgent interim proceedings. If the case turns into a criminal investigation, the committee version keeps the assets secured rather than releasing them in between.
The bill compares the new tool with older ones. Customs can already hold cash in cross-border traffic, for up to 90 days with a court extension, and German criminal law knows an independent confiscation of assets from unclear sources. The memorandum argues that the new procedure needs a longer period because the finance court has to be able to rule on the merits.
The law in numbers
The figures below come from the government bill and the Finance Committee’s report.
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Value that makes an asset “significant” | over €100,000 (rule of thumb) | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Threshold for registered assets (land, cars, ships, aircraft) | over €50,000 | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Freeze by customs | up to 30 days | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Extension by a finance court (once) | up to 150 days | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Written reply period before confiscation | one month | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Budget for IT and crypto-asset analysis tools | €28.4 million | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Extra spending over four years | about €109 million, of which €82 million one-off in 2027 | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Expected yearly revenue from confiscations from 2028 | about €308 million | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Start date | 1 January 2027 (some parts later) | Drucksache 21/8282 |
| Planned evaluation of the seizure tool | by mid-2029 | Drucksache 21/9136 |
The €308 million estimate covers all confiscated assets, from property and luxury cars to art and crypto. The bill does not give a crypto share. The €28.4 million line is the clearest sign that customs expects to deal with coins: it pays for IT infrastructure and for tools to analyse crypto-assets.
Critics see a reversal of the burden of proof
The main objection is about who has to prove what. Formally the court must be convinced that the assets are not of lawful origin, and the person concerned is not obliged to produce evidence. In practice, critics say, the doubt factors and the one-month reply period push the owner to explain.
The German Bar Association (DAV) made that case against the finance ministry’s earlier draft in April 2026. As Legal Tribune Online reported on 20 April, the association said the procedure would run without an initial criminal suspicion and that it in effect provides for “a worrying reversal of the burden of proof” to the detriment of those concerned (“faktisch ist eine bedenkliche Beweislastumkehr zulasten der Betroffenen vorgesehen”). It also raised serious doubts about compatibility with the constitution’s protection of property, Article 14 of the Basic Law. Those comments targeted the ministry draft, not the text passed on 12 November.
In the plenary debate, Ingo Vogel (SPD) called the bill the biggest reorganisation of customs in decades, built on the principle of following the money, and argued that criminally acquired wealth enjoys no protection under Article 14. According to Bitcoin.com’s German edition, he also said the law means no automatic confiscation and no blanket reversal of the burden of proof. Anja Karliczek (CDU/CSU) said drug dealers and clan bosses should no longer be able to count on keeping their assets, while honest citizens could rely on their property staying theirs.
Kay Gottschalk (AfD) said the switch to a senate made the bill acceptable to his group, but criticised vague legal terms and the many unfilled posts at customs. Max Lucks (Greens) called the bill too small, setting the expected €308 million a year against about €100 billion in dirty money he said is laundered in Germany every year, roughly 0.3 percent. Isabelle Vandre (Die Linke) described the steps as baby steps and objected to direct customs access to the central register of foreigners.
What the law means for crypto holders in Germany
The law does not create a new duty to report holdings, and it does not reach every wallet above €100,000. The trigger is a combination: a significant value, concrete indications of an unlawful origin, and assets found within the remit of customs. The text ties the power to assets found within customs’ area of responsibility, such as border checks and its own investigations, and does not spell out how far that reaches for a holder who never crosses a border with a hardware wallet.
Holding coins in self-custody changes the practical picture but not the legal one. Seizing a device does not move coins without the keys. Coins on a platform are different: the draft lets customs attach claims and property rights, so it can act through the intermediary that holds them. The law does not say how customs would take control of coins held under a private key that only the owner knows.
For a holder whose coins are legal, the useful step is to keep the paper trail. That means exchange statements and trade histories, bank transfers that funded the purchases, records of blockchain and earns a reward, which makes rewriting history very expensive.">mining or staking income, and the wallet addresses that link one to the next. By 1 January 2027, German crypto platforms also have to collect tax self-certifications from their customers, as our page on the KStTG deadline explains, so records of who owns which account are growing anyway.
The weak spot is old holdings. Coins bought in 2013 or 2017 on an exchange that has since closed, or received peer to peer, may have no surviving documents. The law does not presume them illegal, and the court still has to be convinced of an unlawful origin. But the doubt factors look at whether income and wealth fit together and whether the stated source can be checked, and an undocumented fortune scores badly on both.
If customs does freeze assets, the owner has legal remedies at each step: an action in the finance courts against the freeze, interim relief, a written reply within a month before any confiscation, and the hardship clause. The 150-day extension itself cannot be appealed.
Part of a wider European move on crypto seizures
Germany is not the only country giving the state faster access to crypto. Poland’s Senate is examining a bill that would let the interior minister freeze crypto before any court rules, as we reported on 11 November. The German tool differs in one respect: confiscation stays with a court.
At EU level, the anti-money-laundering regulation will apply from 10 July 2027 and bar crypto firms from keeping anonymous accounts, as described on our AMLR event page. That regime sets rules for companies. The German law is a national, administrative power aimed at assets, and the bill cites the FATF and the Egmont Group as its references, not the EU regulation.
What happens next: the Bundesrat
The law still has to pass the Bundesrat. The government bill was drafted as a law that needs the states’ consent. The Bundesrat’s next plenary session is on 20 November, and its agenda, last updated on 13 November, does not list the customs law, though agendas can still be supplemented. No date for a Bundesrat vote has been announced.
If the states agree, the main part takes effect on 1 January 2027, some articles on the day after promulgation and a few on 1 January 2028. The coalition wants the new administrative seizure tool evaluated by mid-2029, drawing on the experience of 2027 and 2028.