Bürgergeld and Bitcoin: How Much Crypto Can You Keep?

Yes, your crypto holdings count as assets for Bürgergeld, Germany's basic income support. They are a realisable asset within the meaning of the Social Code, they are valued at their market value, and they are set against the same allowances as an instant-access savings account or a share portfolio. What has changed since the summer of 2026: the allowances are no longer the same for everyone, and the one-year grace period at the start of a claim no longer exists for financial assets.

This article explains how much you may keep, which day decides the valuation, what you must tell the Jobcenter of your own accord, and the routes by which an authority learns of holdings you have not declared. All the figures come from the text of the law itself, not from advice portals.

Bürgergeld has become Grundsicherungsgeld: what changed on assets

The benefit that people still colloquially call Bürgergeld carries a new name in the law. Under section 19 of Book Two of the German Social Code, claimants capable of work receive Grundsicherungsgeld, basic income support. Official jargon and the search engines still lag behind; the decision letters do not. Anyone filing a claim today has the new rules applied, even if they searched for the old word.

More important than the name are two changes of substance. First, the blanket grace period for assets has gone. Assets used to be left untouched up to a high ceiling in the first year of a claim, and only then did the actual allowances bite. Under section 12 SGB II that grace period now applies only to owner-occupied residential property: a house or a flat you live in yourself stays out of the reckoning during the grace period, regardless of value and size. For portfolios, savings books and coins that buffer no longer exists. Your allowances apply from day one.

Second, the size of the allowance now depends on your age. For a crypto holder that is no marginal detail, because it can make the difference between an untouched holding and one you have to spend down, without anything about your holding having changed at all.

The asset allowances under section 12 SGB II: what your age decides

An allowance is the amount you may keep before anything at all is counted against you. Section 12 subsection 2 SGB II grades it by age, and it does so for each person in the benefit unit separately:

Under the law the higher amount applies from the beginning of the month in which you reach the relevant age threshold. Someone turning 41 on the 20th of a month therefore has 12,500 euros free from the first of that same month. With a holding that sits just above a threshold, that single month can decide the outcome.

Work it through on an actual holding. Bitcoin stood at roughly 74,100 euros on September 24, 2026 (CoinGecko). A quarter of a bitcoin is therefore about 18,500 euros. For a single person aged 35 with an allowance of 10,000 euros, some 8,500 euros sit above the line and count as assets to be spent down. The same 0.25 BTC is fully protected for a 52-year-old with a 20,000-euro allowance.

Transferable allowances: how the benefit unit adds up

In social law a benefit unit is the circle of people who are jointly responsible for their upkeep, typically partners and minor children in the household. For assets, a rule applies there that many overlook: allowances the other members have not used up are transferred under section 12 subsection 2 SGB II to the person whose assets breach their own limit.

A couple aged 34 and 52 bring 10,000 plus 20,000 euros between them, so 30,000 euros. If the entire wealth sits in the younger person's wallet alone, that does no harm as long as the total stays below 30,000 euros. The older person's unused allowance moves across in the arithmetic. Hurriedly transferring your coins to your partner before a claim therefore gains you nothing the law does not already give you, and it may well invite questions.

The second half of the calculation gets overlooked too. Alongside the allowance, section 12 subsection 1 SGB II lists items that do not count as assets in the first place. These include reasonable household effects, one reasonable motor vehicle for each employable person in the benefit unit, insurance contracts earmarked for retirement provision, and state-subsidised pension savings. A crypto holding falls under none of these exceptions, not even if you personally regard it as your retirement provision. Number 4 of that subsection does protect assets expressly designated as retirement provision, but only for periods of full-time self-employment without contributions to the state pension scheme, and only up to a statutorily calculated maximum for each year begun.

Market value on the cut-off date: why the day you file decides your entitlement

Section 12 subsection 3 SGB II contains the sentence that weighs most heavily when prices move. Assets are to be taken into account at their market value, and the decisive moment for the valuation is the point at which the claim for an award, or for a renewed award, is filed. If you acquire assets only later, the moment of acquisition counts.

Market value is the price that could be achieved on the market. For a coin with an active exchange listing, that is the price on that day, not your purchase price and not the level from the week before last. Three things follow for you, and the third is where clawbacks arise in practice.

The cut-off date is a day, not an average. A holding that sits below the allowance on a monthly average can sit above it on the day of filing and then count in full. The reverse applies in your favour. Next: every renewal claim sets a new cut-off date. A holding that raised no eyebrows on the initial claim can be above the line at renewal if the price has risen in the meantime. And finally the rule works in the other direction too. Anyone acquiring coins while receiving the benefit, from staking rewards or an airdrop for instance, has new assets at the moment of receipt, which section 60 SGB I requires them to report without delay.

If you hold your assets spread across several wallets and exchanges, have a coherent consolidated statement ready for the cut-off date. A portfolio tracker with tax reporting delivers exactly that snapshot with date, price and source, and you will need it a second time for the tax office anyway.

Which crypto holdings count as realisable and which do not

Realisable in social law means you can turn the item into money or borrow against it within a foreseeable period. For a liquid coin on a mainstream exchange that is uncontroversial. The edge cases are the interesting ones.

Locked, pledged and illiquid holdings

Coins tied up in staking for a fixed term cannot be sold immediately. That does not reduce their value, however, and a lock-up of a few weeks does not make them unrealisable. Long lock-up periods with no option to exit, or tokens without a functioning market, are a different matter. Here it comes down to the individual case, and here it pays to document the lock-up in writing rather than merely assert it.

Particular hardship

Section 12 subsection 1 number 7 SGB II exempts items and rights whose realisation would amount to particular hardship. That is a narrow exception for cases in which a sale would be economically unreasonable, for instance a sale well below value in a forced situation. As a rule it cannot be founded on a price loss since purchase. Anyone wanting to rely on it should discuss the point with an advice centre or a lawyer specialising in social law before writing it into the claim.

Debts

Assets are looked at gross as a matter of principle. An overdraft on your current account is not automatically netted off against a wallet. Anyone who has pledged coins as security for a loan should be able to document the pledge, because it genuinely does restrict realisability. How loans with coins as collateral work for tax and under civil law is set out in the article on bitcoin-backed loans, tax and the holding period.

The duty to cooperate under section 60 SGB I: what you must declare to the Jobcenter

The obligation to declare crypto is not in SGB II but one level above it. Under section 60 subsection 1 of Book One of the German Social Code, anyone who applies for or receives social benefits must state all facts that are material to the benefit. On top of that comes the duty to report changes in circumstances without delay, and the duty to name evidence and produce it on request.

That wording is deliberately broad. It does not turn on whether the claim form expressly asks about cryptocurrencies. What is material is whatever can influence the entitlement, and assets can influence it. The question about existing assets covers coins just as it covers a savings book, even if the word is missing from the form.

What changes during a claim is therefore reportable without delay as well: an inflow from staking or lending, an airdrop, an inheritance in coins, a sale that puts money in your account. Anyone who reports an inherited holding only months later also acquires an evidence problem, because they have to reconstruct the deceased's holding period and acquisition costs. How that is done is set out in our article on proving the holding period and purchase price of inherited bitcoin.

How the Jobcenter finds out about your coins

Many assume that a self-custodied wallet is invisible to an authority. That holds for the wallet itself, and it has long ceased to hold for the route that leads to it. Three channels are responsible, and they operate independently of one another.

The automated data comparison, and what it cannot do

Under section 52 SGB II, the Federal Employment Agency and the municipal bodies compare claimants' data automatically four times a year, on 1 January, 1 April, 1 July and 1 October. That comparison looks for pensions, for periods of compulsory insurance, for benefits from other institutions and for data on exemption orders reported to the Federal Central Tax Office. It does not capture crypto holdings. Anyone concluding from this that a wallet stays undetected draws the wrong conclusion, because the comparison is only the first of three routes.

The account data retrieval at the Federal Central Tax Office

Section 93 subsection 8 of the Fiscal Code expressly permits the authorities responsible for basic income support for jobseekers to retrieve account master data from the Federal Central Tax Office. The conditions are that it is necessary in order to examine the conditions of entitlement, and that a prior request for information addressed to you has not achieved its purpose or holds no promise of success. The retrieval yields no balances and no wallet addresses, but the master data of the accounts and securities accounts held in your name at German credit institutions.

For crypto it is nevertheless the most effective channel, because almost every holding came into being via a bank account. Anyone transferring euros to an exchange and later receiving euros back leaves a trail on the bank statement that leads to the exchange. From there section 60 subsection 2 SGB II carries on: anyone who holds balances or safeguards assets for a person receiving benefits must provide information to the Employment Agency on request. An exchange that holds your coins in custody falls under that provision.

The reporting duty for crypto service providers since 2026

The third channel is new. With the Crypto-Asset Tax Transparency Act, Germany implemented the EU's DAC8 directive, which builds on the international CARF framework. Since 1 January 2026, reporting crypto-asset service providers have had to collect data on their users and transmit it to the Federal Central Tax Office, which exchanges it with the tax authorities of the other member states. The first reporting period is the 2026 calendar year, with transmission in the year that follows.

What gets reported is identification data along with aggregated figures on purchases, sales and transfers for each crypto-asset. That is a tax procedure to begin with and not a social data comparison, and a Jobcenter does not receive these reports automatically. It does shift the starting point, though: a holding that is on file with the tax office is also documentable to another authority if a dispute arises. What that means for tax is described in detail in the article on where to enter crypto in your tax return.

If you have to spend down crypto: holding period, section 23 EStG and the double trap

If your holding is above the allowance, the Jobcenter will require you to spend down the excess before benefits are paid. In practice that means selling. And this is precisely where two sets of rules meet that know nothing of each other.

For tax purposes, coins count as other assets within the meaning of section 23 subsection 1 sentence 1 number 2 of the Income Tax Act. A sale within one year of acquisition is a private disposal and the gain is taxable. After a year has passed it is tax-free. Anyone selling under time pressure because the Jobcenter insists on the assets being spent down can therefore trigger a taxable gain they would not have had with a little more patience.

The second half of the trap: the sale proceeds are not income in the month of receipt but remain assets, because they derive from an asset that already existed. They are therefore not counted as income on top. The gain from them can, however, trigger a tax payment in the following year for which the money is no longer there. Anyone who has to sell should therefore set aside the likely tax out of the proceeds before spending the rest. Which routes exist for selling and where the fees sit is a topic of its own, and the differences are not incidental in a forced sale.

One point you should not overlook: within limits, you may determine the order and the timing yourself. If part of your coins has already passed the one-year mark and another part has not, it is as a rule more favourable to sell the older ones first. Social law does not prescribe which units you dispose of; it is interested only in the result.

What happens if you conceal crypto

If an undeclared holding later comes to light, the authority revokes the award decision for the periods concerned and reclaims the benefits paid. The clawback is measured by what you would have been entitled to had you declared correctly, and it can span several award periods. On top of that, incomplete statements about assets can bring administrative fine proceedings or criminal proceedings in their wake.

That is the expensive route, and it is avoidable. The cheap route is a complete declaration with clean supporting documents, in which you set out yourself, where there is doubt, why in your view a holding should not be taken into account or only in part. An authority handed a complete set of facts decides a question of law. An authority that finds a holding by itself decides on your credibility.

If a decision treats you wrongly on the substance, an objection is open to you, as a rule within one month of notification. The deadline is stated in the decision itself. Free advice is available from the social welfare associations and from independent advice centres, and with larger amounts a lawyer specialising in social law is worth the money.

Preparing your evidence: what to assemble before you file

The effort lies in the documentation, hardly at all in the form-filling. So assemble before you file what you are going to need anyway.

• A statement of all holdings by coin and by place of custody, with the position as at the day the claim is filed.
• That day's price for each coin, with the source and the time of retrieval, so that the market value applied is verifiable.
• The acquisition data, meaning date, quantity and purchase price, because they decide the one-year period for tax.
• Evidence of lock-ups, pledges or commitments that genuinely restrict realisability.
• The bank statements showing deposits to and withdrawals from exchanges, because that is the route along which questions come anyway.

Self-custodied holdings should be listed just as fully as a balance on an exchange. An authority cannot establish a wallet address by itself, and the missing declaration weighs more heavily later than the holding does. If you have kept your coins exclusively on trading platforms so far, transferring them to a hardware wallet of your own is incidentally no way to hide assets. Moving the coins changes nothing about the duty to declare and nothing about the valuation; it changes only who holds the keys.

Drawing the lines: seizure, insolvency and basic income support are three separate procedures

The allowances in SGB II apply exclusively to social benefits. When a private creditor reaches for your assets, the attachment exemption limits of the Code of Civil Procedure apply, and those amounts are different ones. A holding that is protected for basic income support can still be realised by a bailiff. How access to coins works in practice is set out in the article on whether bitcoin can be seized by creditors and insolvency administrators.

Just as non-transferable are the rules of personal insolvency and those of social assistance under Book Twelve of the Social Code, which has an asset framework of its own. Anyone facing several of these procedures at once should have them examined separately, because a statement in one procedure can have quite different consequences in another.

Crypto and Bürgergeld: what to take away

1. Work out your allowance from your age, not from something you read somewhere. There are four bands between 5,000 and 20,000 euros per person, and within a benefit unit unused allowances are transferred. Then draw up a statement of holdings as at the day you intend to file, most easily with a portfolio tracker with tax reporting that supplies the price, the date and the source along with it.
2. Declare all holdings in full and report every change immediately. The duty follows from section 60 SGB I, regardless of whether the form asks about cryptocurrencies. Document your figures once too often rather than once too rarely, and keep ready the bank statements showing the transfers to exchanges. Where the figures belong in your tax return is shown in the article on where to enter crypto in your tax return.
3. Check the one-year period before a forced sale. Coins you have held for more than a year can be disposed of tax-free under section 23 EStG. Where in doubt, sell the oldest units first, compare the selling routes and their fees beforehand, and set aside the likely tax out of the proceeds before you spend the rest.

Sources in the text of the law: section 12 SGB II on assets to be taken into account and section 60 SGB I on the statement of facts.

(As of September 24, 2026. This article is not investment advice and not legal advice. The state of the law, prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy, and where in doubt have your individual case examined by an advice centre or a specialist lawyer.)