30 percent follow finfluencers on crypto: “Investing in memecoins is in fact comparable to placing a bet in a game of chance”

A finfluencer is someone who talks about investing on social media and recommends individual products while doing so. Whether a crypto tip of that kind has been paid for shows up in three places: in the disclosure as advertising or a paid promotion, in affiliate links and discount codes that lead to one particular exchange, and in the pattern of the pitch, which works on urgency and peer pressure. How often that lands in Germany is something the financial regulator BaFin has had in hard numbers since October 1.

Of the 1,000 crypto investors assessed, roughly half pay attention to recommendations from finfluencers. Thirty percent have acted on them when investing. And around 40 percent were not aware that finfluencers are often paid for their recommendations. That is the core of the finding: the recommendation itself is not the problem, the invisible consideration behind it is.

The BaFin survey in numbers: 4,340 respondents, 1,000 crypto investors assessed

A market research institute surveyed 4,340 people aged 18 to 59 on behalf of BaFin. The fieldwork ran online in late March and early April 2026. The answers assessed were those of the 1,000 respondents who held crypto-assets at the time or had held them in the years before. The results appear in the regulator's specialist article, “Soziale Medien treiben Kryptoinvestments”.

What gets held is mostly the obvious. Seventy-nine percent of this group had bought Bitcoin at some point, 39 percent Ether. The assets were used predominantly as an investment. On motives, 39 percent said they had wanted to “try something new”, while 30 percent each cited the prospect of high returns and the wish for a small allocation in their portfolio.

That mix matters for understanding the rest. Someone who gets in out of curiosity, with no firm expectation of the product, tends to choose on the basis of whatever crosses their path. That is exactly where recommendations do their work.

How to spot a paid crypto tip: disclosure, affiliate link, discount code

A paid recommendation online usually takes one of two forms. Either the sender receives a fixed fee for a post, in which case that post has to be labelled as advertising or a paid promotion under German media law. Or they receive a share of the revenue when you open an account through their link and trade. This second form is called an affiliate or partner link: a link with an identifier attached, by which the exchange recognises who sent you.

Four features can be checked without any prior knowledge. First, a note such as “advertising”, “ad” or “paid partnership”, often small at the start or right at the end of a post. Second, a link with an identifier after the question mark, frequently carrying abbreviations such as “ref” or “partner”. Third, a discount or voucher code that runs under the sender's name. Fourth, a bonus promise tied to a minimum deposit.

None of these features makes a recommendation wrong by itself. Advertising is allowed to advertise, but it does tell you that the sender has a commercial interest of their own in your decision, and that belongs in your assessment. If you are looking for a trading venue anyway, the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges is the more sober route there than a code from a video.

35 percent bought because the finfluencer called the right moment

BaFin also asked what made the recommendation convincing. Among those who acted on a finfluencer recommendation, 35 percent invested because the claim was that now was the right moment. That is the most frequent reason in the entire survey.

The sentence “now is the right moment” has a property that makes it so usable for advertising: it cannot be verified at the moment it is made. Whether an entry point was good only becomes visible later, and whoever calls it carries no risk if they are wrong. A verifiable statement would look different and would name a quantity you can recalculate, such as a trading volume, a flow of funds or a date in the protocol.

From that follows a simple counter-move: take the claim and find the number for it yourself. Trading volume, inflows and outflows at exchanges or the distribution of holdings are available in freely accessible data tools; which of them does what is set out in the comparison of analytics platforms. If you find no number for the claim, you already have your answer.

FOMO as a sales argument: 29 percent followed the reference to the majority

The second most frequent reason was the reference to everyone else. Twenty-nine percent of this group bought because, according to the finfluencer, many others were doing so at the time. BaFin uses the English term for this in its assessment: fear of missing out, or FOMO for short.

FOMO says nothing about the crypto-asset itself. The claim describes the behaviour of other people; it can be accurate and still leave open whether the price is worth the risk. On top of that, the claim that a lot of people are buying right now is hard to verify for small tokens, because a few large addresses can generate a trading volume that looks like broad demand.

Both findings together describe the same mechanism from two directions: urgency and crowd. Anyone who hears either one in a recommendation has a reason to let a day pass before acting.

Memecoins and gambling: what BaFin's consumer protection staff say word for word

Nineteen percent of the crypto investors surveyed have bought memecoins at some point. Among the motives they named were “fun” and “having a punt”. A memecoin is a token with no use of its own and no promise of yield, whose price results purely from demand.

The regulator's assessment is blunt. “Investing in memecoins is in fact comparable to placing a bet in a game of chance,” says BaFin consumer protection expert Dr Markus Nielsen; memecoins are therefore particularly risky. Consumer protection officer Christian Bock places the whole market in context: “Consumer interest in crypto-assets is rising,” he says, “yet most of these assets are highly speculative.” Price movements, he adds, are tied neither to a particular currency nor to a tangible asset, and with memecoins there is also no cap on supply.

For a German supervisory authority to compare an asset class with gambling is notable, and it links the finding explicitly to the subject of this article: with memecoins in particular, the danger is especially great that finfluencers move the price by talking an asset up excessively or talking it down. The leverage here is greater than with large assets, because little capital is enough to shift the price.

Concentration risk in the portfolio: 27 percent hold more than a fifth of their wealth in crypto-assets

One figure from the survey can be applied directly to your own portfolio. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they had invested more than 20 percent of their wealth in digital assets. For 5 percent it was more than half.

The technical term for this is concentration risk: a single building block in a portfolio is so large that its performance determines the overall result. In an asset class that swings by double digits within a few days, that share decides whether a setback is merely annoying or existential. The regulator names no upper limit for it, and there is no official one either. The figure still works as a yardstick: if your own share sits well above what you could stomach losing, that is a finding in its own right, independent of any recommendation.

The connection to the rest of the survey is plain. Anyone who settles their position size in the moment of enthusiasm settles it according to that enthusiasm. Anyone who settles it beforehand already has an answer ready for the next tip.

Five features to check before acting on any crypto tip from social media

The findings of the survey boil down to a short routine that runs before a purchase and takes a few minutes.

1. Look for the disclosure. Does it say “advertising”, “ad” or “paid partnership” anywhere? Look in the description under the video and in the first comment as well, because that is where it tends to be parked.
2. Take the link apart. Does the recommendation run through an identifier or a code? Then money flows to the sender when you open your account.
3. Look into the provider. Does the platform named hold a licence for this business in Germany? BaFin maintains a public company database for exactly this, and it publishes warnings about unauthorised providers on an ongoing basis.
4. Find a second source. Does the central claim also appear somewhere that gains nothing from your buying? If nothing turns up, it remains a single opinion.
5. Set the position size beforehand. Decide the amount before you finish listening to the recommendation, and stick to it. This is the only point on the list that nobody but you can influence.

This routine is no substitute for your own view of a crypto-asset; it only separates the question of whether something is a good investment from the question of who earns money when you buy it, and the second question was not on the radar at all for 40 percent of respondents.

Holding period and tax: what an impulse purchase after a finfluencer tip triggers with the tax office

One point does not come up in the survey and yet belongs to every spontaneous purchase. In Germany, transactions in crypto-assets held as private assets count as private disposal transactions under Section 23(1) sentence 1 number 2 of the Income Tax Act (Einkommensteuergesetz). If you sell at a profit within one year of buying, that profit is taxable; after a holding period of one year it is not. A threshold of 1,000 euros applies to the total of all private disposal transactions in a year. Threshold means that once it is exceeded, the entire gain is taxable, and not only the part above it.

Two things follow from this for a purchase made after a tip. First, the one-year period for this specific position begins on this specific day, regardless of how long you have already held the same cryptocurrency. Second, a quick resale, which the same dynamic of urgency and peer pressure frequently leads to, is the least favourable case for tax purposes. Someone who buys and sells three weeks later in disappointment has a taxable event if there is a gain and documentation work if there is a loss.

In practice that means recording the purchase date, quantity and price, and doing so on the day of the purchase. It costs a minute and saves back-calculating across several exchanges if there is ever any doubt. Individual tax questions belong in the hands of a tax adviser; this section is no substitute for advice.

MiCA, BaFin and advertising: which rules apply to finfluencers today and which ones ESMA wants

Since the European crypto regulation MiCA came into force, providers of crypto services in the EU need a licence, and their marketing communications have to be identifiable as such, fair and not misleading. These duties are addressed to the providers. An independent sender on social media who is not a service provider does not automatically fall under them, and that is exactly where the gap sits that the BaFin figures describe. Which obligations the regulation sets out in detail is covered in our overview of the MiCA licensing requirements for crypto companies.

The European securities regulator ESMA wants to change that. In its opinion on the review of MiCA, which reached the EU Commission at the end of September, it explicitly calls for “stricter rules for the marketing of crypto-assets, particularly when they are promoted by influencers and third parties”. Which six changes the authority proposes in total we have broken down in our article on the ESMA opinion on MiCA.

Between a demand and applicable law lies a legislative procedure that runs for months. Until then the labelling requirement from media law remains the most important lever, and its enforcement depends on someone noticing the missing disclosure. That is what makes the survey finding so uncomfortable: a protection that rests on recognition by the audience comes to nothing for 40 percent of that audience.

Two authorities have thus marked the same spot within two days, one with a demand from Paris, the other with figures from Germany.

Finfluencer tips: the key points for your decision

The survey describes the normal case: around half of the crypto investors surveyed pay attention to recommendations from social media, and two in five do not know the business model behind them. Three steps turn that into something manageable.

1. Separate the recommendation from the trading venue. Decide first whether a crypto-asset convinces you, and choose the platform separately afterwards. A look at the comparison of regulated crypto exchanges shows which providers hold a licence in the EU.
2. Get the number behind the claim. Every statement about timing or demand can be cross-checked. Which analytics platforms disclose volume, inflows and the distribution of holdings is set out in the comparison.
3. Document on the day of purchase. Record the date, quantity and price so the holding period can be proven later. Tools for this are in the comparison of crypto tax software and portfolio trackers.

(As of October 7, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)