The price of Shiba Inu stands at $0.00000568 on Saturday morning, that is 5.68 millionths of a dollar, and therefore 3.6 percent lower than the day before. That is not the news of this weekend. The news is a draft bill from the German federal finance ministry that is due to go before the cabinet on 14 October and that decides whether you will ever be able to apply the one-year holding period to your SHIB again. The ministry is only accepting comments on it until 6 October.
For holders of Shiba Inu this draft weighs more heavily than for holders of almost any other crypto-asset. SHIB trades 93.4 percent below its record. Anyone who bought in 2021 is sitting on a loss, and anyone who wants to buy more today is making a decision with the purchase date that cannot be corrected later. This article works through both.
Shiba Inu price on 3 October: $0.00000568 and 93.4 percent below the record
As of Saturday morning, 3 October, one SHIB costs $0.00000568 or 0.00000505 euros. The figures come from the CoinGecko market overview. Over 24 hours there is a loss of 3.59 percent, over seven days a loss of 3.81 percent. The month looks different: over 30 days SHIB is up 9.0 percent. So the week is giving back part of the October gain, nothing more for now.
The record stands at $0.00008616. From today’s price that is a distance of 93.4 percent. This single figure explains why with SHIB the tax question weighs more heavily than the price question. A portfolio that is 93 percent down will not throw off a taxable gain for the foreseeable future. What it can throw off is a loss, and in Germany losses are only worth something under narrow conditions.
Shiba Inu’s market capitalisation comes to $3.35 billion with a circulating supply of 589.24 trillion tokens. For a sense of scale: on the same morning Dogecoin reaches $14.52 billion, a good four times as much.
What 100 euros buys today
At 0.00000505 euros per token you get around 19.8 million SHIB for 100 euros. That number of units is not a curiosity but matters for tax. Every single purchase is its own acquisition with its own date, and on a partial sale the first-in, first-out order applies in Germany. Anyone buying in five tranches has five periods to manage.
Spread and daily turnover at 5.68 millionths of a dollar: $107 million in 24 hours
Trading turnover in SHIB over the past 24 hours comes to around $107 million. Measured against the market capitalisation of $3.35 billion, that turns over 3.2 percent of the stock in a single day. That sounds like a lot, but it is spread across a great many venues.
More important than turnover is the daily range. Between the low at $0.00000553 and the high at $0.00000597 there are 7.96 percent. The net move of the day comes to 3.59 percent. The timing of your order within the day has therefore decided more about the execution price than the direction of the day. With a price carrying six decimal places, every price step also weighs more heavily, because the smallest tradable step makes up a larger share of the price than with a coin in the double-digit dollar range.
3 October is a public holiday in Germany, and the weekend thins out trading further. Anyone placing a larger order as a market order on such a day pays for the thin depth. A limit order costs patience and saves money in exactly this situation. Which venues are authorised in Germany and which fee models they run is set out in the crypto exchange comparison.
Why the draft bill weighs more for SHIB holders than the move of the day
The federal finance ministry has sent the draft to the industry associations. It provides for gains on crypto-assets to be treated in future as investment income under section 20 of the Income Tax Act. Today they run as private disposals under section 23 of the Income Tax Act, and that is where the sentence sits on which the whole German crypto practice is built: after a holding period of one year the gain is tax-free.
It is precisely this sentence that falls under the draft for everything acquired after 31 December 2026. The summary of the draft at Blocktrainer names the cabinet date of 14 October and the deadline for comments on 6 October. For holdings bought up to 31 December 2026, the draft provides for grandfathering. There the one-year period remains in place.
A draft is not a law. It can still be changed in the cabinet, in the Bundestag and in the Bundesrat, and the associations have until 6 October to attempt exactly that. What you take from it today you take from a plan and not from applicable law. For planning an additional purchase that is still enough, because the cut-off date itself is in the draft and is not fixed only later.
Cut-off date 31 December 2026: grandfathering for old SHIB, section 20 for new ones
The draft draws a line through your portfolio. On one side stand the SHIB you bought up to and including 31 December 2026. For them the previous rule is to continue to apply, meaning the one-year holding period and tax-free gains thereafter. On the other side stand the SHIB that enter the portfolio from 1 January 2027. For them the gain is to be taxable regardless of how long you hold it.
For a coin trading 93.4 percent below its record, that is not a theoretical distinction. Anyone betting on a recovery is betting on a multiple, and a multiple is exactly the case in which the difference between tax-free after a year and fully taxable becomes visible.
What section 20 means in practice
Investment income in Germany is subject to the flat-rate withholding tax, meaning 25 percent plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax. In return there is the saver’s allowance of 1,000 euros a year. Today’s exemption threshold for private disposals, of the same amount, works differently, namely as a threshold and not as an allowance. Anyone exceeding it by one euro pays tax on the whole gain and not only on the part above it.
Buying more into a portfolio in the red: the purchase date separates old from new holdings
Here lies the one decision you really have to make before the turn of the year. Suppose you hold SHIB from 2021 and want to lower your average entry price by buying more. If you buy before 31 December 2026, the purchase falls under grandfathering according to the draft, and the one-year period continues to run on that tranche. If you buy in January 2027, the same tranche is permanently taxable.
That is not an argument for buying now. A coin standing 93 percent below its record is not therefore cheap, only fallen for the time being. It is an argument for not pushing a purchase you were going to make anyway into the new year without need. The reverse holds just as much: anyone unsure whether they want SHIB in the portfolio at all should not buy because of a deadline.
The order on partial sales
If you later sell only part, the first-in, first-out order applies in Germany for the same cryptocurrency in the same wallet. With a mixed holding of old and new purchases, the oldest tokens therefore go first, and under the draft those are the protected ones. Anyone who wants to keep old and new holdings cleanly separate needs a separate wallet or very good documentation. Which tools carry such tranches across several exchanges is shown by the comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
Offsetting losses on Shiba Inu: what section 23 does with a 93 percent loss
A loss from a private disposal can under section 23 of the Income Tax Act only be offset against gains from private disposals, so not against wages and not against interest or dividends. Unused losses can be carried back to the previous year and forward into coming years, but always only within the same category of income.
From this follows the uncomfortable symmetry of the one-year period. After twelve months the gain is tax-free, and for the same reason the loss is worthless for tax. What is not taxable also produces no deductible loss. Anyone holding SHIB for longer than a year and selling at a loss cannot set that loss against other crypto gains under current law. Within the one-year period it works perfectly well.
How the draft treats old losses under the new regime cannot be taken from the points summarised publicly so far. That is one of the points on which the associations can comment until 6 October, and one of the reasons why final planning is only possible after the cabinet decision.
Substitute assessment without a purchase record: 50 percent of the sale proceeds as the tax base
The draft provides for a flat 50 percent of the sale proceeds to be applied as the tax base where the acquisition costs cannot be proven. We have written up this rule in more detail in a separate article on the substitute assessment where the acquisition record is missing.
This rule hits holders of Shiba Inu harder than holders of large crypto-assets, and that is down to the coin’s history. SHIB was frequently swapped on decentralised exchanges in the 2021 wave, bought on exchanges that no longer exist, or moved between wallets. A bank statement from a German bank does not exist in these cases. Anyone who cannot prove the purchase price would, under the draft, be taxed on half the proceeds, even if the actual purchase was more expensive than the sale.
What can still be secured today
Transaction data of old exchanges disappears with the exchanges. Whatever you can still export today you should export: trading history as a CSV, deposit and withdrawal records, the wallet addresses and the transaction hashes of the transfers. A blockchain transaction remains permanently traceable; the euro price at the time of purchase is only traceable with the right price source. For the long-term custody of the tokens themselves, what the hardware wallet comparison says applies independently of that.
Staking and lending as investment income: what the draft provides for Shibarium earnings
Under the draft, earnings from staking and lending are to be treated as investment income. In the Shiba Inu environment that concerns the interest mechanisms around its own side chain Shibarium and the in-house exchange, where users deposit tokens and receive earnings for it. Shibarium is a side chain that settles transactions more cheaply and anchors the result on Ethereum.
In practice that means: anyone drawing earnings from such models today should document them separately from pure price gains, because under the draft they land in a different category of income. How dependable the earnings in the Shiba environment currently are is a separate question. Part of the functions in the ecosystem was recently unavailable for months.
Withholding at source from 2028: exchanges may sell crypto-assets without consent
From 1 January 2028 exchanges are to withhold the tax directly, as German banks do today with shares. So that the exchange can pass on the amount, it is to be allowed to sell crypto-assets for that purpose without asking first. What that means for the choice of trading venue we have written up in the article on withholding at source at the exchanges.
For SHIB this point has a sharpness of its own. A forced sale in a token with six decimal places and thin order books runs into exactly the range that today amounts to 7.96 percent. The timing of such a sale then follows the tax logic of the exchange and not the state of the market.
Between the dispatch to the associations and the end of the response deadline lie six calendar days, after which eight days remain until the planned cabinet discussion. 6 October is a Tuesday, and before it lies a long weekend with German Unity Day. For associations that is little time; for you as an investor it is above all a date after which the points of the draft become more dependable.
14 October is the day on which an administrative draft is to become a government bill. Only after that follow the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. Until then, 31 December 2026 remains the only date that is already fixed for your purchase planning.
Levels above and below: 5.53 and 5.97 millionths of a dollar from the daily range
The nearest points of orientation are the day’s own extremes. On the downside the daily low lies at $0.00000553. If the price falls below it, the daily range is resolved to the downside, and the next reference point would be the area from which the recovery of the past 30 days started.
On the upside the daily high lies at $0.00000597, so just under the mark of six millionths of a dollar. Above that mark the current week’s loss of 3.81 percent would be worked off. Both figures are points of observation and not a forecast, because they come from the price movement of the past 24 hours and say nothing about where the price is heading.
The distance of 93.4 percent to the record of $0.00008616 remains the figure against which every recovery calculation has to be measured. To reach the record again, today’s price would have to rise more than fifteenfold.
Shiba Inu and the cut-off date: Your next three steps
- Establish and record the purchase date. Note for every SHIB tranche when it was bought and whether a record exists. Everything held in the portfolio up to 31 December 2026 falls under grandfathering according to the draft. Tools that carry such tranches across several exchanges are in the comparison of crypto tax tools.
- Secure records before exchanges disappear. Export the trading history, deposits and withdrawals and the transaction hashes. Without proof the draft applies a flat 50 percent of the sale proceeds. Where you trade in future and which exports a provider delivers you can compare in the exchange comparison.
- Schedule a planned purchase instead of forcing one. Anyone who wanted to buy anyway has a tax reason until the end of the year not to postpone it. Anyone who is unsure does not buy because of a deadline. For the long-term custody of the tokens, the hardware wallet comparison applies.
(As of October 3, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
Be the first to comment