If you sell your XRP now, your net gain is decided first by the purchase date and only then by the price. If your purchase was more than twelve months ago, the entire gain stays tax-free in Germany. If it was more recent, your personal income tax rate of up to 45 percent applies as soon as your private disposal gains for the calendar year add up to more than 1,000 euros.
With XRP this rule currently produces a result most price reports miss. The price has risen by a good half in seven days. But anyone who has already cleared the one-year period bought their XRP far above today’s price. And anyone sitting on a real paper gain today is almost always still inside the period. This article works through both cases using measured reference-date prices, explains the holding period, the exemption limit and FIFO with concrete figures, and tells you which records you need for your tax return.
XRP at $1.51: The Figures Behind the Weekly Gain
On August 24, 2026 at 00:36 UTC, XRP is quoted at $1.51, or 1.29 euros. The value comes from our own call to the CoinGecko price API at that moment. Over 24 hours that is plus 3.9 percent, over seven days plus 53.1 percent and over 30 days plus 39.3 percent. Market capitalisation stands at around $94.4 billion, trading volume over the past 24 hours at about $5.14 billion, and the circulating supply at 62.74 billion XRP.
Depending on the data provider and the moment of the call, the weekly gain comes out differently. Measurements from the previous day produced just under 50 percent, the call on August 24 produced 53.1 percent. The honest figure is therefore a range of roughly 50 to 53 percent. For your tax records, only the euro price at the moment of your own transaction counts anyway.
For context within the field: Bitcoin stands at $77,457 in the same call, up 23.6 percent over the week. XRP is therefore running well ahead of the market leader this week. There is still plenty of room above: the XRP all-time high is $3.65 from July 17, 2025, and from today’s level that is around 58.6 percent away.
Our article of August 21, 2026, XRP explodes 40% in seven days, described the $1.50 mark as the next target. That mark has been reached. The question therefore shifts from the price target to execution, and in Germany execution is first of all a tax question.
The Holding Period Under Section 23 EStG: Why Twelve Months Decide Your Entire Tax Bill
The holding period is the span between the acquisition and the disposal of an economic asset. Where it exceeds one year for cryptocurrencies, the sale no longer falls under the taxation of private disposal transactions. This is governed by Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, there in paragraph 1 sentence 1 number 2.
A private disposal transaction is a sale out of private assets in which less than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. The gain then does not count as investment income at the fixed flat rate of 25 percent, but is added to your other income and charged at your individual tax rate. On a high income that is up to 45 percent, plus the solidarity surcharge and, where applicable, church tax.
More counts as a disposal than many investors assume. Alongside a sale for euros, swapping XRP into another cryptocurrency or into a stablecoin also counts, as do using it as a means of payment and paying by crypto credit card. Each of these actions triggers the same tax event as a classic sale.
The difference in scale is considerable. Suppose you realise a gain of 10,000 euros and your marginal tax rate is 42 percent: inside the one-year period that would be around 4,200 euros in income tax plus the solidarity surcharge. Once the one-year period has elapsed it would be zero euros. The same position, the same price, a difference of several thousand euros that hangs on the calendar alone.
The Reference-Date Comparison for XRP: Whoever May Sell Tax-Free Is Sitting on a Loss
This is where the theory becomes uncomfortably concrete. The following prices come from the same historical price series at CoinGecko, retrieved on August 24, 2026:
- August 24, 2025: $3.05, or 2.60 euros
- February 24, 2026: $1.37, or 1.16 euros
- May 24, 2026: $1.35, or 1.16 euros
- August 10, 2026: $1.03, or 0.89 euros
- August 17, 2026: $0.99, or 0.86 euros
- August 24, 2026: $1.51, or 1.29 euros
Read the series from top to bottom and the problem becomes visible. Anyone who bought exactly one year ago has seen their one-year period elapse today. They bought at 2.60 euros and stand at 1.29 euros, roughly 50 percent down. The tax exemption is of no use to them, because no gain exists that would be taxable.
Whoever Has a Gain Today Has It at the Full Tax Rate
The reverse applies too: anyone who bought at 0.86 euros on August 17, 2026 is up a good 50 percent. That gain is real, but the one-year period only elapses on August 17, 2027. If this investor sells today, the entire gain is taxable as soon as it exceeds 1,000 euros together with their other private disposal gains for the year.
The purchases from February and May 2026 are also up by around 11 percent, calculated in euros. The corresponding periods end in February and May 2027. Put briefly: the entire paper gain this rally has produced sits in holdings that are still tied up for tax purposes. That is not down to XRP itself. It is the consequence of a price path that fell for a year and only turned in recent weeks.
Keep Your Crypto Taxes Under Control
Exemption Limit, Not an Allowance: The Gain at Which the Tax Office Steps In
An exemption limit is a threshold at which the complete amount becomes taxable, not merely the portion above the threshold. That is precisely how it differs from an allowance, where the base amount stays tax-free. For private disposal transactions the exemption limit stands at 1,000 euros per person and calendar year; it was raised by the Growth Opportunities Act, before which it was 600 euros.
The practical consequence is often underestimated. On an annual gain of 999 euros you pay zero tax. On an annual gain of 1,001 euros you pay tax on the full 1,001 euros at your personal rate. Anyone just above the threshold loses several hundred euros net through two euros of additional gain.
Two further points belong here. First, the exemption limit applies to all private disposal transactions of a year taken together, so not per coin, not per exchange and not per wallet. If you also sell physical gold within the one-year period in the same year, that gain counts towards it. Second, you can offset losses from private disposal transactions against gains of the same kind, in the same year or through a loss carry-forward in later years. For married couples the exemption limit applies per person.
FIFO and the Wallet-by-Wallet View: Which XRP You Actually Sell in a Partial Sale
FIFO stands for first in, first out and denotes the rule that the units bought first count as the units sold first. For determining the holding period, the tax authorities prescribe this order of use in the Federal Ministry of Finance letter of March 6, 2025.
The wallet-by-wallet view applies in addition: every wallet and every exchange account is considered on its own. Your XRP on a trading platform and your XRP on a hardware wallet therefore form two separate holdings, each with its own FIFO order.
For valuation the letter provides in principle for the average method, but likewise permits FIFO as a simplification. Once chosen, you must keep the method within a wallet for the same trading designation until the holding has been disposed of in full. Only after a complete sale and a later fresh acquisition may you switch.
In practice that means: anyone who has bought XRP in tranches over months sells the oldest pieces first in a partial sale. That is usually advantageous, because those pieces are closest to the one-year period or have already passed it. Do the arithmetic rather than assuming it, though: with XRP the oldest tranches are the most expensive, and a tax-free sale at a loss brings you nothing. Anyone holding many tranches across several platforms will quickly reach the limits of a hand calculation; a look at our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers usually saves more time here than the tools cost.
Partial Sale, Stop-Loss or Holding: Three Routes and Their Tax Consequences
No recommendation follows from the facts, but a clean separation of the options does. Which one suits you depends on your purchase date, your tax rate and your appetite for risk.
Route 1: Sell Now and Budget for the Tax
Anyone selling inside the one-year period should set the tax aside immediately rather than paying it out of current funds the following year. A rough reserve equal to your marginal tax rate on the realised gain prevents the most unpleasant variant: a back-tax payment on a gain that has long since gone back into the market by the time it falls due and has lost value there. If you want to move euros to your bank account, it is worth looking first at withdrawal routes and fees, as we have broken them down in our sell Bitcoin comparison; the routes compared there apply to XRP accordingly.
Route 2: Wait Until the One-Year Period Elapses
Waiting for the tax exemption is attractive, but it is not a free advantage. You are trading a certain tax saving for open price risk. Weigh the two against each other: if your price gain is 30 percent and your tax rate 42 percent, an immediate sale costs you around 12.6 percentage points of your return. If the price falls by more than those 12.6 points before the period ends, waiting has cost you money.
Route 3: Hold the Position and Think the Hedge Through for Tax
A stop-loss is a sell order triggered when a set price is reached. For tax purposes that is an entirely ordinary sale, and it triggers when the market decides, not when your calendar allows. Anyone wanting to hold a position until the end of the period should therefore set the stop deliberately or do without it. The same applies to shifting into stablecoins, which many investors wrongly consider tax-neutral.
Record-Keeping Duties: What the Ministry of Finance Letter of March 6, 2025 Demands of You
The Federal Ministry of Finance letter of March 6, 2025, file reference IV C 1 – S 2256/00042/064/043, replaces the earlier letter of May 10, 2022. Across 34 pages it regulates for the first time in explicit terms the tax return, cooperation and record-keeping duties for crypto-assets. The full letter is available as a PDF from the Federal Ministry of Finance.
The core point for private investors reads: whatever lies within your sphere of knowledge, you must document yourself. The tax office can demand evidence of the acquisition date, the acquisition costs and the wallet allocation. So record for every transaction:
- Date and time of the transaction
- Type of event, meaning purchase, sale, swap or payment
- Quantity of units moved
- Price in euros at the moment of the transaction
- Fees incurred
- Wallet or exchange involved
- Transaction ID, where available
The reason for this diligence is unspectacular and expensive at the same time. If you cannot document the acquisition date, the expiry of the one-year period cannot be proven. The tax exemption you waited a year for then rests on your assertion alone. Exchanges do not supply retrospective exports indefinitely, and a platform that has closed supplies none at all.
Compare Exchanges Before You Sell
DAC8 Since January 2026: Why the Tax Office Will Receive Your Exchange Data Automatically
DAC8 is the eighth version of the EU Directive on Administrative Cooperation and extends the automatic exchange of information between tax authorities to crypto-assets. Since January 1, 2026, crypto service providers in the EU have had to record their customers’ transaction data without gaps; from 2027 this data will be transmitted to the tax authorities automatically.
For you that shifts above all the evidential position. Until now the crypto tax return was largely a self-declaration that was checked in case of doubt. In future the tax administration will reconcile your figures with the platforms’ reports by machine. Anyone documenting cleanly will notice nothing. Anyone with gaps should close them now and not once a query lands in the letterbox.
A note on the legal position itself: the one-year holding period for crypto-assets is politically contested and has been the subject of several reform proposals during the current year. For your decision today only the law as it stands, in the form described above, counts. Should anything change, the new rules will as a rule apply to future acquisitions and not retroactively to holdings you have long held.
CLARITY Act: What Is Really Being Voted On in the US Senate on September 15
The most frequently named driver behind the current rally is a piece of US legislation. Majority Leader John Thune initiated the cloture procedure on the Digital Asset Market CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) at the beginning of August. The vote is scheduled for September 15, 2026.
Cloture is a procedural step in the US Senate by which debate on a bill is limited; it requires 60 votes. What matters for the assessment is what is being voted on on September 15: the motion to debate the law at all. A successful vote therefore does not pass the law, it merely opens the debate. The Republicans hold 53 seats, so for the 60 votes they would need at least seven votes from Democrats or independents.
Bull Case and Bear Case Side by Side
The bull case runs: a successful cloture vote would be the first solid signal that a US market structure rule is still possible in this legislative period, and XRP is among the assets whose legal classification would be directly affected by it.
The bear case in this instance comes from the analysts themselves. Galaxy Research cut the probability of the law taking effect during 2026 from 50 to 30 percent in July and attributed that to the shrinking sitting calendar: after Congress returns on September 14, only 14 sitting days remain before the October election recess. That is the assessment of a market research house and not a secured forecast. Other houses calculate differently, and part of the coverage quotes considerably lower figures. For your selling decision that means one thing above all: a price built on a procedural step can also give way again on that same procedural step.
Which Exchange to Sell On: Fees, Regulation and Withdrawal in Euros
If you decide to sell, the platform decides a considerable part of the outcome. Five points are worth comparing before you place an order.
First, the fee model: trading venues with maker and taker fees are almost always cheaper on larger amounts than providers who build their margin into the spread. Second, the withdrawal route: a SEPA transfer in euros is usually free or cheap, an instant payout rarely is. Third, regulation: providers licensed under the EU’s MiCA regulation or holding BaFin permission are subject to supervision you can turn to in a dispute. Fourth, the tax report: a clean CSV or API export with timestamps, euro prices and fees saves you hours at tax-return time. Fifth, the limits: withdrawal limits and verification tiers vary widely and cannot be made up in the minute of the sale.
Which providers meet these points and how in Germany is set side by side in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
Selling XRP: What to Take Away
- Establish your purchase date per tranche first, not your price gain. Only then do you know whether any tax arises at all. If your holding is spread across several exchanges and wallets, the quickest route runs through a tool from our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.
- Calculate the tax saving against the price risk instead of estimating it. At a marginal rate of 42 percent you must expect less than around 13 percentage points of price loss before the period ends for waiting to be worthwhile. If you want to sell, check the withdrawal routes first in our sell Bitcoin comparison.
- Secure your records before you trade. Export the transaction history and the prices at the time of the transaction from every platform you use. If you notice in the process that your provider supplies no usable export, our exchange comparison lists alternatives with a complete tax report.
(As of August 24, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
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