Bitcoin costs $84,828 on Saturday evening. The same quantity appears on a German account as €75,348, and that second figure tells a different year from the first. Counted in dollars, Bitcoin
Bitcoin costs $84,828 on Saturday evening. The same quantity appears on a German account as €75,348, and that second figure tells a different year from the first. Counted in dollars, Bitcoin is down 4.4 percent since the turn of the year. Counted in euros it is 0.5 percent. The gap of around four percentage points comes from the currency market rather than the crypto market.
For you in Germany that is no quibble. You pay in euros, you have payouts made in euros, and the tax office calculates in euros. The dollar price that every price page shows first describes the world market. What your portfolio is worth, what the exchange deducts from you and what appears in the Anlage SO annex of your tax return at year end all hang on the euro figure. This piece places the two side by side, measures how far apart they have run in 2026 and draws from that the checks you can carry out yourself this weekend.
Market data from CoinGecko puts Bitcoin at $84,828 on Saturday evening. Over the preceding 24 hours the range lay between $83,898 and $85,238, with a daily balance of minus 0.24 percent. That is a quiet day on which little moved in the coin itself.
In euros the same bitcoin stands at €75,348, with a daily range of €74,530 to €75,720 and a balance of minus 0.40 percent. The euro balance therefore comes out slightly weaker than the dollar balance, although the same coin at the same hour is at issue. The reason sits between the two figures: the exchange rate.
Measure in dollars in euros Price on Saturday evening 84,828 75,348 Range of the past 24 hours 83,898 to 85,238 74,530 to 75,720 Change since January 2, 2026 minus 4.43 percent minus 0.46 percent Distance to the all-time high minus 32.7 percent minus 30.0 percent Change over 30 days plus 9.74 percent plus 12.93 percentFive rows, and in every single one the left side makes a different statement from the right. Anyone reading only the left column has the year of an American investor in front of them.
Bitcoin has no single uniform price in dollars and none in euros. What is traded is always a pair, and the price belongs to that pair. On the large exchanges the volume sits almost entirely in dollars and in dollar-pegged stablecoins. The euro pair is a derived pair: its price follows in essence from the dollar price and the current exchange rate between euro and dollar.
From this follows a rule that becomes more visible on a quiet market day than on a wild one. If the dollar rises against the euro, the bitcoin price in euros rises, even if the dollar price has not moved a cent. If the dollar falls, the euro figure sinks, although everything in New York has stayed as it was.
The reference rate of the European Central Bank usually serves in Germany as the yardstick for this exchange rate. It is a rate established once a day at around 2:15 pm Central European Time, which the central bank then publishes. It is no trading rate at which you could buy. Its usefulness lies elsewhere: it is a published value, unambiguous for each day, that anyone can look up. Precisely that makes it usable for records.
The ECB reference rate for the US dollar stood at $1.1225 per euro on October 2, 2026. On January 2, 2026, the first trading day of the year, it was $1.1721 per euro. The dollar has therefore appreciated 4.42 percent against the euro over these nine months. Anyone subtracting the two percentages from the table above arrives at practically the same value. The difference between bitcoin's dollar year and its euro year is the dollar.
The conversion rate works in the background of every bitcoin order and appears on no display board.
On January 2, 2026 bitcoin was quoted at $88,764 and €75,698. For the first nine months of the year that produces a decline of 4.43 percent in dollars and of 0.46 percent in euros. An American investor has lost noticeably in 2026 so far. A German investor stands almost exactly where they started in January.
Anyone who bought for €10,000 on January 2, 2026 received around 0.1321 bitcoin at the euro price of the time. The same quantity is worth €9,954 on Saturday evening. The result before fees comes to minus €46. Had the exchange rate stood still and only the dollar price developed as it did, around €9,557 would stand in the same place, and with it a loss of €443.
In this example the currency therefore accounted for just under €400, on a stake of €10,000 and without the investor doing anything at all. In a year with a vigorous price move this effect disappears into the noise. In a sideways year such as 2026 it is the result.
Bitcoin's all-time high stands at $126,080. From the current level, 32.7 percent are missing to get there. Counted in euros the record lies at €107,662, and from €75,348 the gap is 30.0 percent. The same distance, two different figures.
That is more than a curiosity. Anyone setting a finishing line, say the old high as the point for a partial sale, sets it in one currency. Fix it in dollars and your euro portfolio can reach the old high without your level triggering. Fix it in euros and it can trigger while the headlines are still writing about the missing record. Both are defensible as long as you know which of the two figures your level means.
On September 3, 2026 bitcoin stood at $77,297 and €66,721. Since then the dollar price has gained 9.74 percent and the euro price 12.93 percent. This time the euro figure therefore comes out higher than the dollar figure, and for the same reason as in the yearly comparison: at the beginning of September the dollar was weaker than today, with a reference rate of 1.1615.
That the currency effect worked in your favour in the monthly window and in the yearly window as well is no law of nature. It works in both directions. A euro that climbs back towards $1.17 takes away from a German portfolio exactly what the dollar's strength added this year, without anything changing in bitcoin itself.
The price from the market data is an average across many trading venues. What your exchange charges you lies above it. Three items come together, and all three can be looked up before the purchase.
The first is the spread, meaning the distance between the best bid and the best offer in the order book. On a euro pair with thin volume this distance is wider than on the dollar pair of the same exchange. The second is the trading fee, which arises according to order type and volume tier. The third is a currency conversion that some providers charge when you deposit in euros while the trade runs through a dollar pair.
Trade the euro pair directly and you pay the spread there and see a euro amount straight away. Trade the dollar pair and you generally get the tighter spread, but the conversion is added as a separate item, often as a mark-up on the interbank rate. Which route is cheaper depends on the provider and on your order size. You get a reliable answer only by running the same amount through both variants up to the order confirmation and comparing the two final amounts. The fee models of the larger trading venues stand side by side in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
A note on magnitude: on an order of €1,000, a spread wider by 0.2 percentage points amounts to €2. This year's currency effect came to around four percent. The fee question is still worth it, because it arises again with every single order, while the exchange rate takes effect only once.
Every transaction needs its own euro value, and specifically the one from the day of the trade.
Gains from the sale of bitcoin fall in Germany under private disposal transactions pursuant to Section 23 of the Income Tax Act. The taxable gain is the difference between the disposal price and the acquisition cost, and both quantities are euro amounts. If you traded through a dollar pair or against a dollar-pegged stablecoin, you have to convert each side of the trade into euros at the rate of the respective day.
Precisely here the ECB reference rate becomes practical. It is published, unambiguous per day and verifiable at any time. Anyone using it consistently and documenting the source has a conversion that can still be followed years later. Consistency is what decides: a jumble of exchange prices, portal data and estimates produces differences you can no longer explain after the fact. Portfolio trackers take this conversion off your hands and record it per transaction; an overview sits with the tax tools and portfolio trackers.
Two quantities decide whether a gain turns into tax at all. The first is the holding period of one year: if more than a year lies between acquisition and disposal, the gain stays tax free. The second is the exemption limit of €1,000 in the calendar year, which has applied since 2024. If the sum of all private disposal gains of a year stays below it, no tax arises. Once the limit is reached, the entire amount is taxable and not only the excess portion. That is the difference between an exemption limit and an allowance.
And because the limit is a euro amount, the exchange rate can help decide which side of it you land on. A gain that sits clearly below the threshold counted in dollars can lie above it in euros. This can be checked only against the euro calculation, not against the display in the app, which frequently runs in dollars.
On the upside the first line sits at €75,720, the daily high of the past 24 hours, and immediately next to it at €75,698. That second figure does not come from chart analysis. It is the euro price of January 2, and it therefore decides the sign of your euro year: above it, 2026 is in positive territory for a German portfolio, below it in negative. At €75,348, 0.5 percent are missing to get there.
On the downside the next line sits at €74,530, the daily low. Below that a range without prominent daily levels opens up, reaching into the area of the September low. In dollars these lines correspond to 85,238 and 83,898. That the two currencies do not mark exactly the same moments here is because the dollar price and the exchange rate move independently of each other within a day.
More important than any of these lines is a sober assessment: with a daily balance of 0.24 percent in dollars, the market is delivering no signal right now. Anyone taking a decision in such a position takes it for reasons of their own, such as holding period, liquidity needs or portfolio allocation.
October 3 is a public holiday in Germany, and in 2026 it falls on a Saturday. For the crypto market that changes nothing, it runs around the clock. For the route your money takes to the exchange it changes a good deal. An ordinary SEPA transfer is not executed on public holidays and at weekends; it lands in the target account on Monday at the earliest.
Matters stand differently with the instant transfer. Since October 9, 2025, payment service providers in the euro area have had to be able to send instant transfers as well, after receiving them already became mandatory in January 2025. Such a transfer arrives in seconds, around the clock, including on a holiday Saturday. If you want to buy at a particular euro price today, that is the difference between today and Monday, and between €75,348 and a price nobody knows today.
At the provider itself, the European regulation on markets in crypto assets has applied in full since December 30, 2024. Anyone offering crypto asset services in the EU needs a licence for it; in Germany BaFin grants and supervises it. Before a deposit it is worth looking at which licence your trading venue works under and where custody sits. A licensed custodian is a statement about supervision, not a guarantee against price losses.
(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.)
