# Germany

> Germany (BaFin · Bundesbank · BfDI and the Länder authorities): A national custody licence, and secrecy for tokenised securities. Region: Europe. Confidential with disclosure: Confidentiality is workable so long as the regulated firm can identify the parties and disclose on demand. Encrypted amounts are not the thing being restricted.

Part of the Soda Labs Privacy Hub regulation map, which reads the instruments
themselves rather than summarising the summaries: https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation

## Key facts

- Entry type: Jurisdiction
- Region: Europe
- Subject: A national custody licence, and secrecy for tokenised securities
- Authority: BaFin · Bundesbank · BfDI and the Länder authorities
- Stance on on-chain confidentiality: Confidential with disclosure. Confidentiality is workable so long as the regulated firm can identify the parties and disclose on demand. Encrypted amounts are not the thing being restricted.
- Tags: custody licence, self-custody exempt, register secrecy, DPAs silent
- Canonical page: https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-germany

## What it actually says

Germany's divergence runs in two directions and neither is about coins. It built a national licence for crypto custody before the EU had one, and that licence survives alongside the European regime without carrying a passport. But it drew the line at self-custody in unusually clear terms: holding your own assets is not the licensed activity, because you are not doing it for anyone else. Less discussed, and more interesting for this section, is the confidentiality rule for tokenised securities. A holder's identity and address may be disclosed from the register only on a special legitimate interest, weighed against their data protection interests. That is confidentiality by default in a securities register, with no equivalent in EU law. Germany's data protection authorities, notably, have published nothing at all on blockchain.

## The instruments that matter

- **Crypto custody as a licensed business**: introduced into the banking act in December 2019, covering the custody, administration and safeguarding of crypto-assets or of the private keys used to hold them for others
- **Self-custody is expressly outside it**: BaFin guidance states that holding one's own crypto-assets does not constitute the licensed business, because the element of doing so for others is missing
- **Register secrecy for electronic securities**: section 10 of the electronic securities act lets third parties see a registered security only on a legitimate interest, and disclosure of a holder's identity and address requires a special legitimate interest weighed against their data protection interests
- **The national travel rule lapsed**: the crypto transfer regulation of May 2023 required name and address of an unhosted counterparty with no value threshold, and expired on 30 December 2024
- **No national blockchain guidance**: the German data protection conference's index of orientation papers runs from 2014 to 2026 and contains nothing on blockchain, distributed ledgers or crypto-assets

## Sources

- [BaFin guidance on crypto custody](https://www.bafin.de/SharedDocs/Veroeffentlichungen/DE/Merkblatt/mb_200302_kryptoverwahrgeschaeft.html)
- [Electronic Securities Act, section 10](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ewpg/__10.html)

## Related entries

- [Argentina](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-argentina): Self-custody providers written out of the regime
- [Austria](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-austria): EU baseline, with an early transition close
- [Belgium](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-belgium): EU baseline, with no national layer on confidentiality
- [Czechia](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-czechia): EU baseline, supervised by the central bank
- [Denmark](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-denmark): EU baseline, with tax as the historic pressure point
- [Estonia](https://www.sodalabs.xyz/privacy-hub/regulation/jur-estonia): The licence cull that reshaped the European market