How to buy Pepe coin in Germany, and keep the taxman happy

Quick answer: buy Pepe coin in Germany with SEPA

If you want to buy Pepe coin in Germany, the simplest route is a MiCA-authorised app that quotes PEPE in euro and takes a free SEPA transfer. On 13 October 2026 that list included Bitpanda, Bison from the Boerse Stuttgart group, Bitvavo, Kraken and Bitstamp. You verify your identity, send euros by SEPA or SEPA Instant, buy PEPE, and either leave it on the platform or move it to your own Ethereum wallet. The live euro price is in the widget at the top of the page, and our PEPE calculator converts any euro budget into tokens. For scale, CoinGecko put 1 PEPE at about €0.00000363 that day.

The part that is genuinely German is tax. Under today’s rules, PEPE you hold for more than a year can be sold tax-free, and small gains under the €1,000 Freigrenze also stay untaxed. A Finance Ministry draft published on 30 September 2026 would change that for coins bought from 2027, which makes your purchase date matter more than usual. Both are covered below.

Euro is also a serious PEPE currency. On the day we checked, EUR pairs made up 17.0% of PEPE’s fiat-pair volume across the first 300 CoinGecko tickers, about $4.15 million in 24 hours, behind only the US dollar and the Turkish lira.

Is Pepe coin legal in Germany? BaFin and MiCA

Yes. Private individuals may buy, hold and sell PEPE in Germany. What is regulated is the business of offering it. Since 30 December 2024 the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) applies, with BaFin as Germany’s national competent authority and the national details set out in the KMAG. A crypto platform needs a CASP authorisation, either from BaFin or from another EU regulator, which it can then passport into Germany.

The transition period that let older firms keep operating without that authorisation ended EU-wide on 1 July 2026. Since then, an exchange without a MiCA licence may not serve German customers. That is the practical test for any app: is it in ESMA’s interim CASP register? You can check the register yourself; the CSV we used was last modified on 7 October 2026.

Several familiar names show up in that register with German relevance. Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH, the group behind Bison, was authorised by BaFin on 17 January 2025. Bitpanda Asset Management GmbH got its BaFin authorisation on 24 January 2025, while Bitpanda GmbH is authorised by Austria’s FMA. Trade Republic Bank, N26 and Scalable Capital also hold BaFin authorisations. Bitvavo is licensed by the Dutch AFM, Kraken’s European arm by the Central Bank of Ireland, and Coinbase’s by Luxembourg’s CSSF, not Ireland, despite what some guides say.

Where to buy PEPE for euros in Germany

We checked each platform’s public API or coin page on 13 October 2026. Two types of venue appear. Brokers such as Bitpanda and Bison sell you PEPE at a quoted price with the spread built in, which is simple but rarely the cheapest. Order-book exchanges such as Bitvavo, Kraken and Bitstamp match buyers and sellers on a PEPE/EUR market, with explicit maker and taker fees.

Bitpanda, the Vienna broker founded in 2014, is the most popular all-rounder in German-speaking Europe. It prices PEPE in 12 fiat currencies including the euro, takes SEPA for free and PayPal with a 1.49% deposit fee, and its built-in premium ranges from 0% to 2.49% depending on the asset. Our Bitpanda review digs into those costs. Bitvavo runs a real PEPE-EUR order book with a €5 minimum and fees of 0.15% maker and 0.25% taker in the lowest volume tier; its PEPE withdrawals go over Ethereum and cost 270,000 PEPE. The Bitvavo review has the full breakdown, and our exchange comparison covers the rest.

Coinbase is the odd one out. Its exchange API listed only PEPE-USD, with no PEPE-EUR market, and we could not confirm whether the retail app sells PEPE for euros in Germany. Trade Republic and Scalable Capital are MiCA-authorised, but whether either offers PEPE could not be confirmed when we checked, so we leave them out of the table.

Buy Pepe coin with SEPA, step by step

SEPA is the default rail in Germany, and on the platforms above euro bank transfers in are free. Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay are faster but cost more: 2.49% on Bison and 1% on Bitvavo. For the general walk-through, including how to spot the real contract, see our guide to buying PEPE.

1. Check the licence

   Confirm the platform is in ESMA’s MiCA register, either BaFin-authorised or passported into Germany.

2. Verify your identity

   Complete KYC with your ID card or passport before you can deposit.

3. Send euros by SEPA

   Use SEPA Instant if your bank supports it. Bison gives you a personal IBAN for this.

4. Buy PEPE in euro

   Use a broker quote for simplicity or a PEPE-EUR limit order on an exchange for tighter pricing.

5. Record the date

   Save the purchase date, amount and price. Your tax treatment depends on it.

If you plan to hold for a long time, think about custody. Native PEPE is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum, so any Ethereum wallet can hold it. Moving it costs a withdrawal fee, so check the amount first. Our wallet guide explains MetaMask, Ledger and the rest. Under the BMF letter of 6 March 2025, holding on foreign platforms comes with a stricter duty to document and disclose under § 90(2) AO, so keep exports of your trade history wherever you hold.

Pepe coin tax in Germany: § 23 EStG and the €1,000 Freigrenze

Under current law, PEPE held privately is not treated as capital income. Instead, selling or swapping it is a “private Veräußerungsgeschäft”, a private sale under § 22 No. 2 and § 23(1) sentence 1 No. 2 EStG. The rule has two parts that matter.

First, the holding period. A sale is only taxable if the time between buying and selling is not more than one year. Hold your PEPE for longer than a year and the gain is tax-free, however big it is. Second, the Freigrenze. If your total gains from all private sales in a calendar year stay under €1,000, they are tax-free. This is an exemption limit, not an allowance: at €1,000 or more, the whole amount becomes taxable, not just the part above the line. A €990 gain costs nothing; a €1,010 gain is taxed in full at your personal income tax rate.

The BMF letter of 6 March 2025 (BStBl I S. 658) fills in the details for staking, lending and airdrops and sets out the records you should keep. For tax year 2026, an annual return you file yourself is due by 31 July 2027 under § 149(2) AO; returns prepared by a tax adviser get longer.

The 30 Sep 2026 reform draft: draft only, not law

On 30 September 2026 the Federal Ministry of Finance published a Referentenentwurf, a ministry draft bill, called the “Gesetz zur Reform der Besteuerung bestimmter Kryptowerte im Privatvermögen”. This is a draft, not law. It still has to go through cabinet and parliament, and its content could change. Here is what it proposes, from the PDF we read on 13 October 2026.

1. 30 Sep 2026

   Ministry draft published

   Proposes moving exchange-type crypto assets into capital income under § 20 EStG.

2. 1 Jan 2027

   Proposed start for new purchases

   Coins acquired after 31 Dec 2026 would face 25% Kapitalertragsteuer. Older holdings stay under the one-year rule.

3. 1 Jan 2028

   Proposed platform withholding

   Platforms would start withholding the tax, as banks do for shares.

The draft targets “Tauschkryptowerte”, crypto assets under MiCA Article 3(1)(5) that are accepted as a means of exchange. The ministry estimates extra revenue of €350 million a year once fully in effect. Whether PEPE counts as a Tauschkryptowert is an open question we could not settle; that one needs a tax adviser. In practice, PEPE bought in 2026 would keep the old one-year rule even if the draft becomes law, while PEPE bought in 2027 or later might not.

CEX.IO availability in Germany

CEX.IO, an exchange running since 2013, does not currently take new customers from Germany. The terms for its European entity, CEX.IO EUROPE, S.L. in Madrid, last updated 1 July 2026, state that it does not onboard new EU or EEA users and that existing accounts are for withdrawals and account management only. The reason is MiCA. CEX.IO says it has applied to Spain’s CNMV for authorisation, and the application is under review, but it was not in ESMA’s register when we checked. Until that changes, German buyers should use one of the authorised platforms above. CEX.IO’s PEPE markets are in USD, USDT and USDC anyway, with no euro pair.

Local tips and unique facts

The most German thing about PEPE may be where you can buy it. Bison, the app from the Boerse Stuttgart group, lists Pepe (PEPE) on its coin list with a link to its MiCA white paper. A stock-exchange group offering a meme frog with a regulatory white paper is about as German as crypto gets. Germany is not among the top 20 countries in Chainalysis’s 2025 Global Crypto Adoption Index; the exact rank could not be confirmed. Still, the euro market for PEPE is deep.

Two habits save trouble. Only use apps you can find in the ESMA register, because after 1 July 2026 an unlicensed offshore exchange is breaking EU rules by serving you. And always check you are buying the real ERC-20 PEPE, not a lookalike, and size your position with PEPE’s risks in mind; our guide to PEPE copycat tokens lists the common ones. Neighbours work under the same MiCA rules but very different taxes: compare buying PEPE in the Netherlands, where Box 3 taxes a deemed return instead of gains, and buying PEPE in Czechia, where the ČNB had licensed 11 crypto firms by 1 July 2026.