Tax for Bitcoiners is a space devoted to the taxation of crypto-assets as it applies in Spain.

Spanish tax law was not designed with crypto-assets in mind — unlike other categories of assets, such as real estate or securities — and so it lacks substantive rules specific to their taxation: there is no dedicated regime for characterising the income they generate, nor measurement or timing rules suited to their nature. The only provisions conceived specifically for these assets are reporting obligations (tax forms 172, 173 and 721).

Their substantive treatment has therefore been built by fitting each transaction into the general categories of each tax — a task carried out in large part by the Directorate-General for Taxes (DGT), the body within the Ministry of Finance responsible for interpreting tax legislation, through its binding rulings.

Although bitcoin sits at the centre of our work, the analysis extends across the whole ecosystem: stablecoins, decentralised finance and lending, staking, NFTs and beyond.

We set out the treatment that applies in Spain to the main crypto-asset transactions, with a link to every ruling and judgment we discuss, and we give our own reading where we believe the Directorate-General for Taxes has it wrong.

Many transactions — both today’s and those this vibrant ecosystem will keep bringing forth — still lack any settled tax treatment. In those cases we give our opinion, to the best of our knowledge and judgement. Don’t trust, verify.