Institutional bitcoin holders in Germany

The figures come from the Germany pages of Bitcoin Treasuries, which track companies and exchange-traded products by country, and from the reports that the companies publish themselves. An issuer of a physically backed product holds bitcoin for its investors and not for its own account, so the table marks these holders as issuers. Where a company publishes only a euro value, the table shows that value with its date, and the order compares it at the bitcoin price of that date. All other figures are from October 2026 unless the text names an earlier report.

Bitwise took over the Frankfurt issuer ETC Group in 2024, and its German company Bitwise Europe GmbH now issues the Bitwise Physical Bitcoin ETC with the ticker BTCE. The product has traded on Xetra since June 2020, and according to Bitcoin Treasuries it holds about 10,771 bitcoin. The cheaper Bitwise Core Bitcoin ETC adds about 1,480 bitcoin, so the two products together make Bitwise Europe the largest institutional bitcoin holder in Germany. Every security is backed by bitcoin that custodians such as BitGo and Zodia Custody keep for the investors.

Bitcoin Group SE in Herford is the listed holding company of bitcoin.de, which started in 2011 as a marketplace where private buyers and sellers trade bitcoin with each other. The company holds about 3,605 bitcoin on its own balance sheet, the largest bitcoin reserve of any listed company based in Germany. In its half-year report of September 2026 the company valued its holdings at 199 million euros on 30 June 2026 and announced a relaunch of bitcoin.de with a wider product range.

The Frankfurt asset manager DWS launched the Xtrackers Galaxy Physical Bitcoin ETC on Xetra in April 2024, with Galaxy as partner and an annual fee of 0.35 percent. The issuer of the product is Xtrackers Digital Markets ETC AG in Switzerland, while DWS runs the brand and the distribution from Frankfurt. nxtAssets is a Frankfurt issuer under BaFin supervision, and its bitcoin products keep their coins at Crypto Finance (Deutschland), a company of Deutsche Börse Group. Deutsche Digital Assets started its physical bitcoin ETP on Xetra in May 2021 under the earlier name Iconic Funds, and the product holds about 214 bitcoin.

3U Holding AG in Marburg owns companies in renewable energy and IT, and it began buying bitcoin in 2024 as part of its treasury. The holding company had 200 bitcoin by the third quarter of 2024 at a cost of about 12.1 million euros and reached 331 bitcoin in July 2025. Its report for the first quarter of 2026 shows 427.1 bitcoin, together with a non-cash valuation charge of 7.2 million euros at the reporting date.

The Berlin financing company aifinyo announced in October 2025 that it would become the first listed bitcoin treasury company in Germany (in German), with a target of more than 10,000 bitcoin by 2027. By November 2025 aifinyo held about 31 bitcoin, bought from the cash flow of its business with around 8,000 business clients. Nakiki SE in Frankfurt, the former windeln.de, turned to a pure bitcoin treasury strategy in 2025 and issued a bitcoin bond, but it has not published a bitcoin count. The natural cosmetics maker Evertz Pharma first bought bitcoin in December 2020 and added 100 bitcoin in May 2025. The Berlin biotech company ATAI Life Sciences decided in March 2025 to build an initial bitcoin position of 5 million US dollars.

Counted by institution, the most bitcoin in Germany sits in the two bitcoin ETCs of Bitwise Europe, which together hold about 12,250 bitcoin for their investors. Among companies that hold bitcoin for their own account, Bitcoin Group SE leads with about 3,605 bitcoin, far ahead of 3U Holding with 427 bitcoin. Private individuals who keep bitcoin in their own wallets appear in no register, so no list can name the largest private holders.

Bitcoin Treasuries counts four listed companies based in Germany with bitcoin on their balance sheets, Bitcoin Group SE, 3U Holding, ATAI Life Sciences and aifinyo, with about 4,121 bitcoin together. Evertz Pharma is the only private company in Germany on that tracker with published bitcoin holdings. Both 3U Holding and Bitcoin Group SE reported lower bitcoin values in their interim reports for 2026, after the price fell in the first half of the year.

A bitcoin ETP from a German issuer is a bearer bond that trades on Xetra or the Stuttgart exchange and is backed by bitcoin held at a custodian. Bitwise Europe, nxtAssets and Deutsche Digital Assets issue such products from Frankfurt, while larger European products come from issuers in Jersey, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. Bitcoin ETFs in Europe explains why EU fund rules lead to this bond structure instead of a fund.

The German state no longer holds bitcoin in any amount worth reporting. Between 19 June and 12 July 2024 the prosecutors in Dresden sold about 49,858 bitcoin that the police had seized in the movie2k criminal case, for about 2.64 billion euros. The sale was an emergency sale under the Code of Criminal Procedure, which applies when seized assets threaten to lose a large part of their value before a court decides on them.