Crypto Country GuideCrypto rules and tax, country by country

Switzerland

Last reviewed: October 2026

On this page
  1. Legal status
    1. Stablecoins
    2. Planned new licenses
  2. Tax for individuals
    1. Private gains and wealth tax
    2. Mining, staking and airdrops
    3. Professional trading
  3. Tax for companies
    1. VAT
  4. Reporting and filing obligations
  5. Exchanges and KYC
  6. Self-custody
  7. Sources
  • FINMA supervises crypto providers under existing financial market law and classes tokens as payment, utility or asset tokens. New license categories for payment instrument institutions and crypto institutions are planned.
  • For private individuals, gains on crypto are generally tax-free capital gains at the federal level, and losses are not deductible. Your crypto counts as wealth and is declared at its market value at the end of the tax period.
  • Mining income is taxable. Staking rewards and airdrops are taxed as income from movable assets. Professional trading is self-employment and is taxed as income.
  • Cantons apply the rules themselves, so details can differ by canton.
  • Switzerland has not yet started automatic exchange of crypto-asset information: the earliest start is 1 January 2027.

This page covers private individuals and companies that hold, trade or accept crypto in Switzerland. It is general information, not legal or tax advice. Several of the official documents we needed are PDFs or pages that we could not read in full, and we say so where it matters.

Switzerland has no single crypto law. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) applies existing financial market law to crypto activities, case by case. Its guidelines on initial coin offerings (updated 16 February 2018) and its supplement on stablecoins (11 September 2019) are published on the FINMA website. FINMA distinguishes payment tokens, utility tokens and asset tokens, and the Federal Tax Administration (ESTV) uses the same three categories.

The DLT Act, which adapted several Swiss laws to distributed ledger technology, has been fully in force since 1 August 2021. For providers, FINMA lists among its licenses the “FinTech licence” under Article 1b of the Banking Act.

Stablecoins

In FINMA Guidance 06/2024 (26 July 2024) FINMA says that various stablecoin issuers in Switzerland use default guarantees from banks, which means they often do not need a FINMA license under banking law. FINMA also points to increased risks of money laundering, terrorist financing and circumvention of sanctions.

Planned new licenses

The Federal Council opened a consultation on 22 October 2025 (closed 6 February 2026) on two new license categories under the Financial Institutions Act: payment instrument institutions, which would replace the fintech license, and crypto institutions, with requirements modeled on securities firms. Customer funds would be segregated if the institution goes bankrupt. We could not confirm whether the bill has since gone to parliament, so check the State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF) website for the current status.

Tax for individuals

The ESTV working paper on cryptocurrencies and ICOs/ITOs (the latest version we found is dated 3 August 2022, replacing the edition of 27 August 2019) sets out the federal view. Cantons apply the tax law in their own jurisdiction, so check your canton’s tax authority. We did not read a cantonal source.

Private gains and wealth tax

  • Gains and losses. For individuals who hold crypto as private assets, gains from buying and selling are in principle tax-free capital gains, and losses are non-deductible capital losses.
  • Holding. Simply holding payment tokens bought on a crypto exchange does not, as a rule, generate income subject to income tax or withholding tax.
  • Wealth tax. Crypto counts as a valuable, movable, tradable and intangible asset, in the category of movable capital assets. You declare it at its market value at the end of the tax period. The ESTV publishes tax values for the most common cryptocurrencies in its annual rate list (Kursliste).

Mining, staking and airdrops

  • Mining. The compensation a miner receives is taxable income. According to the ESTV, mining normally meets the criteria of an independent business activity.
  • Staking. The reward is in principle income from movable assets (Article 20(1) of the Federal Direct Tax Act).
  • Airdrops. Airdropped tokens are taxed as income from movable assets, at their market value, at the time they are allocated.

Professional trading

The tax-free treatment of private gains does not apply if you trade as a business. The ESTV says that, depending on the nature, scope and financing of the transactions, there is no private asset management but self-employment. The gains are then commercial gains subject to income tax. The ESTV working paper lists detailed criteria, but we could not read that PDF, so we do not list them here.

Tax for companies

Companies pay federal, cantonal and communal profit tax. We could not read the pages that state the current rates, so we do not give them here. Check the ESTV and your canton.

For the books, the ESTV says that losses are tax-deductible if they have been booked. For token issuers, the funds received count as taxable income and are shown as income in the profit and loss account when the tokens are issued.

VAT

The ESTV VAT guide (MWST-Info 04, section 2.7.3.5) says that if validation work is paid only in newly generated crypto coins or tokens created automatically by the network, there is no party that spends an asset to receive a service. Block rewards alone are therefore not subject to VAT. Transaction fees paid by the sender to the validator are different: they are in principle a taxable service relationship.

Reporting and filing obligations

Individuals. You declare your crypto as wealth in your tax return, at its market value at the end of the tax period, using the ESTV rate list where it lists your coin. Any taxable income, such as staking rewards, goes in the return as well. Canton rules decide the details.

Automatic exchange (CARF). The State Secretariat for International Finance says that Switzerland can implement the automatic exchange of crypto-asset information at the earliest from 1 January 2027, and that the legal provisions do not apply in 2026. Parliament decides which partner states take part. The Federal Council’s dispatch of 6 June 2025 proposed 74 partner states relevant to the crypto market. The sources we read are not consistent about the exact dates, so treat them as open.

Exchanges and KYC

Providers that act as financial intermediaries must identify their customers under Swiss anti-money-laundering law and need a FINMA license or membership of a self-regulatory organization. We could not read the statute or the organizations’ pages for this guide, so we do not describe the details.

FINMA Guidance 02/2019 (26 August 2019) on payments on the blockchain says that information about the client and the beneficiary must be transmitted with transfers of tokens. It also says that supervised institutions may only send cryptocurrencies or other tokens to external wallets that belong to their own customers whose identity has already been verified.

Self-custody

We found no Swiss rule that restricts private wallets. The rules we confirmed apply to supervised intermediaries. Tokens in your own wallet are treated like tokens on an exchange for wealth tax: they are movable capital assets, declared at market value at the end of the tax period. We found no official statement on lost private keys.

Sources

This page is general information, not legal or tax advice. Rules and rates change, so check the official sources above before you act.