Bloomberg reported on June 30, 2025, that the German savings banks are now seeking to enable their private consumers to trade crypto such as Bitcoin. Germany’s Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe- Finanzgruppe and parent of Dekabank announced that it would extend crypto trading to its 50 million retail clients by summer 2026.
Yet at a time in 2023, the group deemed cryptocurrencies “highly speculative” and opted against offering such services, but now this move mirrors the changing mindset of institutions, banks and companies over crypto, especially Bitcoin.
Dekabank, which already launched institutional crypto trading and custody services in February this year, will manage this retail platform, enabling the trading of Bitcoin and Ethereum through the Sparkasse app.
EU’s MiCA backing the surge in demand for crypto
Market experts call the move of Sparkassen- Finanzgruppe likely to be motivated from the skyrocketing demand of cryptocurrencies among consumers.
While talking to Bloomberg News, a spokesperson of DekaBank said that the offering will be developed over the course of a year, and customers will likely be able to trade crypto in summer next year.
On June 30th, 2025, the German Saving Banks Association announced that, “ The Savings Banks Finance Group will provide reliable access to a regulated crypto offering.”
DZ Bank, the central institution of over 700 cooperative banks, launched a blockchain-based digital asset custody platform for institutional clients in 2023.
In 2025, this pilot is expanding across the cooperative network with plans to offer Bitcoin, Ethereum, and select crypto to retail clients of the 737 cooperative banks serving 30 million customers.
Especially in this year German cooperative banks led by DZ Bank are actively rolling out crypto trading and custody services. The retail pilot from 2024 is scaling up with many banks offering Bitcoin and Ethereum.
How big is the German crypto market?
As per Statista, the crypto market of Germany is projected to generate $2.5 billion in 2025 with a compound annual growth rate of 16.33% from 2025 to 2026 reaching $2.9 billion by 2026.
The average revenue per user in the ongoing year is expected to be $91.51, which was $70.30 in the last year; a Grandview Research report said that the crypto marketplace of the nation has generated $314.4 million in 2024.
By 2025 end the number of crypto users in Germany are expected to reach 27.32 million, a 33% surge is expected in the ongoing from the number of users in 2024.
According to the data from CoinMarketCap, Wen Lambo Financial is one of the most viewed crypto in Germany followed by Shieldeum, SwissCheese, Bitcoin, XRP, Solana, Ethereum, Pi, Solaxy and Cardano.
However, trending cryptocurrencies in the nation are Hashflow, Shieldeum, Bitcoin, XRP, Wen Lambo Financial, Solana, TrueFi and Bitcoin Cash.
