Spread, Custody and Tax in Detail

Crypto exchanges compared: where the markup shows up on the bill

The information provided in this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Investing in cryptocurrencies carries a high level of risk.

The Bison app belongs to the Boerse Stuttgart group, claims more than a million active users and advertises that crypto trading carries no order fees. That is true, and it is still only half an answer to the question of what the trading costs.

You pay through the spread, the gap between the buying and the selling price. Bison quantifies it itself: an average of 1.25 percent on bitcoin and ether, an average of 1.75 percent on every other cryptocurrency. Retrieved from the fee page on September 5, 2026.

This article is an assessment rather than a news report. It draws on the general terms and conditions in their versions of June 1, 2026, the special conditions for the pooled trust account of December 15, 2025, the basic and risk information of May 27, 2026, and the MiCA register of the European securities regulator ESMA. All

Who stands behind the Bison app, and why that is more than a formality

Bison is a brand, not a company. Behind it sit several firms with clearly separated roles, and for the question of who is liable for what, that separation is decisive.

Your trading counterparty is EUWAX Aktiengesellschaft, based at Boersenstrasse 4 in Stuttgart. It does not act as an intermediary but as a direct counterparty. Clause 4.1 of the terms says expressly that customers buy crypto assets “from us” and sell them “to us”.

Your crypto assets are held by Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH, on a fiduciary basis and as a separate company. It grew out of the former blocknox GmbH.

Your euro balance sits in a pooled trust account of EUWAX AG, maintained at Solaris SE and, since January 2025, additionally at Deutsche Bank. One point matters here: you have no contractual relationship of your own with these banks. That is set out in the special conditions for the pooled trust account.

The authorisations: four entries, four dates, one register

Bison was the first German provider to hold a MiCAR licence. That is often shortened to “Bison is licensed”. More precisely, and in a form you can verify, it looks like this, according to ESMA’s MiCA register with a data status of August 17, 2026:

In all four cases the competent authority is BaFin. The custody company additionally holds a passport for 29 states, EUWAX AG for eight, and in one case for Germany alone.

The practical point that follows: the licence sits with the group companies, not with the app. When you compare providers, you are comparing these entries, and not brand names.

What trading through the Bison app costs

The fee page is easy to read, and most of what is on it really is free of charge. Retrieved on September 5, 2026:

Scale the spread up to your own amount before you take comfort from the zero on the order fee. A full round trip, meaning a purchase and a later sale, works out at roughly 2.5 percent on bitcoin and ether and roughly 3.5 percent on the other coins. On a €5,000 stake that is €125 or €175 that never appears as a fee on the statement. It sits in the price.

Two qualifications, in fairness to that figure. Bison writes itself that the spread “fluctuates, as it can depend on market conditions and on the size of a trade”. And the fee page carries no date. The values therefore hold as of the retrieval date, not indefinitely.

No order book: why the price holds for only ten seconds

This is the difference you cannot see inside an app. For crypto trading, Bison runs no order book. Clause 4.3 of the terms calls the procedure a request for trade system.

How it works: you are shown an indicative price, that price holds for ten seconds, and EUWAX AG is entitled to reject your trade request. So you are not trading against other market participants. You are trading against your provider, which also sets the price.

That is standard for broker apps and no disadvantage in itself; for small amounts it is simpler. It does mean, though, that there is no market depth for you to examine, and that the price is a decision taken by the provider. If you want order book trading, the venues that offer it are in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.

At least limit buy, stop buy, limit sell and stop loss are available, and they cost nothing beyond the spread.

Withdrawals to your own wallet: here Bison is unusually generous

This is the strongest point in the offering, and it is rarely highlighted. Withdrawing cryptocurrencies to a wallet of your own is not merely free: Bison even covers the blockchain fees.

Clause 4.3 of the custody company’s terms says it literally: “We bear the transaction costs arising on these transfers.” They are first charged to the trust assets and then settled out of the company’s own funds. At most providers you carry the network fee yourself, and on Ethereum that quickly runs to several euros depending on congestion.

Anyone who genuinely wants to move crypto assets into their own custody has one of the cheapest routes here. Suitable devices are listed in our hardware wallet comparison.

The limits on withdrawals you should know before your first attempt

Free does not mean unconditional. Five points from the documentation, as of September 4, 2026:

Minimum amounts per coin. A minimum withdrawal amount is documented for around 70 cryptocurrencies, for example 0.001 bitcoin, 0.01 ether, 0.1 solana, 10 XRP, 30 cardano or 100 dogecoin. Below that, the attempt fails with an error message.

Taproot is not supported for bitcoin. Withdrawals are designed for address formats beginning with 1, 3 and bc1q. Addresses starting with bc1p, meaning Taproot, do not work. If you use a modern wallet, you have to pick a suitable receiving address deliberately.

A 24-hour waiting period after a purchase. Freshly bought holdings cannot be withdrawn immediately.

Own wallets only. The terms expressly prohibit transfers to third-party wallets, service providers included.

Cancellable for one hour after you start it, and irrevocable after that. Release runs through a password, an SMS code and an email confirmation.

For euro withdrawals a closed-loop principle applies on top: money goes back only to an account that money was previously paid in from.

Staking through the Bison app: 27 percent, and without MiCAR protection

Bison offers staking for ethereum and solana, from 0.005 ether and 0.1 solana respectively. The company gives a yield range of 2 to 5 percent a year on ethereum and 4 to 8 percent on solana. Rewards arrive weekly on Mondays. Against the risk of a network penalty, known in the jargon as slashing, there is insurance with Munich Re.

Two figures belong alongside that, and both come from Bison itself.

First: Bison retains 27 percent of the rewards. A gross yield of 5 percent therefore becomes 3.65 percent by the time it reaches you.

Second, and this is the weightier point: its own staking page states in as many words that the service is “currently not regulated under MiCAR and does not offer the protection and supervision established by EU rules”. Trading and custody are licensed. The staking is not. If you are looking for staking as a core function, weigh that against the providers in our comparison of staking platforms.

Deposit protection: yes for euros, expressly not for crypto

On the euro balance, statutory deposit protection of €100,000 per investor and per bank applies, through Solaris SE and Deutsche Bank.

Two restrictions sit in the small print and are seldom quoted. The protection exists “only once for all balances of the customer held at the trustee bank”. Anyone who is already a Deutsche Bank customer is therefore sharing a single pot. And under clause 6.4 of the special conditions you carry the insolvency risk of the trustee bank, to the extent that the claim can be enforced neither against the deposit guarantee scheme nor against the insolvency administrator.

For crypto assets it does not apply at all, and the terms say so unmistakably under the heading “no compensation claim” in clause 12.12: there is no claim against the compensation scheme for securities trading firms, there is no guarantee fund and there is no other compensation arrangement. Fiduciary custody with private-sector insurance takes its place.

A side note for the cost calculation: interest on the euro balance is not yours. Clause 3.7 of the special conditions records that no claim to the release of interest arises and that EUWAX AG may keep it.

Tax: two worlds inside one app

Bison sells crypto and securities through the same interface. For tax purposes they are two entirely different matters.

On securities, Bison handles everything for you. Withholding tax is deducted automatically, the advance lump sum is taken into account, losses are offset monthly, an exemption order can be lodged in the app, and you receive an annual tax certificate at around April of the following year.

On crypto, Bison handles nothing for you. No tax deduction, no exemption order, no loss certificate, no offsetting against other asset classes. The basic and risk information of May 27, 2026 puts it this way: “Any tax that may arise is in principle to be paid by you to the tax office responsible for you.”

What you do get is a free information report as a PDF, available under account and reports. It contains a non-binding calculation using the FIFO method, separated by holding periods above and below one year, and it shows staking rewards separately. Alongside it comes a transaction history as a CSV file for external tax software.

The catch hits precisely the users who rely on the free withdrawal: coins for which an external deposit or withdrawal has taken place are shaded grey in the information report and do not enter the automatic profit and loss calculation. The holding period counter also restarts at zero once a coin comes back. Anyone using the transfer function therefore needs a tool of their own, or loses exactly the statement they need for the tax return. Which programs cover this is set out in our comparison of crypto tax tools.

The tax treatment itself follows the private disposal transaction under section 23 of the German Income Tax Act, with a one-year speculation period and an exemption threshold of €1,000.

Who the Bison app suits

It suits you if you want a German, supervised provider with a simple interface, if you save small amounts, use the savings plan from €0.01 upwards and move your crypto assets to a wallet of your own on a regular basis. The free withdrawal, network fee included, is a genuine argument.

It suits you less if you trade a lot. Roughly 2.5 to 3.5 percent per round trip adds up, and order book exchanges sit well below that. It also suits you less if staking is your main aim, because of the 27 percent and because this service sits outside the MiCAR framework.

Bison app: what to take away

1. Scale the spread up to your amount before you buy. On €5,000, 1.25 percent is around €62 on the purchase and the same again on the sale. Compare that with a provider that charges a visible order fee.
2. Check your receiving address before you withdraw. If it begins with bc1p, the bitcoin withdrawal will not work. Check the minimum amount for your coin as well, and allow for the 24-hour waiting period after a purchase.
3. Secure your tax data yourself as soon as you transfer externally. The information report leaves transferred coins out. Export the transaction history as a CSV file regularly and bring it together in tax software.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Bison app really free of charge? There is no order fee, but there is a spread averaging 1.25 percent on bitcoin and ether and 1.75 percent on all other cryptocurrencies, as of September 5, 2026. Securities cost €1.99 per trade.

Who holds my crypto assets at Bison? Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH, on a fiduciary basis. It has been authorised under MiCAR for custody and transfer services since January 17, 2025, with BaFin as the competent authority.

Can I withdraw crypto from Bison to my own wallet? Yes, free of charge, and Bison even covers the blockchain fees. Minimum amounts apply per coin, along with a 24-hour waiting period after a purchase, and Taproot addresses beginning with bc1p are not supported for bitcoin.

Is my money protected at Bison? The euro balance is, at €100,000 per investor and per bank through Solaris SE and Deutsche Bank. Crypto assets are not: the terms expressly exclude a compensation claim, and fiduciary custody with insurance takes its place.

How much is left from staking through Bison? Bison retains 27 percent of the rewards. On the stated range of 2 to 5 percent for ethereum, that leaves 1.46 to 3.65 percent on the arithmetic. According to Bison, the staking service is currently not regulated under MiCAR.

Does Bison pay the tax on crypto for me? No. On securities Bison deducts withholding tax and issues an annual tax certificate; on crypto assets it does not. You receive a non-binding information report as a PDF and have to file yourself.

MiCAR is being built out further, and Bison’s staking service expressly sits outside that framework for now. As soon as anything changes there, the conditions change with it. We follow this and summarise it, in German and in English. The current picture is on the front page of cryptoticker.io.

Sources

• Bison, fee overview, retrieved on September 5, 2026: https://bisonapp.com/gebuehren/
• Bison, general terms and conditions of EUWAX AG, version DE 13.2, as of June 1, 2026: https://bisonapp.com/wp-content/static/documents/202606/2026-06-01_BISON_EUWAX_AGB_v13.2_DE_clean.pdf
• Bison, general terms and conditions of Boerse Stuttgart Digital Custody GmbH, version 11.2, as of June 1, 2026: https://bisonapp.com/wp-content/static/documents/202606/2026-06-01_BISON_BSDC_AGB_v11.2_DE_clean.pdf
• Bison, special conditions for the pooled trust account of EUWAX AG, as of December 15, 2025: https://bisonapp.com/wp-content/static/documents/122025/sonderbedingungen-treuhandsammelkonto-euwax-ag.pdf
• Bison, basic and risk information, as of May 27, 2026: https://bisonapp.com/wp-content/static/documents/202606/bison-basis-und-risikoinformationen-stand-27.05.2026.pdf
• Bison, staking page with yield range and regulatory note: https://bisonapp.com/krypto/staking/
• Bison, help article on crypto withdrawals and address formats, updated on September 2 and 4, 2026: https://support.bisonapp.com/hc/de/articles/19332347529501
• Bison, blog post on the partnership with Deutsche Bank of January 13, 2025: https://bisonapp.com/blog/partnerschaft-deutsche-bank/
• ESMA, interim MiCA register of crypto asset service providers, file CASPS.csv, data status August 17, 2026: https://www.esma.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2024-12/CASPS.csv
• Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto assets (MiCAR), Article 70: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1114/oj

(As of September 5, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)

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Transparency note: This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editorial team before publication. All figures and claims were checked against the primaryI

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Source: cryptoticker.io