The Bitcoin Beacon
Bull Bitcoin asks the Conseil d’État to annul the decree that reports every crypto holder to the tax grid — 41 kidnappings, it argues, are the stakes.
The first legal challenge to Europe's crypto tax-surveillance regime was filed not by a lobby but by an exchange. Bull Bitcoin — the bitcoin-only, non-custodial firm licensed under MiCA by France's AMF — has asked the Conseil d'État, the country's supreme administrative court, to annul Decree No. 2025-1276, the measure that transposes the EU's DAC8 directive into French law.
DAC8 requires crypto service providers to automatically report client identities, balances and transactions for exchange across EU tax authorities. Bull Bitcoin's substantive brief, filed after a February 24 summary petition, attacks the automatic part: under prior frameworks, authorities got customer data on lawful request, typically with suspicion of wrongdoing. The decree replaces that threshold with blanket transmission — everyone reported, suspected of nothing.
The company's sharpest claim is physical, not fiscal. France has recorded 41 crypto-related kidnappings since January, a wave of “wrench attacks” on known holders. A state-mandated database of who owns what, Bull Bitcoin argues, is a target list waiting for its first leak — and institutions cannot guarantee it never leaks.
A database of holders is a map for burglars.
There is self-interest here, honestly declared: automatic reporting is expensive for a non-custodial business built on data minimization. But the privacy argument stands apart from the business one, and the company says it will escalate to the Court of Justice of the European Union if it loses.
Every EU state must transpose DAC8; France's decree is among the first, so the first annulment fight sets the template. A win would force member states to rebuild reporting around suspicion and proportionality. A loss still puts on record, in Europe's most litigious administrative court, what blanket financial surveillance costs the people it catalogs.
Europe's crypto rulebook was written as if data collection were free. The first invoice — 41 kidnappings and a constitutional challenge — has arrived.
Editor’s note: the 41-kidnapping figure is Bull Bitcoin’s own count of 2026 incidents, echoed in coverage — treat as the litigant’s number. DAC8 covers “crypto-assets” broadly; we cover the case for its bitcoin-holder stakes.
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