Crypto assets

Crypto assets are a form of digital money that has proven to be a popular complement to “real” money. Another characteristic of crypto assets is that they can be used for payment without a need for intermediaries such as banks. This means that anyone can send money via the Internet to anyone without a central intermediary. The best known decentralized crypto asset is currently Bitcoin. Crypto assets are based on blockchains. A blockchain is a decentralized database where the data are updated through algorithms. This data is kept safe and interlinked using cryptography.

You can buy crypto assets in the LHV mobile app and in the internet bank. In the mobile app, go to the “Growth” screen (third icon from the left at the bottom), select “+” at the top middle and then “Buy Crypto Assets”. Then enter the crypto asset you want to purchase and the amount.

In the internet bank, go to “Investing” → “Buy-sell” and choose “Crypto assets”. Enter the desired amount and crypto asset you wish to buy.

You can purchase crypto assets if you have agreed to the terms and conditions for crypto-asset services and completed the appropriateness questionnaire. Legal entities must also have a valid LEI code.

If you have purchased crypto assets in your LHV account, you can sell them via the mobile app or in the internet bank. In the mobile app, tap on the crypto asset and select “Sell”. In the internet bank, go to “Investing” → “Buy-sell” and choose “Crypto assets”. From there, choose the transaction type as “Sell” and enter the crypto asset you wish to sell and the amount.

No, you cannot pay with the crypto assets that you have acquired through LHV. They can only be traded.

No, you will not receive a separate crypto wallet address when buying crypto address through LHV

Crypto assets are high-risk financial instruments. The value of cryptocurrency has been known to increase or decrease 20 or 30 percent in a single day. There is no guarantee that crypto assets will retain value or increase in value. The crypto sector is also less regulated and may not offer the investor protection measures that are common for securities.

Before making a transaction with a crypto asset, we recommend a thorough analysis of the nature of the specific crypto asset and the financial, legal and tax issues related to the prospective transaction.

Among other things, crypto assets are exposed to risks that may result from changes in the national legal environment, cyber security, and various fraudulent schemes that increase the risk of loss of the entire value of crypto assets.

The client’s order will be completed on the following terms:

• The order is always sent to the crypto exchange immediately, without the broker’s manual intervention.
• LHV does not gather or divide clients’ orders, meaning that the order inserted by the client is sent to the market directly in the set amount.
• The maximum transaction sum is 100,000 euros to avoid transactions that would affect the liquidity of the market.
• When using the market order type the order is filled immediately, with the best available price.
• Orders with a price limit are filled according to the chosen limit and the market situation.
• The orders on the exchange will be filled using the of first in, first out method, i.e. the orders that have come through first will be filled first in case of equal price point.

The list of crypto assets tradable in LHV with their description can be found on the product page.

The crypto exchange is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So you can buy crypto assets at LHV at any time. The transaction is executed immediately.

It is currently not possible to transfer other crypto assets to LHV.

You can buy crypto assets as an individual and as a company. Keep in mind that a company needs to have a valid LEI code.

No, crypto assets cannot be gifted. They can only be purchased or sold on one’s own LHV individual or business account.

Yes, you can. To do this, select a child account and enter a crypto asset purchase order.

Only crypto-assets acquired on a platform with a MiCA licence are eligible for the investment account system. LHV received its MiCA licence on 18.05.2026. This means that:

• Crypto-assets acquired through LHV up to and including 17.05.2026 cannot be included in the investment account system. Every profitable transaction must be declared in table 6.3 of your tax return (“Transfer of other property”). Loss-making transactions may not be taken into account. Example: if you buy Bitcoin for 100 euros and later sell it for 150 euros, the taxable gain is 50 euros. If a subsequent or previous crypto transaction is loss-making (e.g. a 60-euro loss), it cannot be offset against the gain — income tax is still payable on the 50-euro profit.
• Crypto-assets acquired through LHV from 18.05.2026 onwards are financial assets eligible for the investment account. If a crypto-asset is acquired using funds held in an investment account, the income generated from crypto-assets can be reinvested into other crypto-assets or financial assets without income tax being paid in the meantime. Income tax liability arises only once withdrawals from the investment account begin to exceed the contributions made to it. If a crypto-asset is acquired from an ordinary current account (i.e. an account that has not been declared to the Tax and Customs Board as an investment account in table 6.5), every profitable crypto-asset transaction must be declared in table 6.1 of the tax return (“Transfer of financial assets”). However, unlike crypto-assets acquired before MiCA, if the crypto-asset sold was acquired from 18.05.2026 onwards and the sale resulted in a loss, that transaction may also be declared in table 6.1 to reduce the income tax liability.

You can read more about the taxation of crypto-assets here.

The crypto assets will appear on your LHV account immediately after the transaction.

If you invest as a private individual and wish to defer your income tax liability, we recommend buying crypto-assets from an account that you have declared to the Tax and Customs Board in table 6.5 of your tax return. If you only have one current account, which you use for everyday transactions, we recommend opening a new bank account for investing in crypto-assets and buying crypto-assets from there. You can then declare that account as an investment account in table 6.5 when submitting your next tax return.

To open a new account in the Internet Bank, go to “Settings” → “Add an account”. On the mobile app, go to the home icon and click the “…” sign on the top right corner.

For legal entities, there is no difference which account is used for crypto asset purchases.

Transfers between accounts cannot be made. The only option would be to sell the crypto assets purchased on the wrong account and then re-purchase the assets on the correct account.

The external custodians with whom the LHV clients’ crypto assets are held will decide on the crypto assets held by them when the split occurs. External custodians do not guarantee that every split is also supported on their platform, but they are analysed on an individual level, taking into account their security in particular.

LHV’s role in ensuring the security of its clients’ crypto assets is mainly through the selection of partners with a high level of security. LHV’s partners are Bitstamp, a licenced crypto exchange in Europe, BitGo, a licenced custody service provider in the US. Additionally, both the custody and the trading service is provided by a US company Bitstamp.

The crypto assets of all LHV clients are protected in accordance with our partners’ security processes:

• The majority of clients’ assets are stored in a cold wallet, a location that is not connected to the Internet, meaning that these assets cannot be stolen virtually. The keys to these wallets are stored in a physical form in a secure location.
• To a lesser extent, clients’ assets are held in a hot wallet, a place connected to the internet, which is used to carry out stock exchange transactions on an ongoing basis. These assets have a higher risk of falling victim to cybercrime.

All in all, the vast majority of clients’ assets are kept in a wallet that is not electronically accessible. Additionally, both types of wallets are insured, providing protection in the event of theft. The final impact on a client’s assets in the event of a cyber-attack will depend on a number of factors, but mainly on which of our foreign broker’s hot wallets is attacked (which crypto assets) and the value of that wallet. A cold wallet attack is supposed to be a physical attack, so it is less likely to happen. However, should this happen, clients will also be protected by higher insurance.

Yes, crypto-assets acquired through LHV from 18.05.2026 onwards are financial assets eligible for the investment account.

The taxation of crypto-assets depends on when they were acquired:

• Crypto-assets acquired through LHV up to and including 17.05.2026 do not fall under the investment account system, as at that time they were not considered financial assets. They must be declared as the transfer of other property, in the same way as real estate and physical gold.
• Crypto-assets acquired through LHV from 18.05.2026 onwards are financial assets eligible for the investment account system, as LHV received its MiCA licence on 18.05.2026.

Read more about the taxation of crypto-assets for private individuals

Transfer of other property (crypto-assets acquired up to 17.05.2026)
Crypto-assets acquired up to 17.05.2026 must be declared as the transfer of other property in table 6.3 of the tax return, in the same way as real estate and physical gold. Every profitable sale transaction is taxable, while loss-making transactions cannot be taken into account. For example: if during the year you have sold Bitcoin twice — earning a profit of 100 euros on one transaction and incurring a loss of 80 euros on the other — income tax must be paid on the full 100 euros of profit.

If such a crypto-asset was acquired through an investment account, its purchase is treated as a cash withdrawal and its sale as a contribution to the investment account, since at the time of acquisition the crypto-asset was not yet classified as a financial asset.

Ordinary system (crypto-assets acquired from 18.05.2026 onwards)
The ordinary system applies only to crypto-assets acquired through LHV from 18.05.2026 onwards, provided they were not acquired using funds held in an investment account. Under this system, both profitable and loss-making transactions can be declared in table 6.1 of the tax return (“Transfer of financial assets”) — meaning loss-making transactions reduce the taxable profit.

Investment account system (crypto-assets acquired from 18.05.2026 onwards)
The investment account system can only be used for crypto-assets if they were acquired from 18.05.2026 onwards and purchased with funds held in an investment account. In that case, you can defer your income tax liability until the moment when withdrawals from the investment account exceed the contributions made to it.

We have made declaration for you as simple as possible
We have made declaration as simple as possible. You do not need to keep track yourself of when each crypto-asset was acquired. Your portfolio position does not change, and there is no difference when entering transactions. The system keeps track by default on a FIFO basis, meaning we assume that you first sell off your pre-MiCA crypto-assets and only afterwards your post-MiCA ones.

When it is time to declare, you simply need to generate the correct tax report in LHV’s internet bank under the “Assets and liabilities” menu:

• if the account from which you have acquired crypto-assets has been declared to the Tax and Customs Board as an investment account, choose the investment account report;
• if the account has not been declared as an investment account, choose the tax report.

The reports can be sent to the Tax and Customs Board automatically. Read more about how to distinguish between an investment account and an ordinary account.

Market orders are used when certainty of execution is a priority over price of execution. This order type does not allow any control over the price received and your order will receive a price once it is executed. The order will be executed in full and you can access it under Pending transactions.

Limit orders are used when you wish to buy a security for less, or sell for more, than the market price. The order might, however, never be fully executed, if the market price does not match the limit order price. N.B. A buy limit order can only be below the market price and a sell limit order above the market price, otherwise the orders are executed at market price.

Valid until end of day – if the order is not executed before midnight UTC (2 am Estonian time or 3 am during daylight saving time) on the next trading day, the order is cancelled automatically, the reserved amount is released, and the money is transferred back to your account in the currency the order was supposed to be settled in.
Valid until cancelled – good until cancelled order is valid for one quarter. In the beginning of each quarter all orders which have not been filled and are older than one quarter will be cancelled.

MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is a European Union regulation that establishes a unified legal framework for crypto-assets and crypto-asset service providers in the EU. The aim of MiCA is to ensure investor protection, market integrity and financial stability by setting requirements for authorisation, transparency and supervision of the issuance of crypto-assets and related services.

The MiCA license obtained by LHV ensures that crypto-assets purchased through LHV fit into the investment account system. It is important to note that crypto-assets fit into the investment account system from the date the license was obtained (18.05.2026). Crypto-assets purchased earlier do not fit into the investment account system, and the profit earned from them must be declared as gains from the transfer of property.

Crypto-assets are aggregated on the account, i.e. displayed as a single consolidated position. If you use the investment account system for investing, then when declaring the investment account next year, the system will be able to take into account that crypto transactions made from 18.05 onwards were part of the investment account system.

Today, transferring crypto-assets is not yet possible.

The Guarantee Fund’s investor protection applies only to traditional securities (shares, bonds, fund units and other financial instruments in accordance with the Securities Market Act). Crypto-assets are not covered or protected by the Guarantee Fund’s investor protection regime. Regardless of this, the bank is regulatorily obliged to keep clients’ crypto-assets fully segregated from its own funds, which protects them from the bank’s own liquidity risks.

If the account from which you have purchased crypto so far is declared as an investment account (in table 6.5 of the tax return) or you plan to do so for the first time next year, you do not need to do anything separately. You can also use an existing investment account for acquiring crypto-assets, which you already use for acquiring other financial assets – in such a case, you do not necessarily need to open a new account.

However, if you have purchased crypto from your regular current account and you do not yet have any investment account, we recommend that you open a new account and start acquiring crypto-assets from there. You can declare this new account as an investment account to the tax authority next year in order to defer the income tax obligation.

The LEI code requirement is related to MiCA regulation. Since crypto-assets acquired through LHV are now classified as financial assets, the Bank must henceforth carry out similar reporting obligations regarding them as for ordinary securities, and for this, the existence of an LEI code is necessary for investing from a company. There is no LEI code requirement for private individuals.

Yes, new crypto-assets are expected to be added to LHV’s selection.

Essentially, a ledger of all transactions. Unlike cash settlements, every cryptocurrency transaction is recorded. The blockchain is the complete record.

Decentralization means that there is no single person, agency or computer that manages and control payments or the operation of a currency. These responsibilities are shared globally between everyone looking to participate in these activities. For example, Bitcoin is a decentralized virtual currency, i.e., it does not belong to any specific institution, so anyone who wishes can participate.

Digital token – a crypto asset-based instrument which is presented in electronic form, which can be digitally transferred, stored or traded and registered in a distributed ledger or other secure system based on similar technology, or which is based on cryptography. The instrument entitles the owner to have a say in the development of the platform associated with the token or to use or provide any service or other similar privilege.

A wallet is a unique code where crypto investors’ assets are stored and which allows transactions to be made.

Allows transactions between two parties to be stored in the blockchain efficiently, controllably and permanently.

The creation of new crypto assets is also called mining. Mining requires large server farms that validate transactions and constantly crunch numbers. Miners receive new tokens in return. For example, if someone mines Bitcoin, they receive a reward for it, and acquire new bitcoin.

Smart contract – a digital algorithm or code, which is a set of functions and information located at a specific address in the blockchain. A computer network is responsible for the functioning and regulation of this code. While in the case of standard contracts, consent from a single central authority (e.g., a bank) has to be obtained, the smart contracts are autonomous and decisions can be made on the basis of the rules originally set out in the smart contract. Such a process makes the whole process more efficient and objective. Most smart contracts are created on decentralized platforms (e.g., Ethereum).