30% of people are concerned about "financial Internet celebrities" in the cryptocurrency field: "

Financial Internet celebrity and cryptocurrency investment: The truth revealed by the BaFin survey in Germany

"Finfluencers" refer to people who talk about investing on social media and recommend specific financial products. Whether such cryptocurrency advice involves payment is usually reflected in three aspects: disclosure of advertising or paid promotions, affiliate links and discount codes that lead to specific exchanges, and a speech model that leverages a sense of urgency and peer pressure to promote. Since October 1, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has obtained relevant quantitative data.

Of the 1,000 cryptocurrency investors evaluated, about half would pay attention to financial Internet celebrity recommendations;30% had adopted these suggestions when investing; and about 40% did not realize that financial Internet celebrities often received rewards for their recommendations. The core of this finding is that the problem is not the recommendation itself, but the invisible interest considerations behind it.

Overview of BaFin Survey Data

Commissioned by BaFin, a market research institute conducted a survey of 4,340 people aged 18 to 59. Field research will be conducted online from the end of March to the beginning of April 2026. The answers evaluated came from 1,000 respondents who held crypto assets at the time or in the past few years. The results appeared in the regulator's feature article "Social Media Promotes Cryptocurrency Investment."

持有的资产大多是显而易见的。该群体中有79%的人曾购买过比特币，39%的人持有以太坊。这些资产主要被用作投资。在动机方面，39%的人表示想“尝试新事物”，各有30%的人 citing 高回报的前景以及在投资组合中进行小额配置的需求。

这种混合心态对于理解后续情况至关重要。出于好奇而入场、对产品没有明确预期的人，往往倾向于根据遇到的任何信息做出选择。而这正是推荐发挥作用的地方。

如何识别付费的加密货币建议：披露、联盟链接、折扣代码

网上的付费推荐通常有两种形式。第一种是发帖人因帖子收到固定费用，根据德国媒体法，此类帖子必须标记为广告或付费推广。第二种是当你通过其链接开户并进行交易时，发帖人获得收入分成。这第二种形式称为联盟或合作伙伴链接：带有标识符的链接，交易所借此识别是谁将你引荐过来的。

无需任何先验知识即可检查四个特征。首先，帖子开头或末尾常有“广告”、“Ad”或“付费合作”等说明，有时字体较小。其次，问号后带有标识符的链接，常包含“ref”或“partner”等缩写。第三，以发帖人姓名命名的折扣或优惠券代码。第四，与最低存款挂钩的奖金承诺。

These characteristics do not in themselves make recommendations wrong. Advertising allows publicity, but it tells you that the poster has a business interest in your decision, which is part of your assessment. If you're looking for trading platforms anyway, it's more rational to check the comparisons of regulated cryptocurrency exchanges than to use the code in the video.

35% of people bought

BaFin also asked what makes recommendations convincing. Among those who adopted the advice of financial celebrities, 35% invested because they claimed that now was the "right time." This was the reason with the highest frequency in the entire survey.

The sentence "now is the right time" has a feature that makes it very suitable for advertising: it cannot be verified when proposed. Whether the entry point is good can only be revealed after the fact, and whether right or wrong, the person making the appeal does not have to take risks. Verifiable statements will vary and list a number that you can recalculate, such as transaction volume, capital flow, or date in an agreement.

The simple countermeasure is to accept this proposition and find the corresponding data yourself. The trading volume, inflow and outflow, and position distribution of the exchange can be found in freely available data tools; see the analysis platform comparison for the purpose of each tool. If you can't find data to support that claim, you already have the answer.

The interest considerations behind the advice rarely appear on the screen: 40% of respondents did not know that financial Internet celebrities would be paid for providing advice.

FOMO as a sales argument: 29% follow the majority's reference

The second most common reason is mentioning other people. Twenty-nine percent of this group bought because financial Internet celebrities claimed that many other people were doing the same at the time. BaFin uses the English term to describe this in its assessment: Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO for short.

FOMO does not say anything about the cryptocurrency assets themselves. The claim describes the behavior of others; it may be accurate, but it may still leave the question of whether the price is worth the risk. In addition, the claim that many people are buying small tokens is difficult to verify because a few large addresses can generate transaction volume that appears to be widely needed.

These two findings together describe the same mechanism in two directions: urgency and crowd effects. Anyone who hears one of these in the advice has reason to wait a day before taking action.

Memocoins and gambling: Words from BaFin consumer protection officers

19% of surveyed cryptocurrency investors have purchased Memecoins. The motivations they mentioned included "fun" and "speculation." Memo is a token that has no use of its own and no promise of revenue, and its price is determined purely by demand.

The regulator's assessment is straightforward. "In fact, investing in memes is similar to betting in a gambling game," said Dr. Markus Nielsen, a BaFin consumer protection expert; therefore memes are particularly dangerous. Consumer protection officer Christian Bock put the overall market in context: "Consumer interest in cryptocurrency assets is rising," he said,"yet most of these assets are highly speculative." He added that price movements are neither pegged to specific currencies nor to tangible assets, and for memes, there is no upper limit on supply.

German regulators have strikingly equated one type of asset to gambling, and this finding is clearly linked to the theme of this article: Especially with memin, financial Internet celebrities are particularly risky to influence prices by over-touting or suppressing an asset. The leverage here is greater than for large assets, because a small amount of capital is enough to change prices.

Concentration risk in a portfolio: 27% of people hold more than one-fifth of their wealth in cryptocurrency assets

One number from the survey can be applied directly to your own portfolio. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they invested more than 20% of their wealth in digital assets. For the 5 percent, this is more than half.

The technical term is called concentration risk: a single component in a portfolio is so large that its performance determines the overall outcome. In an asset class that fluctuates in double digits over a few days, this share determines whether the setback is simply annoying or an existential crisis. Regulators have not set a cap on this, nor have officials. This number can still be used as a yardstick: if your share is much higher than what you can afford to lose, that is a finding in itself, independent of any advice.

This is clearly linked to other parts of the investigation. Anyone who sizes a position when enthusiasm is high determines it based on that enthusiasm. Anyone who determines the size of a position in advance has the answer ready for the next suggestion.

Five characteristics to check before taking any cryptocurrency recommended action from social media

The survey results boiled down to a short process that runs a few minutes before buying.

• Find disclosure statements: Does the description in or below the video and the first comment contain an "ad", an "Ad" or a "paid partnership"? They usually stop there.
• Disassembly link: Do recommendations run through identifiers or code? If so, then when you open an account, the money will flow to the person who posted it.
• Review providers: Does the designated platform have a license for this service in Germany? BaFin maintains a public company database for this purpose and continues to issue warnings about unauthorized providers.
• Looking for secondary sources: Does the core proposition also appear where it will not benefit from your purchase? If it doesn't appear, it's still just an opinion.
• Set position size in advance: Decide on the amount before listening to the advice and stick to it. This is the only point on the list that only you can influence.

This process is not a substitute for your opinion of cryptocurrency assets; it simply separates the question of "whether something is a good investment" from "who makes money when you buy", which is not considered at all for 40% of respondents.

Holding period and taxes after impulse purchases: The tax bureau's response triggered by the financial Internet celebrity recommendation

The survey did not mention anything, but it belonged to every impulse purchase. In Germany, cryptocurrency transactions held as private assets are regarded as private disposal transactions under Article 23(1), paragraph 1, item 2, of the Income Tax Act (Einkommensteuergesetz). If you sell it at a profit within one year of buying it, the profit is subject to tax; if you hold it for more than one year, you are exempt from tax. The total threshold applicable to all private disposal transactions during a year is € 1,000. The threshold means that once exceeded, all proceeds will be subject to tax, not just the excess.

这对在建议后做出的购买有以下两点后果。首先，该特定头寸的一年期限从这一天开始计算，无论你已经持有相同加密货币多长时间。其次，快速 resale，这通常是由紧迫感和同伴压力的相同动态导致的，在税务上是最不利的情况。如果三周后因失望而卖出且有收益，则构成应税事件；如果有损失，则需要文档记录工作。

在实践中，这意味着记录购买日期、数量和价格，并在购买当天完成。这需要一分钟，但如果将来有任何疑问，可以节省跨多个交易所回溯计算的工作。个人的税务问题应交由税务顾问处理；本节内容不能替代专业建议。

MiCA、BaFin和广告：目前哪些规则适用于金融网红，哪些是ESMA想要的

自欧洲加密货币法规MiCA生效以来，欧盟内的加密货币服务提供商需要许可证，其营销沟通必须可识别、公平且不误导。这些职责针对服务提供商。社交媒体上独立且非服务提供商的发件人不会自动受到约束，这正是BaFin数据所描述的差距所在。该法规详细规定的义务涵盖在我们关于加密货币公司MiCA许可要求的概述中。

欧洲证券市场监管机构ESMA希望改变这一现状。在其于9月底抵达欧盟委员会的MiCA审查意见中，它明确要求“加强对加密货币资产营销的规则，特别是当它们由影响者和第三方推广时”。我们在关于ESMA对MiCA意见的文章中分解了该机构提出的六项变更。

在需求和适用法律之间，立法程序持续数月。在此之前，媒体法的标签要求仍然是最重要的杠杆，其执行取决于有人注意到缺失的披露。这就是为什么调查结果如此令人不安：一种依赖于受众认可的保护措施对于该受众中的40%来说毫无意义。

因此，两个当局在两天内标记了同一个位置，一个来自巴黎的要求，另一个来自德国的数据。

金融网红建议：你决策的关键要点

调查描述了正常情况： surveyed的加密货币投资者中约有一半人关注社交媒体的建议，其中五分之二的人不知道其背后的商业模式。三个步骤将其转化为可控的事情。

1. 将建议与交易平台分开： 首先决定一项加密货币资产是否说服了你，然后单独选择平台。查看受监管加密货币交易所的比较，了解哪些提供商在欧盟拥有许可证。
2. 获取主张背后的数据：Every statement about timing or need can be cross-checked. Which analytical platforms disclose the distribution of trading volumes, inflows and positions, see comparison for details.
3. Record on the day of purchase: Record the date, quantity and price to later prove the holding period. See a comparison of cryptocurrency tax software and portfolio trackers for related tools.