In this article
- TL;DR
- Ordinals as Vermögensbestandteil
- The reveal transaction as acquisition date
- Valuation without an ESTV Kursliste entry
- The professional-trader test applied to ordinal trading
- Anti-money-laundering duties: who owes what
- DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3 and ordinal sales
- VAT on an inscription sale
- Worked example mint hold sell
- Satoshi rarity premiums and the valuation problem
- What to do right now
The ESTV Kursliste has no line for an inscription.
I work in the crypto self-custody space and I hold inscriptions. When I went to declare them for Swiss wealth tax in early 2025, I found a blank. No ESTV Kursliste entry. No Zurich guidance, because ZStB 16.5 covers only Bitcoin and comparable coins. The gap is still open in September 2026.
This post documents what the law says, which published rule fills the gap, and how you build a declaration file that survives a cantonal query.
TL;DR
Bitcoin inscriptions are taxable assets under Swiss wealth tax (StHG Art. 13). The ESTV publishes no inscription-specific reference price as of September 2026. The ESTV working paper on cryptocurrencies tells you what to do instead: take the market value from a leading trading platform, and if no price exists, the original purchase price in CHF. A private investor's sale falls under the capital gains exemption in DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3, though no ESTV ruling names inscriptions. The professional-trader test of Kreisschreiben Nr. 36 applies by analogy. A Swiss exchange or custodian you use must identify you and clarify unusual transactions under the GwG (SR 955.0, Art. 3 and 6); you owe nothing under that act. This is education. Consult a licensed Swiss Steuerberater before declaring any inscription portfolio.
Ordinals as Vermögensbestandteil
Swiss wealth tax covers your entire net wealth under StHG Art. 13, valued at Verkehrswert under Art. 14. An inscription is data attached to one satoshi in a reveal transaction. The Ordinals protocol tracks that satoshi, so you can transfer it and sell it. It has a market price. That makes it a Vermögensbestandteil.
No ESTV ruling classifies inscriptions. The closest published rule is the ESTV working paper on cryptocurrencies: where the ESTV publishes no value, use the market value on a leading trading platform; where no current price exists, the original purchase price in CHF. Zurich's ZStB 16.5 applies the same rule and tells you to declare such holdings under übrige Guthaben in the Wertschriften- und Guthabenverzeichnis with a wallet printout. Neither text mentions NFTs, inscriptions or Runes.
The Swiss Blockchain Federation's Digital Assets Tax Framework Review Switzerland 2026/02 (Version 1.3e, March 2026) treats tokens as movable capital assets to be declared at market value. It says nothing about inscriptions either.
So the working position is this: inscriptions belong in your Wertschriften und Guthaben at 31 December market value, taken from the leading marketplace. That is what the published rule for unlisted crypto assets says. No ESTV ruling confirms it for inscriptions by name.
The reveal transaction as acquisition date
An inscription is created in a specific transaction at a specific block height. The protocol works in two steps, commit and reveal, and the inscription is made in the reveal transaction. That block height and timestamp are the earliest point at which the asset exists in your custody.
No ESTV or Zurich publication addresses the acquisition date of an inscription. Zurich's only crypto practice note, ZStB 16.5 of 20 December 2017, covers Bitcoin and comparable coins and says nothing about inscriptions. I use the block timestamp of the reveal transaction as the acquisition date, and I count the six-month holding period of Kreisschreiben Nr. 36 from there.
Document it with:
- The inscription ID: the reveal transaction ID followed by
iand an index, for example521f8ecc...79dai0, as shown on ordinals.com or ordiscan.com - The inscription number, which is a separate sequential integer
- The block height and timestamp of the reveal transaction
This file supports your cost basis and any later question about holding period. For how inscriptions get created and tracked, see the Bitcoin Ordinals explained guide.
Valuation without an ESTV Kursliste entry
The ESTV Kursliste on ICTax publishes 31 December values that count as Steuerwert under StHG Art. 14 and 17 Abs. 1. Bitcoin, Ether and many tokens appear; the token list for 31 December 2025 puts Bitcoin at CHF 69,571.99. Individual inscriptions do not appear. Neither do Bitcoin Runes.
StHG Art. 14 requires the Verkehrswert. The ESTV working paper says to take it from a leading trading platform. For inscriptions, that means:
Step 1: Record the 31 December closing price. Open the marketplace where your collection actually trades, for example Gamma or the OKX Ordinals marketplace. Record the collection floor or the last sale of a comparable inscription at close of 31 December, with a timestamped screenshot. ZStB 16.5 asks for one year-end closing price of the most common platform, not an intraday range.
Step 2: Record the inscription ID. Each inscription carries a permanent identifier in the format <reveal transaction ID>i<index>. The inscription number is a separate sequential integer. Note both next to the screenshot.
Step 3: Convert to CHF. Convert a BTC price with the ESTV year-end Bitcoin value and a USD price with the ESTV year-end exchange rate. Both sit in the Kursliste on ictax.admin.ch. Do not use a spot rate from a different source; the ESTV values are the ones the cantonal office already holds.
Step 4: Apply the fallback if no price exists. If no current price can be determined, the ESTV working paper's fallback is the original purchase price converted to CHF. Write down why no market price was available.
Step 5: Keep the file. A Nachsteuer procedure can be opened up to ten years after the end of the tax period (DBG Art. 152 Abs. 1; StHG Art. 53 Abs. 2), so keep the screenshots, the CHF conversion and the methodology note for at least that long.
No ESTV guidance covers this process for inscriptions. The steps follow the working paper's rule for tokens without an ESTV value. A licensed Steuerberater can validate or improve it for your situation.
The professional-trader test applied to ordinal trading
The capital gains exemption under DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3 covers only private investors. If your cantonal authority reclassifies you as a gewerbsmässiger Händler, your gains become taxable income from self-employment under DBG Art. 18. The ESTV working paper and ZStB 16.5 apply the five safe-harbour criteria of Kreisschreiben Nr. 36 to crypto assets by analogy. See the full framework in Bitcoin Tax Switzerland.
The five criteria that keep you on the private-investor side:
1. Holding period at least six months. Buying and flipping inscriptions within weeks signals trading intent. A single short turnaround rarely decides anything. A pattern will.
2. Annual transaction volume not exceeding five times your start-of-year portfolio. KS 36 adds up all purchase prices and sale proceeds in the tax period and compares the sum to your Wertschriften- und Guthabenbestand at the start of the period. High-frequency inscription trading against a small starting portfolio fails this ratio fast.
3. No debt financing. KS 36 allows borrowed money only where taxable investment income exceeds the related interest. Inscriptions yield nothing, so any loan fails the criterion. Funding inscription purchases with a Bitcoin-backed loan is a strong indicator of professional trading. Avoid it.
4. Gains not needed for living expenses. KS 36 treats this as met when realised capital gains are below 50 percent of your Reineinkommen for the tax period. If inscription profits exceed that share, the safe harbour fails.
5. Derivatives used only to hedge own positions. Systematic use of options or other derivatives beyond hedging an existing position points to professional activity.
In my experience, inscription order books are thin and prices swing more than Bitcoin's. If you rotate between collections and hold for weeks, assess your activity against all five criteria before you assume the private-investor exemption applies.
Anti-money-laundering duties: who owes what
The GwG (SR 955.0) obliges Swiss financial intermediaries, not their customers. Its scope is set in Art. 2. An exchange or custodian must identify you when it opens the relationship (Art. 3) and clarify the background and purpose of unusual transactions (Art. 6 Abs. 2). For one-off crypto transactions without an account relationship, the identification threshold is CHF 1,000 under GwV-FINMA Art. 51a. Nothing in either text turns on whether a transfer crosses a border.
If you buy an inscription on a marketplace and route it through a FINMA-supervised Swiss custodian, that custodian identifies you and may ask about the source of funds. That is the custodian's duty, and it can slow a large transfer down. It creates no filing obligation for you beyond the wealth-tax return.
Transfers between your own wallets involve no intermediary. If you sign offline with a Coldcard and broadcast through Sparrow Wallet via PSBT (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction), no GwG duty exists on either side. Before I sign anything in Sparrow from a wallet that holds an inscription, I check in an Ordinals-aware wallet such as Xverse or UniSat which UTXO carries the inscribed sat, so it does not leave as fee or change. You still document the transfer for your tax file.
For the minting workflow, see how to create Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions.
DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3 and ordinal sales
DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3 exempts capital gains on private assets from federal income tax. The cantonal parallel is StHG Art. 7 Abs. 4 lit. b, which exempts gains on movable private assets. Together they cover federal direct tax and cantonal and municipal income tax.
An inscription is movable. You hold it as a private asset if you qualify as a private investor under the five criteria above. The ESTV has issued no ruling extending or limiting this exemption to inscriptions. The SBF review treats tokens as movable capital assets but never mentions inscription sub-classes.
The working position: a private investor's gain from selling an inscription falls within DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3. No ESTV circular names inscriptions, and I know of no published Bundesgericht or Bundesverwaltungsgericht ruling that does. It is the general framework applied by analogy to an asset class that did not exist when the framework was drafted.
The mirror image applies to losses. If you mint for CHF 3,000 and sell for CHF 800, the CHF 2,200 loss is a non-deductible private capital loss. ZStB 16.5 says it plainly: Kapitalverluste sind steuerlich unbeachtlich.
If you sell inscriptions at material CHF gains, the unsettled status is reason enough to consult a licensed Steuerberater before you file.
VAT on an inscription sale
MWST-Info 04 covers blockchain services in Ziff. 2.7.3: coin and token issuance, use, transfer, trading, custody and validation. It has no NFT or inscription section, and the ESTV has published no NFT-specific VAT practice as of September 2026. A private seller below the CHF 100,000 turnover threshold owes no VAT. A professional seller should treat an inscription sale as a supply whose place is at the recipient. The Bitcoin VAT Switzerland post covers the general rules.
Worked example mint hold sell
A concrete fact pattern. It is illustrative, not a calculation for your return.
Facts. Mohamed mints one Bitcoin inscription in January 2024 at a total cost of 0.003 BTC (inscription fee plus on-chain transaction fees), roughly CHF 110 at the January 2024 rate. The ESTV year-end value for 31 December 2023 was CHF 35,541.63 per Bitcoin. He holds the inscription in self-custody through 31 December 2025 and sells it on a marketplace in March 2026 for CHF 25,000 net of marketplace fees.
Wealth tax 2024. On 31 December 2024 Mohamed records the closing floor price of his collection on the leading marketplace, with a screenshot, and converts it with the ESTV year-end values. The result is CHF 4,500. He declares CHF 4,500 in his 2024 Wertschriften und Guthaben. At an assumed effective cantonal wealth-tax rate of 0.5 percent on net wealth above the Freibetrag, the wealth tax attributable to this holding is CHF 22.50 for 2024.
Wealth tax 2025. Same method on 31 December 2025. Closing price converted to CHF: CHF 18,000. Same assumed 0.5 percent rate: CHF 90.
Capital gain on sale in 2026. Gross CHF proceeds: CHF 25,000. Acquisition cost: CHF 110. Gain: CHF 24,890. Mohamed is a private investor. He has held the inscription for over two years, well beyond six months. His annual transaction volume is small against his portfolio. He uses no borrowed money. His employment income far exceeds his inscription gain. He uses no derivatives.
Applying DBG Art. 16 Abs. 3 by analogy: the gain is tax-free at federal and cantonal level. CHF 24,890 is Mohamed's to keep.
No ESTV circular confirms this result for inscriptions specifically. Mohamed documents his holding period, his five-criteria assessment and the marketplace sale receipts. He consults a Steuerberater before filing his 2026 return.
Satoshi rarity premiums and the valuation problem
Inscriptions on rare satoshis command premiums beyond the inscription content itself. An inscription on a satoshi collectors prize for its age, or on an uncommon sat (the first sat of a block) or an epic sat (the first sat of a halving epoch) under the protocol's rarity levels, can trade at a multiple of comparable inscriptions on common sats. The six rarity levels are defined at docs.ordinals.com and explored in Bitcoin satoshi rarity.
Swiss tax law has no mechanism that recognises rarity premiums as a distinct valuation category. You cannot declare an inscription at a discount because its premium is speculative. You declare it at 31 December Verkehrswert under StHG Art. 14, which for a rare-sat inscription means the price at which comparable assets actually traded on that date, premium included.
This creates a documentation problem for high-rarity inscriptions with thin secondary markets. If no comparable sale occurred near 31 December, you have no market price to anchor on. The ESTV working paper's fallback then applies: declare the original purchase price converted to CHF, and document why no market price was available.
What to do right now
Three steps for Swiss inscription holders in 2026.
First, locate every inscription in your custody. Pull the inscription ID and inscription number for each from ordinals.com or ordiscan.com. If you lost track of which UTXOs carry inscriptions, an Ordinals-aware wallet such as Xverse or UniSat will scan your addresses and surface them.
Second, build a 31 December documentation file. For each inscription held at year-end: inscription ID, reveal transaction, block height, one closing-price screenshot from the leading marketplace with timestamp and the ESTV-rate CHF conversion. Do this for every 31 December you have held inscriptions. The ten-year Nachsteuer look-back under DBG Art. 152 Abs. 1 and StHG Art. 53 Abs. 2 means past years matter.
Third, consult a licensed Swiss Steuerberater before filing if your inscription portfolio has material CHF value. The framework I described is the published rule for crypto assets without an ESTV value, applied by analogy. It is not inscription-specific guidance. The gap between what the ESTV says about digital assets and what it says about inscriptions is real and open as of September 2026.
This is education, not tax advice. Ordinals are an unsettled area for Swiss tax authorities. The ESTV has published no inscription-specific valuation guideline as of September 2026, and no ESTV publication names inscriptions. The positions described here apply general Swiss tax principles by analogy. Individual circumstances vary across cantons, holding periods and transaction volumes. Consult a licensed Swiss Steuerberater before declaring any inscription portfolio.
New to Bitcoin Ordinals? Bitcoin Ordinals explained covers how inscriptions work, how Runes relate to BRC-20, and how miner fees relate to inscription demand.
Holding rare satoshis? Bitcoin satoshi rarity covers the six official rarity levels and what the collector premiums reflect.
Want to mint? How to create Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions is the step-by-step guide.
Full Swiss tax framework. Bitcoin Tax Switzerland covers the five-criteria professional-trader test, wealth tax declaration, CARF, and Selbstanzeige in full.
Estimate your wealth tax: the Zurich Bitcoin tax guide and calculator turns your holding into the CHF figure for your return.
