Giancarlo Giorgetti makes it a question of financial education. Savers must be able to distinguish between investments that finance tangible projects and others whose value “is completely disconnected from underlying assets and economic resources”. The Minister of Economy points the finger at cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin and its brothers “present a very high level of risk”, is the warning launched from the podium of the 100th Savings Day, celebrated by Acri, the association that brings together foundations of banking origin. The not too veiled criticism comes on a topic that gathers admirers within the party of the owner of the Mef.
The League is in the front row to ask for a correction of the 42% increase in taxation on bitcoin, a novelty introduced in the latest maneuver in the general surprise in the Carroccio household. And he doesn’t do it with second-rate exponents. Even Federico Freni, Northern League undersecretary for the Economy, hoped that the rule could change. With him the group leader in the Finance Committee of the Chamber, Giulio Centemero, the first to come out openly asking for a correction and calling in his support the president of the Senate Finance Committee, Massimo Garavaglia, and the economic manager of the party, Alberto Bagnai. Deputies and senators from the Northern League are already preparing the amendments. However, the exegetes of the minister’s words clarified that the reference was not to the tax being planned. “No legislation and supervision can be more effective than, nor replace, informed individual decisions”, added Giorgetti with a pill of financial education.
That higher taxation could be a fair disincentive is instead a belief rooted within Consob, the supervisory authority on the stock exchange and markets and therefore on the crypto world together with the Bank of Italy. Commissioner Federico Cornelli criticized in the bishops’ newspaper Avvenire the idea that savings in private cryptocurrencies – therefore not the digital euro on which the ECB is working – has “fundamental characteristics of social utility”. He therefore deems it appropriate to increase the rate on capital gains from sales from 26% to 42%. Crypto, he writes, “rarely allows for the generation of collective utility through private utility.” And again, speaking of taxation, he notes that “it is among the rights and, probably, duties of the legislator to calibrate taxation differently depending on how they are placed within the transmission system that links finance and economy”.
The Northern League’s response is in a conference organized at the Chamber dedicated to the “Social value of cryptocurrencies and Web3”. Also expected was Paolo Arduino, number one of Tether, the most used stablecoin in the world – a type of cryptocurrency linked to a so-called fiat currency such as the dollar – which boasts a capitalization of 120 billion. In the end he won’t be able to be there due to time zone reasons. The tax is considered “counterproductive” because it would push into the underground economy, hindering a growing market. The bugaboo is the loss of competitiveness compared to Switzerland. Lugano’s plan B, where B stands for Bitcoin, aims to make the city in the Canton of Ticino a pole of attraction for the world of crypto-investors.
There are certainly no public finance reasons behind the increase. The expected revenue is 16 million euros. The latest Consob report on the investment choices of Italian families records a strong increase in cryptocurrencies in the portfolios of national investors: between 2022 and 2024, the percentage of those who declare they own them jumped from 8% to 18%. A growth accompanied by a growing familiarity with this type of investments. 86% of those interviewed said they had heard of it, but the percentage fluctuates between 23% and 50% when the answers touch on the main characteristics of cryptocurrencies. In practice, Italians hear about them, but they don’t know them in depth. Giorgetti’s warning, therefore, did not fall flat. If it then serves to divert savings into forms of investment with a return on the territories and the economy, so much the better.
