Swing trading means holding a cryptocurrency for a few days to a few weeks in order to capture a single price move. You buy after a pullback and sell when the price has reached the next interim high. Swing trading thus sits between hectic day trading, where positions are closed on the same day, and long-term holding over years. For investors in Germany this time frame has a consequence that many underestimate: every gain falls within the one-year speculation period and is taxable as soon as all private disposal gains in a year reach €1,000.

Swing trading is particularly common in crypto because price swings are larger than with equities. A weekly gain or loss of ten percent is not unusual for Bitcoin, and smaller coins move even more….