France’s Senate greenlights crypto tax data swaps as $BTC holders become prime targets

The French Senate adopted a bill allowing tax authorities to automatically exchange crypto transaction data with foreign counterparts. The measure passed its first reading on Tuesday and was transmitted to the National Assembly as Bill no. 3421, covering an agreement on exchanging crypto tax information and an update to an existing agreement on financial account information.

The crypto agreement is based on the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). CARF establishes common standards for participating jurisdictions to collect and automatically exchange information on crypto transactions. France already introduced crypto reporting obligations through the 2025 Finance Act, implementing the crypto reporting amendment to the European Union’s Directive on Administrative Cooperation, known as DAC8.

Under the rules, crypto service providers must report customer identities and transaction data to tax authorities, which share the information with authorities in users’ EU countries of residence. Lawmakers are also debating crypto tax changes in the 2027 budget. The National Assembly adopted an amendment on Oct. 16 that would make gains from conversions into certain fiat-pegged stablecoins taxable from Jan. 1, 2027, but the measure is not law yet. Debate on the budget’s revenue section resumed on Tuesday, with a vote scheduled for Nov. 3.

Tax reporting under DAC8 has raised data security concerns because it involves sharing personal information, including names, addresses, tax numbers and transaction volumes, between EU tax authorities, Faustine Fleuret, global head of public affairs at lending protocol Morpho, told Cointelegraph. “In a country where crypto holders have been physically targeted, a leaked list of who trades what, and for how much, is not only a privacy issue but first and foremost a safety issue.” The European Commission plans to create a central repository for crypto reports by the end of 2026, allowing each member state’s tax authorities to access information concerning its tax residents. Fleuret said centralizing the information could create a “single point of failure” for sensitive crypto transaction data.

Fleuret’s remarks followed an increase in physical attacks targeting cryptocurrency investors, also known as wrench attacks. During the first half of 2026, France accounted for 33 of the 52 verified wrench attacks worldwide, according to blockchain security company CertiK. In a March incident, a French couple in their late 50s was robbed of about $1 million worth of $BTC by criminals posing as police officers.