Bull Bitcoin Challenges French DAC8 Decree Over Holder Safety
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- Bull Bitcoin petitioned France's Council of State (Conseil d'État) to annul Decree No. 2025-1276, the French implementation of the EU's DAC8 crypto tax reporting framework
- Bull Bitcoin filed a summary petition on Feb. 24 followed by a substantive legal brief, and said it intends to challenge both DAC8 and the OECD's parallel global Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF)
- The exchange argued DAC8 risks creating a "mass database" linking legal identities, home addresses, and transaction histories, endangering up to 135 million European crypto holders and their families
- DAC8 requires crypto service providers to collect user identity and transaction data and automatically exchange it across EU tax authorities, with the first reports covering 2026 due by Sept. 30, 2027
- France led the world in "wrench attacks" in 2025 with 19 confirmed cases, and French police have counted 41 crypto-related kidnappings since the start of 2026, per RTL
- Global wrench attacks rose 75% in 2025 to 72 verified cases worldwide, with Europe accounting for roughly 40% of incidents, according to cybersecurity firm CertiK
Why it matters: A successful challenge at the Conseil d'État could suspend or annul France's implementing decree, delaying DAC8 enforcement in one of Europe's largest crypto markets and giving non-custodial platforms and their users a reprieve before the Sept. 30, 2027 first-report deadline. The physical-safety framing, backed by France's world-leading wrench attack count, raises the political cost of strict enforcement across the EU.
