Seizure by equivalent are among the most effective and most contested instruments of tax criminal law. Judgment 1760 of the Supreme Court has set a clear limit, with direct effects on the taxpayer's position and on the defence strategy.
The principle
The judgment annuls the evidentiary seizure of bitcoin ordered against a taxpayer for the proceeds of a tax offence. The principle is that crypto-assets cannot be seized by equivalent, because seizure by equivalent presupposes a certain equivalence with the amount seized, and the value of a cryptocurrency fluctuates over time and is therefore not equivalent.
In short: the tax shortfall is quantified in euro, and the seizure must be in euro. A genuine coercive measure cannot rest on a value the market determines at every moment.
The doctrinal and case-law framework
The judgment sits within a case-law path begun long before: already in judgment no. 26807 of 17 September 2020, the Second Section applied crypto-activities to the offence of money laundering and to seizure, with reference to the special legislation on virtual currencies (Art. 1 of Legislative Decree 231/2007 and Legislative Decree 21/2023).
This is an evolution the scholarship has followed closely, identifying in this ruling a further step in the development of a new statute of digital evidence, and the consolidation of the public prosecutor's role as an organ of justice and not merely the holder of the criminal action.
Effect on the taxpayer's position
The practical effect is direct: a person whose crypto-assets are seized for a tax offence may request conversion of the seizure into euro, or its release, arguing the impossibility of seizure by equivalent of an asset whose value cannot be determined in advance.
The application must be drafted precisely and supported by the accounting documentation: the taxpayer must demonstrate the actual extent of the seized estate and the non-equivalence between the value of the crypto-assets and the tax claim.
The MiCA angle
The MiCA framework adds an element: full application of the authorisation regime since 1 July 2026 makes it possible to verify whether the platform holding the crypto-assets was operating lawfully, and whether the required evidence-preservation measures were adopted. That is an objective fact bearing on the assessment of the lawfulness of the seizure.
On this front, defence and data retrieval converge: preservation of evidence, on blockchain, is the same matter that sectoral rules require of CASPs.
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