The Indonesian government plans to raise taxes on cryptocurrency transactions, effective immediately starting from August 1. The new law will apply to overseas exchanges, domestic exchanges and more.
- Starting in August, Indonesia will raise its overseas exchange transaction tax from 0.2% to 1%. Meanwhile, domestic exchanges get a 0.1% hike.
- Crypto buyers will no longer need to pay value added tax.
According to a recent Reuters report, a new finance ministry regulation is set to shake up the playing field for the nation’s budding crypto space. For one thing, it will hike up the tax applied to cryptocurrency transactions by 0.1%.
Starting from August 1, sellers of crypto assets traded through domestic exchanges will have to pay a 0.21% tax on transaction values made through the exchange. Before the new financial regulation, the tax on crypto transaction was set at 0.11%.
The tax hike is even higher for exchanges not based in Indonesia. Where the tax was previously only 0.2% for crypto transactions, now the tax rate has been raised to a staggering 1% for overseas firms, rising by 0.8% starting this August.
This means that exchanges like Binance, Bitget, Bybit, and others may have to reconsider their strategy if they want to retain their Indonesian customers. At the moment, the Indonesian crypto space already has homegrown exchanges like Indodax, Tokocrypto, Pintu and more. Domestic exchanges stand to benefit from the shift in regulations, despite the slight raise in taxes.
On a more positive note, crypto asset buyers would no longer have to pay value added tax or VAT. The new regulation waives the VAT applied to customers, which was previously set at 0.11% to 0.22%.
However, the Indonesian government has also raised the VAT rate when it comes to crypto mining. Under the new financial regulation, the VAT rate has doubled from 1.1% to 2.2% for crypto miners starting from August this year.
Higher taxes for higher crypto use in Indonesia
Crypto usage in Indonesia has been on the rise. According to data from the Financial Services Authority or OJK, the total transaction volume for crypto assets in the country tripled in 2024 compared to the previous year. In 2024, the transaction value for cryptocurrency reached more than $39.67 billion.
In fact, it has been documented that there are more crypto exchange users in Indonesia than there are investors in the country’s stock market. According to data from OJK, the number of crypto traders in Indonesia reached up to 14,78 million people as of May 2025. This number went up by 4.38% compared to just a month prior.
In May 2025 alone, the total transaction volume for crypto reached Rp49.57 trillion ($3.02 billion), indicating a 39.21% rise compared to the previous month.
Chief Executive of OJK’s Supervising Technology Innovation, Digital Financial Assets, and Crypto Assets division, Hasan Fawzi, was quoted by Liputan6 attributed the surge in crypto adoption to improving market interest, particularly in the face of fluctuations in various global digital currencies.
“The increasing trend in the number of consumers and crypto asset transactions demonstrates that consumer confidence and the national crypto asset market remain well-maintained,” said Hasan.
