Germany’s financial regulator BaFin has refused the MiCA authorisation applied for by futurum bank AG, the subsidiary of Bitcoin Group SE that runs the bitcoin.de marketplace. Bitcoin Group disclosed this in an ad hoc notice on 6 October 2026. BaFin has not published its decision, so everything below comes from the company.
What happened
futurum bank applied on 27 June 2025 for authorisation as a crypto-asset service provider under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA). The company says BaFin refused that application and told the bank that its earlier tolerance of the crypto services no longer applies. Formal service of the decision was still pending when the notice went out.
Trading on bitcoin.de has been largely suspended since 12 June 2026. The company says the application had already run for more than 15 months and that it had prepared for a refusal.
What the company says happens next
- futurum bank plans to work with a regulated German institution as trading partner and another regulated German party as custodian, so that customers can trade again in a renewed bitcoin.de app. No partners are named and no date is given.
- Customer assets stay in custody until they are moved, and the company says all customer claims remain intact.
- Bitcoin Group and the bank are reviewing the decision. An objection can be lodged within one month of notification, and the bank can apply again.
Who is affected
German users of bitcoin.de, which cannot offer crypto services itself until it has a licence or a licensed partner. The decision does not change the position of any platform we track. It shows how long a MiCA file can take at Germany’s regulator and what a refusal means in practice once transitional tolerance ends.
What changes in our data
Nothing. bitcoin.de is not one of our 26 tracked platforms, and our Germany rows describe only those. We log the decision as a licensing event for the country.
Sources
- Bitcoin Group SE, ad hoc notice of 6 October 2026, distributed via EQS.