- Germany’s financial regulator has refused the MiCA authorisation applied for by futurum bank AG, the Bitcoin Group SE subsidiary that operates Bitcoin.de.
- BaFin’s previous toleration of the business has ended, and trading on the platform has been largely suspended since 12 June.
- The operator plans to restart through a regulated trading partner and a separate custodian. It has named neither and signed nothing yet.
Germany’s oldest bitcoin marketplace stopped most trading in June and told customers it was waiting on a licence. The licence has now been refused. Bitcoin.de‘s operator says it will reopen through regulated partners within weeks, although it has not named one or signed anything.
Platforms across Europe, and now the UK, are working through the same kind of approval process, and most people assume the worst case is a delay. This is what the other outcome looks like. The trading stops, and it stays stopped until someone else’s permission can be borrowed. Your coins and your ability to trade them are two separate questions, and only one of them is settled here.
What the licence is for
MiCA, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, is the EU’s rulebook for firms that let people buy, sell or hold crypto. Since it came fully into force, any business offering those services inside the EU has to be authorised by the regulator in its home country, which in Germany is BaFin. The attraction is that one authorisation covers all 27 member states. The cost is that operating without one is simply not allowed.
Firms already trading before the rules landed were given transitional room to apply. futurum bank AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of the listed Bitcoin Group SE, submitted its application on 27 June 2025. While it sat with the regulator, BaFin tolerated the firm continuing to provide crypto services, a status German law calls a Duldung.
Fifteen months, then a no
On 6 October the parent company disclosed the refusal in an ad-hoc announcement under Article 17 of the EU market abuse rules, the mechanism a listed company uses when it has price-sensitive news it cannot sit on. The same disclosure confirmed that the toleration no longer applies, which removes the legal footing the business had been operating on. futurum bank may lodge an objection within one month of formal notification and is free to submit a fresh application later.
Why BaFin said no is harder to pin down. The regulator published nothing of its own that we could find. The reasoning now circulating, that the degree of implementation and operationalisation of the required measures was not sufficient, comes from Bitcoin Group SE’s account of what it was told, not from BaFin’s own words.
The company’s chief executive, Moritz Eckert, said in its press release: “Die Entscheidung der Bafin ist für uns ein Rückschlag.” BaFin’s decision, in other words, is a setback. He went on: “Dies sehen wir anders, haben uns jedoch auf die Möglichkeit der Verweigerung vorbereitet”, meaning the company disagrees with the assessment but had prepared for the possibility of refusal.
The plan, and the gaps in it
That preparation is an alternative operating model. Rather than hold its own authorisation, futurum bank says it intends to sign a cooperation agreement with a regulated institution based in Germany, which would act as the trading counterparty for customers, while a separate regulated German party would take on custody of the coins. Eckert said the priority now is “das alternative Betriebsmodell umzusetzen und unsere Kunden transparent über die nächsten Schritte zu informieren”: implementing that model and keeping customers informed.
Read the wording closely and it describes an intention rather than an arrangement. No partner has been named, no agreement has been announced as signed, and the restart timing is a target the company set for itself, “within the next few weeks”, rather than a date anyone has confirmed. Customer crypto remains in custody at futurum bank and the company describes all customer claims as fully intact, pending transfer to an alternative regulated custodian. That is the operator’s own assurance, and no auditor or regulator has publicly backed it.
None of that makes the plan implausible. Borrowing a licensed counterparty is a recognised structure, and plenty of consumer-facing crypto apps already run on exactly that basis. It does mean the gap between the current position and the advertised one depends on a third party nobody outside the company can currently identify.
What a UK reader should take from it
The UK is building its own authorisation regime for crypto firms, and the structure of the problem is the same even though the regulator, the rules and the timetable are not. A platform you use either has permission to operate or it has an application pending, and the outcome of that application is not guaranteed. Our policy coverage has been tracking the application window; this is the first clear illustration of what the refusal outcome does to customers in practice.
Two practical things follow. The first is that trading and custody can fail separately: Bitcoin.de’s customers have, on the company’s account, kept their balances while losing the ability to do anything with them for four months. The second is that holding your own keys removes the trading question entirely, with a different set of risks attached, which is what our self-custody guide goes through.
What to watch
Whether futurum bank actually lodges the objection it has a month to file, and whether a named partner appears alongside a signed agreement rather than a stated intention. If trading resumes on schedule through a regulated counterparty, this reads as an awkward but survivable transition. If the “next few weeks” becomes another quarter, the suspension starts to look structural rather than procedural, and the question stops being about paperwork.