First Published MiCA Case Sees Bitpanda Fined EUR 70,000 in Austria

Austria's Financial Market Authority (FMA) fined Bitpanda GmbH EUR 70,000 (about $81,000) for several breaches of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR). The regulator disclosed the final decision Friday.

The FMA called it the first legally binding MiCAR penalty decision it has published. That wording does not establish that Bitpanda received the first MiCAR fine in the European Union.

The penalty concerns what happened after authorization: the timing and content of disclosures for a crypto-asset. It does not concern the custody of customer assets or access to withdrawals.

White Paper Arrived After the Deadline

Bitpanda did not send the crypto-asset white paper Whitepaper A whitepaper is defined as a pitch or persuasive, authoritative, and often in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem along with a respective solution. Marketers rely on whitepapers for a variety of reasons, most simply to educate an audience about a particular issue or to promote a particular methodology. In the cryptocurrency world, a whitepaper is a document that should contain all of the information about the technology that was used to build a cryptocurrency network, and ho A whitepaper is defined as a pitch or persuasive, authoritative, and often in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem along with a respective solution. Marketers rely on whitepapers for a variety of reasons, most simply to educate an audience about a particular issue or to promote a particular methodology. In the cryptocurrency world, a whitepaper is a document that should contain all of the information about the technology that was used to build a cryptocurrency network, and ho Read this Term to the FMA at least 20 working days before publishing it, according to the sanction notice. The regulator cited Article 8 of MiCAR.

The company also distributed a marketing communication before publishing the required white paper, the FMA said.

The marketing material omitted the required statement that no European Union authority had reviewed or approved it and that the offeror was solely responsible for its content. It also lacked a telephone number and email address.

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The FMA did not name the crypto-asset, reproduce the marketing communication or provide the relevant publication dates. Its notice did not allege customer losses and did not say that Bitpanda's license had been suspended, restricted or placed under review.

The regulator said it closed the proceeding through an expedited process under Section 22(2b) of Austria's Financial Market Authority Act. It did not provide further procedural details.

First Published Case Has a Narrow Meaning

The FMA issued a separate statement to explain why it published the case. It said MiCAR had moved beyond licensing and supervision into enforcement, covering the full supervisory cycle.

The regulator also cautioned against reading too much into the first-case label. It said publication did not give the company or the violations any special status.

Earlier penalties involving MiCAR-licensed exchanges were not necessarily MiCAR cases. Malta fined OKX's European entity EUR 1.1 million in 2025 for anti-money laundering Money Laundering Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laund Money laundering is a blanket term to describe the process by which criminals disguise the original ownership and proceeds of criminal conduct by making such proceeds appear to be derived from a legitimate source.Money laundering is an issue that traverses countless industries and sectors, which includes the financial services space. Though criminal money may be successfully laundered without the assistance of the financial sector, billions of dollars’ worth of criminally derived money are laund Read this Term failures from 2023, as FinanceMagnates.com reported.

Those failures predated OKX's MiCAR license. Malta imposed that penalty under AML rules, not MiCAR.

Bitpanda's Austrian Authorization Remains Listed

The FMA authorized Bitpanda GmbH as a crypto-asset service provider on April 9, 2025. The permission covers custody, exchange, order execution, placement, reception and transmission of orders, and transfers.

Bitpanda had already obtained a separate MiCAR authorization from Germany's Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) in January 2025. At the time, FinanceMagnates.com reported that the company presented the approval as a basis for offering services across the European Union.

In a June 23 company post, Bitpanda said strict enforcement was necessary to protect the market and described itself as fully compliant.

The final European transition period ended on July 1, extending the unified regime to providers that had previously operated under national rules.

The FMA's authorization page continues to list Bitpanda GmbH as approved to provide crypto-asset services in Austria.