Melker Bengtsson
TL;DR
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The Austrian Financial Market Authority fined Bitpanda €70,000, one of the first MiCA fines issued in the EU
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The breaches were bureaucratic misses: a late white paper and marketing missing required disclosures, not customer funds or licensing
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Bitpanda says the issues were formalities, fixed after the FMA raised them and settled consensually
One of the first MiCA fines has been issued in the EU. Bitpanda has been fined €70,000 by the Austrian Financial Market Authority, FMA. Bitpanda is a Vienna founded crypto exchange and was one of the first to get licensed under MiCA. The fines aren’t related to customer funds or licensing but bureaucratic misses. The company failed to file a white paper and breached marketing rules.
The fines all really stem from one launch. Bitpanda marketed a white paper that was filed late, the marketing was started before the white paper filing and that same marketing was missing the required disclosures. It was not mentioned which token launch it concerned.
Bitpanda says the issues were formalities, that they were fixed after the FMA brought them to their attention and that the issues were settled consensually. In a statement to CoinDesk, they said:
The conclusions related exclusively to timing and formal specifications surrounding the publication of the whitepaper and an accompanying information document.
The first fine since the grandfathering window closed
The MiCA grandfathering window, which let exchanges operate on their old national licenses, was closed in July. This is the first publicly announced fine since that window closed. Some regulatory action has already been taken in the name of MiCA. Back in April of 2025, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), acted against Ethena over the USDe token. That targeted Ethena's authorization, rather than conduct.
For an exchange of Bitpandas size, €70,000 is close to a rounding error, it won’t affect the business or its customers. But this shows that EU authorities are already applying the framework. In this case, it targeted a licensed exchange for its conduct within the license. That’s likely what we’ll see most of with this framework. The agencies apply it as they do traditional securities supervision.
