GERMANY’S BAFIN REFUSES BITCOIN.DE’S MICAR LICENSE — TRADING PAUSED SINCE JUNE 12 — THE PLATFORM SAYS WITHDRAWALS STILL WORK

Germany’s financial regulator, BaFin, has refused the MiCAR license that futurum bank AG, the bank behind Bitcoin.de, applied for on June 27, 2025. Bitcoin Group SE disclosed the refusal in an ad hoc notice at 17:05 CEST on October 6, 2026. Trading on Bitcoin.de has been largely suspended since June 12, 2026. futurum can object within one month or apply again later.

The line that matters to anyone with coins there is on the platform’s own status page, dated October 7, 2026: “Auszahlungen Ihrer Kryptowerte sind weiterhin möglich.” In English: withdrawals of your crypto are still possible. Until then, the company says, futurum bank will keep holding customer assets “until they are transferred to the alternative regulated custodian.” Cointelegraph’s report did not say whether withdrawals were open. The platform’s page does.

The restart plan uses two regulated German partners, one to run trading and one to hold the coins. That would be the second custody move this year: Cointelegraph reports that in August customer holdings were already shifted to new custody infrastructure. CEO Moritz Eckert, quoted by Cointelegraph: “Our priority now is to implement the alternative operating model.” Bitcoin.de’s homepage still claims more than 1,100,000 customers.

A license decision now sets when more than a million people can trade. Their coins sit with a bank the regulator just turned down, waiting to be handed to another firm they did not pick. The one thing in this story that still works without anyone’s approval is the exit. A withdrawal to a wallet you hold is the only custody arrangement BaFin cannot refuse. At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $82,983.