“We have created the essential conditions …”: bitcoin.de has stood still for three months, the MiCAR licence is missing

Crypto trading on bitcoin.de has been idle since the end of June 2026, and the half-year report of Bitcoin Group SE dated September 29, 2026 gives a single reason for it: authorisation under the European crypto regulation MiCAR is not yet in place, and the company leaves open when it will come. Anyone holding an account on the marketplace is now waiting a fourth consecutive quarter for a trading venue whose technology, according to the company, has long been finished.

Chief executive Moritz Eckert puts it this way in the statement: „With the redevelopment of bitcoin.de we have created the essential conditions that lie within our own sphere of influence.“ The rest lies with the supervisor. For you as an investor that is an uncomfortable position, because it has no end date.

What Bitcoin Group SE reported in its 2026 half-year report

Bitcoin Group SE is the listed parent company behind the trading venue bitcoin.de. Trading itself is handled by its subsidiary futurum bank AG, a credit institution licensed under the German Banking Act. That split matters for understanding the news: the permission currently missing is not the banking licence but the separate authorisation as a provider of crypto-asset services.

These company figures come from the report for the first half of 2026, published on September 29, 2026 through the EQS news service:

• Revenue of €1.59 million, after €3.78 million in the first half of 2025
• EBITDA of minus €3.25 million, after minus €1.00 million in the prior-year period
• Earnings per share of minus €1.02, after minus €0.33
• An equity ratio of 71.8 percent, after 72.5 percent
• Liquid funds of €3.9 million
• Net own crypto holdings of €199 million

The roughly 58 percent drop in revenue has an obvious cause: a marketplace on which no trading has been possible since the end of June earns no trading fees in that period. For the 2026 financial year as a whole, the management board says it expects declining revenue and a negative EBITDA once again.

Why crypto trading on bitcoin.de has been idle since the end of June 2026

The decisive sentence of the statement is short: „As this is taking longer than originally expected, crypto trading on bitcoin.de has been temporarily unavailable since the end of June 2026.“ What is meant is the licensing procedure. According to the company, futurum bank AG is in close contact with the competent supervisory authorities and attaches the highest priority to completing it successfully.

This is no sudden turn. The standstill has accompanied the marketplace through the whole third quarter, and we set out the position back in August, when the trading halt at bitcoin.de first hit customers. What is new in the September 29 statement is the combination of two claims: the platform is technically finished, and the timing of the licence remains hard to foresee all the same.

What MiCAR means for a German trading venue

MiCAR is the European Union regulation on markets in crypto-assets. Under that regulation, companies offering crypto-asset services need an authorisation of their own. That covers operating a trading platform as much as exchanging crypto-assets for euros, custody for clients and the execution of orders.

Germany drew the transition period tighter than the EU allowed. Since January 1, 2026, providers in the country may no longer supply crypto-asset services without MiCAR authorisation, whereas the European long-stop date would have run to July 1, 2026. The competent authority is BaFin, together with the Deutsche Bundesbank. The duties this brings for providers are set out in our overview of MiCA licensing obligations for crypto companies.

For existing institutions with a banking licence there is a simplified procedure. That does not change the fact that the authority decides in the end, and that a company cannot set the timing of that decision itself. Exactly that point sits behind the chief executive's sentence about his own sphere of influence.

The first-half figures in context

Two items from the report belong read together. On one side stand net own crypto holdings of €199 million, after €356 million at the end of the first half of 2025. On the other stand liquid funds of €3.9 million and an equity ratio of 71.8 percent.

Own holdings are thus by far the largest item and fluctuate with the market price. Part of the decline is explained by the price path of the past year, and anyone wanting to follow how the reference value has developed will find the path on our Bitcoin price prediction page. The company itself cites the increased investment needs at futurum bank AG and the delayed restart as burdens on the result.

Restart as a broker: what changes in the bitcoin.de model

The second half of the announcement describes not a setback but a rebuild. bitcoin.de had been a peer-to-peer marketplace since 2011: buyers and sellers found each other through offers, the platform brokered the match and settled it through the bank. The new model is a broker. You then trade against the platform, or rather its liquidity sources, not against another private individual.

For the new offering the company names more than 100 cryptocurrencies, savings plans, crypto swaps, dynamic staking and a modern settlement infrastructure. Added to that are a new website and a new trading app. A crypto swap is the direct exchange of one cryptocurrency for another, without the detour through euros.

For you, the change of model means above all this: price formation changes. On a marketplace you see other people's offers and their prices; with a broker you get a quoted price with a mark-up. Which of the two forms is cheaper for you depends on order size and trading frequency, and that can only be judged properly once the fee schedule for the new offering is published. So far that schedule has not been published.

Your balance on bitcoin.de: which routes are open

Trading is idle, but that is not the same as a frozen account. Bitcoin Group SE speaks throughout of trading being temporarily unavailable, and names the completion of the authorisation procedure as the sole condition for resuming. The half-year statement says nothing about deposits and withdrawals.

Because the statement is silent on that, the sober route applies to you: get the current position on your account directly from the provider, by logging in and through support, and do not rely on a summary such as this one. What stands in a quarterly statement is the position on the reporting date, and your account may be in a different position.

If you decide to move your balance, three questions are practically relevant. First, whether a payout in euros to your reference account is possible. Second, whether a transfer of your crypto-assets to an external address works and what it costs. Third, what tax consequences each step carries.

Tax and holding period: what the standstill does not change

One worry can be defused. The one-year holding period of Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act keeps running while your holdings sit in the account. A trading halt does not interrupt it, because it hangs on the date of acquisition and the date of disposal, not on whether the trading venue happens to be open. Anyone who bought their coins over a year ago does not lose that status by waiting.

A transfer looks different. Moving your coins from an exchange to your own wallet is not in itself a taxable event, because you are neither disposing of anything nor swapping anything. What it does make more laborious is the documentation, because you still have to be able to evidence the acquisition date and acquisition cost, and the old provider's overview may no longer be conveniently available to you later. So download your transaction overview while you can still get it.

A swap, by contrast, is a disposal of one crypto-asset and an acquisition of another. For the newly acquired position the one-year period starts again. Anyone who overlooks that when reallocating pushes their holdings back into taxable territory without meaning to. Suitable tools for the documentation are in our comparison of crypto tax tools and portfolio trackers.

How to spot a trading venue with a valid MiCAR authorisation

If you want to trade elsewhere in the meantime, authorisation is the first feature that counts. BaFin maintains public registers, and ESMA maintains an EU-wide directory of authorised providers of crypto-asset services. A provider listed there with its authorised legal entity may supply the service in the EU and, via the European passport, may offer it in Germany too.

Three things deserve a second look. The name in the register is the legal company, not the brand you know the app by; the two can diverge. The authorisation is also limited to particular services, and custody is a different permission from operating a trading platform. And a seat outside the EU means the regulation's investor protection rules do not apply for you. A pre-selection of European regulated providers is in our overview of the best regulated crypto exchanges.

Self-custody: when your own wallet is the quieter choice

The bitcoin.de case illustrates a dependency many investors do not feel day to day. Coins in a trading account are a claim against the operator, and whether you can dispose of them depends on that operator being allowed to work. A regulatory question over which neither you nor the company has any influence thereby becomes your problem.

Self-custody means you hold the private keys yourself, usually on a hardware wallet. You then need nobody's permission for a transfer. The price for it is responsibility for the recovery words, because losing those words is final, and there is no support desk that will restore your access. Anyone considering that step will find the common devices in our hardware wallet comparison.

For active savings-plan investors, self-custody is inconvenient, because every execution entails a transfer. A workable middle way is to leave the running savings amount in the trading account and withdraw the long-term holdings at regular intervals.

What comes next in the fourth quarter of 2026

There is no fixed date, and that is the central message of the statement. The company expressly makes the resumption of trading dependent on the completion of the licensing procedure and describes its timing as hard to foresee. Anyone waiting for a launch date is therefore waiting on a decision by the supervisor, not on an announcement by the company.

That can be watched in two places. Bitcoin Group SE is listed and has to publish price-sensitive facts as an ad hoc disclosure; a granted authorisation would be such a case. And the supervisor's public registers list authorised providers with their legal entity, in this case therefore futurum bank AG.

bitcoin.de and the MiCAR licence: what to take away

1. Get the position on your own account. Log in and ask support whether payouts and transfers are currently running. The half-year statement says nothing about it, and your account is the only reliable point of reference. While you are there, download the full transaction overview for your tax records; the right tools for that are in the comparison of crypto tax tools.
2. Decide deliberately between waiting and moving. Your holding period keeps running, so a move costs you no deadline, though it does cost effort and network fees. If you do want to move, pick the new trading venue by its authorisation and not by its advertising; a pre-selection is in the overview of regulated crypto exchanges.
3. Separate long-term holdings from trading balance. What you intend to hold for years does not have to sit in a trading account. A hardware wallet makes you independent of a provider's licensing position, but demands safe keeping of the recovery words in return. An overview of the devices is in the hardware wallet comparison.

The situation is uncomfortable but manageable. On its own account the company has done its part and is waiting on an authority, and you are waiting with it. What you can steer in that time is where your holdings sit and how good your records are.

You can read the full wording of the company statement of September 29, 2026 in the EQS publication of the 2026 half-year report.

(As of September 29, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)