Austria's Financial Market Authority (FMA) has fined Bitpanda GmbH 70,000 euros ($81,150) for breaches of the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation. The penalty, announced on August 17, 2026, is the first the regulator has imposed under the EU's crypto asset rules and is now final.

The FMA identified three violations. First, Bitpanda failed to submit a cryptocurrency white paper to the regulator at least 20 working days before publishing it. Second, the firm circulated a marketing communication before publishing the required white paper. Third, another communication omitted a mandatory statement that regulators had not reviewed or approved the document and that the provider was solely responsible for its contents, along with a required telephone number and email address. The regulator did not identify the cryptocurrency involved.

Bitpanda disputed any substantive failing. In an emailed statement, the company said the regulator's findings "related exclusively to timing and formal specifications surrounding the publication of the whitepaper and an accompanying information document."

"For the token launch in question, we prepared a comprehensive whitepaper in accordance with MiCAR requirements, submitted it to the FMA, and continuously coordinated the entire process with the authority," Bitpanda said. The firm confirmed the white paper was submitted in early 2025.

The company said it corrected the issues after the FMA raised them and chose a "swift, consensual conclusion" to the proceedings. The regulator closed the case through an expedited process under Austria's Financial Market Authority Act, and the penalty cannot be appealed.

A significant target

The sanction lands on one of Europe's largest crypto brokers. Bitpanda ended 2025 with 7.4 million registered users, up 25% year on year, and 371 million euros in adjusted revenue. The Vienna-based company has been expanding beyond Europe by supplying trading, custody and tokenization infrastructure to banks and fintech firms.

The firm holds a full MiCA license from German regulator BaFin, secured in January 2025, allowing it to serve customers across the European Economic Area. Austria's FMA separately authorized Bitpanda GmbH to provide custody, exchange, order execution and other crypto services in April 2025.

What it means for practitioners

The decision offers the first published guide to how the FMA will exercise its MiCA enforcement powers, and the signals are pointed. A five-figure fine attached to what the respondent itself characterizes as procedural slippage — a missed 20-working-day notification window, premature marketing, and a missing disclaimer — shows the regulator intends to enforce MiCA's white paper and marketing communication requirements to the letter, regardless of the substance of the disclosure or the firm's cooperation. Compliance teams at CASPs should treat the pre-publication notification deadline as a hard gate: no marketing material goes out before the white paper is published, and every communication must carry the non-approval statement together with contact details. The expedited, consensual resolution route under the Financial Market Authority Act also demonstrates a willingness on both sides to settle quickly — a precedent that in-house counsel may find useful when weighing whether to contest findings or negotiate an early conclusion.