Bitget EU expects MiCA approval in Austria by mid-2026 and plans a broker-led model with strict asset standards for European users. Bitget appointed former Bitpanda chief legal officer and prior KuCoin EU head Oliver Stauber as CEO of Bitget EU to lead the exchange’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) expansion and set up its new European headquarters in Vienna. The entity, which applied for a MiCA license in Austria in 2025, expects regulatory approval in the second quarter of 2026 and will not offer services in the European Economic Area (EEA) until authorization is granted, Stauber told Cointelegraph. He said that Bitget EU will ring‑fence EEA users from the offshore Bitget platform via Internet Protocol (IP) address detection and enhanced Know Your Customer (KYC) controls designed to prevent unlicensed entities from onboarding residents through geographic workarounds, marketing or reverse solicitation. Read more
DeFi is still out of scope for DAC8 and CARF, but AML enforcement trends suggest that may not last, according to Taxbit’s Colby Mangels. The European Union’s new cryptocurrency tax reporting framework is built around what governments can immediately enforce, leaving decentralized finance (DeFi) outside its scope for now. A former Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) official who worked on the Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) said that this gap is a deliberate focus and not a blind spot. “It doesn’t make sense to go to your grandma and ask her to give you all the tax reporting on crypto just because you happened to work with her over a certain period,” Colby Mangels, Taxbit’s global head of government solutions and a former OECD adviser, told Cointelegraph. “You really have to go to the intermediaries that are doing this as a business.” Read more
Romanian store chain Contakt, the leading retailer of cell phone accessories in Romania, saw an 8% growth in revenue to RON138 million in 2025, from the RON128.7 million in 2024.