Bitcoin sale in Austria without license allowed

Bitcoin sale in Austria without license allowed
Austria is so damn beautiful. Now also for Bitcoin fans. Image: Prolesalpe Styria/Austria, by Gerhard Haindl via Flickr.com. License: Creative Commons

There are hundreds of reasons to love Austria. Recently, this also includes the freedom to sell Bitcoins publicly via machine or voucher. At the request of the Graz startup Coinfinity, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) meant the business of the Graz startup, whose trade does not trigger a supervisory obligation.

Coinfinity from Graz operates a Bitcoin machine in her office and supplies 600 tobaccoats (Austrian for kiosk) with Bitcoinbons, which are vouchers for bitcoins. The two-member startup is called the “leading Bitcoin agency” in Austria, which is not art, since there is no further Bitcoin agency in the Alpine Republic apart from Coinfinity. Nevertheless, the boys deserve fame: they not only the first implement a Bitcoinbon concept, but also create a good deal of legal certainty for the Bitcoin market in the former Danube monarchy through their law firm Brandl & Talos.

The lawyers had asked the FMA whether the business models from Coinfinity need permission. The answer was that neither the setting up of Bitcoin machines nor the distribution of Bitcoinbons need a license. The fact that the sale of bitcoins itself does not trigger a duty of permission does not mean that he cannot do that. For example, the operation of a Bitcoin exchange could require a license despite everything.

Austria is on the way to liberal Bitcoin legislation. In Germany, as a comparison, it would be unthinkable that Bitcoin machines or Bitcoinbons set up without permission or. be sold. The principle here is that every business model that explicitly revolves around Bitcoin is subject to a certain probability.