Crypto is legal in Romania, and since 1 July 2026 it is fully regulated. Any firm that exchanges, holds, transfers or trades crypto-assets for Romanian clients needs an authorization as a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) under the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. In Romania the authorization is issued by the Financial Supervisory Authority (ASF) under OUG 10/2025; a CASP authorized in another Member State can passport in. Individuals pay 16% tax on crypto gains realized from 2026.
Who needs a MiCA authorization
MiCA (art. 3(1)(16) and art. 59) requires an authorization for the following services when provided to clients in the EU:
- custody and administration of crypto-assets for clients;
- operation of a trading platform for crypto-assets;
- exchange of crypto-assets for funds or for other crypto-assets;
- execution of orders, and reception and transmission of orders;
- placing of crypto-assets;
- transfer services;
- advice on crypto-assets and portfolio management.
Credit institutions, e-money institutions, investment firms and some other regulated entities can provide certain services after a notification instead of a full authorization (art. 60). Holding crypto, mining and genuinely decentralized protocols without an intermediary fall outside the CASP regime.
Who regulates crypto in Romania
Romania implemented MiCA through OUG 10/2025, in force since March 2025:
- ASF authorizes and supervises CASPs that are not banks or e-money institutions, such as trading platforms, custodians, investment firms offering crypto services and crypto-focused fund managers.
- BNR supervises credit institutions and e-money institutions that also provide crypto services.
- ONPCSB receives AML reports from CASPs.
- CASPs authorized elsewhere in the EU that serve Romania without a branch must designate a single contact point in Romania.
What an authorization requires
| Requirement | MiCA rule |
|---|---|
| Legal form | A legal person established in the EU with its registered office there and at least one director resident in the EU (art. 59) |
| Minimum capital | €50,000 (e.g. order reception and transmission, advice, placing, transfers, portfolio management), €125,000 (adds custody or exchange), €150,000 (trading platform), or a quarter of last year’s fixed overheads if higher (art. 67, Annex IV) |
| Governance | Fit-and-proper management body and qualifying holders, business continuity, ICT security under DORA, conflict-of-interest and complaints procedures (arts. 62, 68, 71, 72) |
| Client assets | Segregation of client crypto-assets and funds; custody agreement and liability for losses (arts. 70, 75) |
| White papers | Issuers and offerors of crypto-assets publish a white paper; asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens follow stricter rules (Titles II–IV) |
Timeline. ASF checks completeness within 25 working days of the application and decides within 40 working days of a complete file (art. 63); questions stop the clock. Plan for several months including preparation.
Passporting. An authorized CASP can serve clients across the EU after the home authority notifies the host authorities (art. 65). A Romanian CASP can therefore serve the whole EU, and an EU CASP can serve Romania without a Romanian license.
The transitional period has ended
Romania chose an 18-month grandfathering period under art. 143(3) MiCA, the longest allowed. Firms already serving Romanian clients could continue until 1 July 2026. From that date an unauthorized platform may no longer serve clients in Romania. Press reports put the number of Romanians holding crypto at about 600,000, so the change has been noticeable: clients of unlicensed platforms have had to move to authorized ones.
AML: crypto providers are financial institutions
OUG 10/2025 rewrote the crypto provisions of Law 129/2019 in MiCA terms. CASPs are treated as financial institutions, with AML duties comparable to banks. Law 86/2025 set their due-diligence threshold at €1,000 for occasional transactions and requires them to assess the risk of transfers to and from self-hosted wallets. The EU Transfer of Funds Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 has also applied since 30 December 2024, so originator and beneficiary data must travel with every crypto transfer (the travel rule). The general Romanian framework is in Romania AML rules for gambling companies.
Tax on crypto gains
For individuals, crypto gains are taxed as income from other sources under art. 116 of the Fiscal Code:
| Gains realized in | Rate |
|---|---|
| 2023–2025 | 10% |
| From 1 January 2026 | 16% (Law 239/2025) |
The taxable gain is the sale price minus the acquisition cost and direct transaction costs. Selling for fiat, swapping one crypto-asset for another and paying for goods or services with crypto are all taxable events; simply holding is not. Gains are exempt only if each transaction’s gain is under RON 200 and the annual total does not exceed RON 600. Losses cannot be offset against other income or carried forward. Platforms do not withhold tax: the individual files the Declarația unică (form D212) and pays by 25 May of the following year, plus health contribution (CASS) where total income exceeds the threshold.
ANAF will soon see the data directly. OUG 71/2025 transposes the EU DAC8 directive and the OECD Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework: platforms serving Romanian residents must register with ANAF and report user transactions, with the first report due by 15 March 2027 for 2026.
Companies are taxed on crypto gains as ordinary profit, at 16% corporate income tax, or within the micro-enterprise regime where it still applies (gambling companies are excluded from the latter).
Crypto and gambling in Romania
The question we are asked most often is whether a crypto casino or betting site can serve Romanian players without an ONJN license. It cannot. OUG 77/2009 applies to any game of chance offered to players in Romania, whatever the currency used for stakes. ONJN adds unlicensed domains to its blacklist, and crypto-based platforms are no exception; see our report on the blacklisting of Polymarket and how sites get blacklisted and what to do about it. Since Law 239/2025, ONJN Class 2 suppliers, including payment processors, may not serve an operator that accepts deposits in crypto-assets from Romania without a Class 1 license (see the Class 2 license page).
A licensed operator that wants to offer crypto payments must fit them into its ONJN-approved payment, player-account and AML setup, and the payment partner must itself be MiCA-authorized. Plan that with your payments adviser before building it. Brands built around crypto-only play usually choose a different market and license; our jurisdictions overview compares the options.
Background: from no rules in 2019 to MiCA
When this article was first written in October 2019, Romania had no crypto law at all. Virtual coins were neither national nor foreign currency, so a crypto trading company needed only an ordinary company under Law 31/1990, and the National Bank of Romania said publicly that it did not regulate virtual currencies. A Ministry of Finance draft later proposed €350,000 of capital and BNR vetting for exchange and wallet providers, but it was never adopted, and the registration of crypto providers foreseen by Law 129/2019 never started. MiCA replaced all of that with a single EU regime.
