The state of EU crypto-asset service provider licensing — 2026 mid-year report
We are now eighteen months into MiCA full application. The transitional windows in most member states have either closed or are within weeks of closing. The CASP register has filled in substantially. National regulators have published guidance, enforced actions, and refined their interpretations. This essay is a mid-year 2026 report on where things actually stand, written for retail investors, comparison-platform operators, and crypto-firm compliance teams who need a current picture rather than a forecast from 2024.
The baseline: full application has held
The biggest takeaway from eighteen months of MiCA full application is the absence of major surprises. The regulation has worked broadly as designed. Major exchanges have either obtained authorisation, partnered with EU-licensed entities, or withdrawn from EU retail markets. The bifurcation between MiCA-licensed and non-MiCA providers in EU consumer-facing markets has become operationally clear.
The headline-level licensed CASP count is now substantial. Across the EU, several dozen authorised CASPs are operational across spot trading, custody, brokerage, payment services, lending, and stablecoin issuance. The names that retail investors actually recognise — Bitpanda, Bitvavo, Kraken, Coinbase, Crypto.com, Nexo, Bitget Europe — are MiCA-licensed in some EU jurisdiction with full passporting rights.
The operational reality of passporting has also held. A CASP authorised in Ireland (Kraken via CBI) can serve a German customer without separate German authorisation. A CASP authorised in Austria (Bitpanda via FMA) can serve a Spanish customer. The passporting fiction is functioning as actual passporting — at least for the categories of services the major players offer.
Country-by-country snapshot
Germany. BaFin's 18-month transitional window closes 30 June 2026. By the time this is read, German licensed CASPs include Coinbase Germany GmbH (the primary BaFin-supervised entity), Bitpanda (passported from Austria + supplemented with BaFin direct authorisation), and several smaller German-headquartered firms. The Kryptowertpapier-issuance side is also developing, with several institutional tokenisation projects under BaFin oversight.
France. AMF's shorter (12-month) transition closed end-2025. PSAN-registered firms have either completed MiCA conversion or exited French retail. The notable French CASPs include several spot-trading-focused firms with broad French-language presence.
Netherlands. DNB + AFM completed the shortest EU transition (6 months) in mid-2025. The Netherlands has emerged as one of the most-passported-from jurisdictions, with Bitvavo holding particular prominence. DNB's joint prudential supervision adds rigour for institutional customers.
Ireland. The Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) has positioned itself as a preferred passporting jurisdiction for crypto-asset service providers seeking EU access via an English-language regulatory environment. Kraken EU is the most-visible CBI-licensed operator; several institutional-focused crypto firms have followed.
Malta + Cyprus. MFSA + CySEC remain active passporting jurisdictions. Crypto.com's EU operations passport via MFSA Malta; Nexo passports via CySEC Cyprus. The jurisdictions retain strong crypto-specific licensing track records.
Spain, Italy, Portugal. Joint securities + central-bank supervision models. Transitional windows remain in effect (typically through mid-2026 for previously-registered firms). Limited domestically-headquartered MiCA-licensed CASPs; most retail flow goes to EU-passported alternatives.
Notable departures and adjustments
Binance.com's position in the EU has been the most significant industry development. Application withdrawals across multiple member states during 2024-2025 left Binance without a clear MiCA-authorised path. EU retail access via Binance.com is now restricted, with users redirected to either EU-licensed alternatives or to non-MiCA-licensed pathways that fall outside our recommendation scope.
Several mid-sized non-EU exchanges have similarly withdrawn from active EU retail marketing rather than complete authorisation. The cost-benefit calculation for smaller players — whose EU revenue did not justify the authorisation cost — has favoured strategic withdrawal in multiple cases.
Stablecoin issuance has been notably slower to develop in the EU than expected. MiCA Titles III + IV requirements (e-money institution authorisation for euro-denominated EMTs, etc.) have proved a higher bar than many issuers anticipated. No major euro-denominated stablecoin has achieved volumes comparable to USDC or USDT under EU authorisation.
DeFi-front-end question remains open. Pure decentralised protocols are outside MiCA scope by design. Centralised front-ends (uniswap.org, app.aave.com, etc.) operating in or marketing to EU users face complex assessment. National regulators have been cautious in their enforcement so far, but the regulatory perimeter on this question continues to tighten.
What the second half of 2026 looks like
The defining event of H2 2026 is the European Commission's first MiCA review, due by 30 December 2026 per Article 140. The review will assess MiCA's functioning across stablecoin supervision, CASP authorisation, retail protection, and adjacent topics including DeFi treatment and NFT clarifications.
ESMA's harmonised supervisory framework report is expected mid-2027 but groundwork is being laid in 2026. National-implementation divergences (transitional period lengths, supervisory practices, interpretation of "fully decentralised") are being catalogued.
DAC8 reporting begins for transactions in 2026, with first reports due January 2027. The interaction with MiCA is operational rather than legal — MiCA-licensed CASPs are the entities that will report under DAC8. The combined effect closes the information gap for crypto taxation in the EU.
The Travel Rule (Regulation (EU) 2023/1113) reaches full enforcement on 1 July 2026, alongside the close of the longest national transitional windows. The combined operational impact on CASPs is meaningful: KYC, transaction monitoring, MiCA conduct rules, DAC8 reporting, Travel Rule data attachment — all simultaneous obligations.
For retail investors: the EU CASP landscape is now substantially clearer than at any point since 2018. Choosing a MiCA-licensed provider is no longer difficult; verifying MiCA status takes seconds via the ESMA register. The next year's evolution will be incremental rather than structural.
What this means for comparison platforms
Comparison platforms serving EU retail users now operate in a fundamentally different environment than in 2023. The MiCA-licensed/non-licensed distinction is no longer ambiguous — it can be verified per-provider against the ESMA register and national CASP registers. The audience asking about MiCA status is sophisticated. The regulatory pressure on misleading marketing of non-licensed providers has tightened.
For platforms like ChainChoice, this is a structural opportunity. The pre-MiCA comparison landscape was opaque enough that distinguishing between editorially-rigorous and payola-driven platforms required reader expertise the average retail investor didn't have. Post-MiCA, the basic facts (who is licensed, where, with what scope) are externally verifiable. A platform that builds its recommendations on these verifiable facts can be evaluated by readers in ways that weren't possible before.
The inverse is also true. Platforms still operating on the old "vague claims + universal-affiliation rankings" model now face an audience that can — and increasingly does — check.
Eighteen months into full MiCA application, the EU crypto-asset service provider universe is more coherent than at any point in the previous decade. The compliance baseline is verifiable. The provider population is bifurcated cleanly between MiCA-licensed (recommendable to EU retail) and non-licensed (not). The retail audience is sophisticated enough to apply the distinction. For comparison platforms, this is the most useful environment to operate in since the category began. For retail investors, it is the safest moment to be choosing a crypto provider. The architectural shift is real, and 2026 H2 will see it continue to settle into the new operational baseline.
Mathias Siemonsmeier is the founder and editor-in-chief of ChainChoice, a brand of Simi Ventures GmbH (Bonn). He writes about editorial integrity in decision-support platforms, cryptographic provenance for editorial decisions, and the architectural — not policy — approach to ranking-system independence.