MiCA's Summer Cleanup: 90% of EU Crypto Firms Evicted, 244 Survive With a License to Bill 🧾

The European crypto industry entered a new regulatory era on Wednesday as the 18-month transitional period under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) expired, leaving only 244 authorized crypto-asset service providers across the European Union and European Economic Area, according to the European Securities and Markets Authority's interim register by Friday. The framework replaces 27 separate national regimes with a single rulebook, granting licensed firms passporting rights to operate across all EU member states under unified standards for custody, governance, capital requirements and consumer protection. The European Securities and Markets Authority said on June 23 that crypto service providers still unauthorized by the deadline must take "immediate" steps to wind down their EU activities.

The shakeout has been swift. Industry estimates indicate that roughly 210 out of approximately 2,700 firms survived the July 1 cutoff, with the rest withdrawing or restricting European operations. Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, remains unlicensed under MiCA after withdrawing its application in Greece, one of the EU member states that have yet to issue a MiCA license. Bybit restricted its platform for EEA users, and Binance also scaled back its European presence. The largest MiCA-authorized exchanges by spot orderbook liquidity now include OKX, Coinbase, Bybit, Crypto.com, Gate and Bitstamp, according to DefiLlama data.

A wave of last-minute authorizations preceded the cutoff. Italy's central bank, the Bank of Italy, announced Tuesday that Consob had approved licenses for asset management platform Hodlie, crypto exchange Young Platform, trading platform CryptoSmart and crypto service provider Hercle, bringing Italy's total to eight authorized CASPs. France's financial markets regulator, Autorité des marchés financiers, added three companies on Tuesday — crypto investment platform Mereau Finance, blockchain infrastructure provider Iceblock and crypto service provider Aplo — raising France's total to 31 licensed CASPs. Digital asset prime broker FalconX announced Monday that it had received a MiCA license in Malta, while Venga said on Wednesday that it had received CASP authorization from Spain. Coinbase opened a MiCA hub in Luxembourg covering all 27 EU states, and Ripple secured a preliminary CASP license in Luxembourg.

Dubai-based Utorg said it received full MiCA authorization effective July 1, clearing it to operate across all 29 EEA member states, a combined market of over 450 million people. The company, which provides regulated crypto rails, wallets and stablecoin infrastructure to businesses across 130+ countries, said it holds a PCI DSS Level 2 certificate under the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for card payments. Eugene Petrakov, Co-founder of Utorg, said: "Most of the industry spent the last two years hoping MiCA would get delayed or softened. We spent it building toward it. For European users, July 1 means fewer options, stricter standards, and a much shorter list of platforms they can actually trust. We intend to be at the top of that list, not just because we're authorized, but because we built a product that is safe by design. The license confirms what was already true."

Simon Schneider, CEO of Sygnum Europe, described the end of the transition period as a competitive sorting moment, stating: "The end of the transition period is a sorting moment: the market will increasingly consolidate around regulated players who can both operate at scale in terms of operational experience and regulatory compliance as much as innovative products and service. Bank-grade trust becomes a competitive moat under MiCAR." Industry data indicates that more than 5,000 banks across Europe have not yet offered digital asset services, with regulatory clarity now seen as a potential catalyst for institutional entry into the market.