EU's MiCA gate swings open: 37 crypto firms, 162 still locked out 🚪

The European Securities and Markets Authority published its first MiCA register update on Friday after the regulation's transitional period ended Wednesday, adding 37 licensed crypto-asset service providers including global banking group Standard Chartered, which secured MiCA authorization from Luxembourg regulators on June 25. ESMA's interim MiCA register now lists 280 CASPs, up from 243 in the previous update published June 26. Newly listed firms include digital asset prime brokerage FalconX, Sygnum Europe and Ronin EM, while the register of electronic money tokens added Crédit Agricole's CACEIS. The list of non-compliant entities remained unchanged at 162, and the asset-referenced tokens register still shows no approved issuers.

Standard Chartered also received an Electronic Money Institution license, allowing the bank to issue electronic money and provide payment services, the bank announced Monday. "Securing our MiCA and EMI licences is a key step in progressing our digital asset journey in Europe," Standard Chartered's global head of financing, Margaret Harwood-Jones, said. The bank said the approvals build on recent milestones, including the launch of digital asset custody services in Asia and the Middle East, and support growing client demand for regulated access to digital assets in Europe. Related moves include Standard Chartered's partnership with Circle to bring USDC minting onto banking rails.

Cyprus led the latest wave of authorizations with six new CASPs, followed by France, Italy and Malta with five each, the Czech Republic and Spain with four each, Luxembourg with three, the Netherlands with two, and Germany, Liechtenstein and Latvia with one each. The approvals bring CySEC's total MiCA authorizations to 21, while Germany's BaFin remains the EU's leading authority with 58 MiCA authorizations. Of the 283 authorized CASP records on file, only 17 firms are authorized to operate a crypto trading platform, with the remainder holding narrower permissions such as custody, transfer services, order execution or crypto-to-fiat exchange.

Register data shows a late surge of licensing activity before the deadline, with 36 CASP authorizations dated between June 23 and July 1, including 13 on June 30 and one more on July 1. June alone accounted for 66 authorizations, underscoring the rush by firms to comply with the bloc's unified crypto rules. Germany holds the largest CASP count at 59 records, followed by France with 31, the Netherlands with 28, Malta with 22 and Cyprus with 21, indicating that MiCA authorizations remain concentrated in a handful of jurisdictions despite the regulation's passporting framework for cross-border operations across the European Economic Area.