Germany Leads MiCA Licensing Race: 83% of Firms Fail July 1 Deadline

The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation enters its enforcement phase on Tuesday as the 18-month transitional period expires. Any firm providing crypto-asset services in the bloc without a CASP authorisation is now in breach of EU law and must immediately stop. ESMA has been explicit that no intermediate status exists after July 1 and that a pending application does not confer any right to continue operating.

The licensing picture heading into the deadline is deeply uneven. Germany leads the bloc with 57 authorised entities, approved by its regulator BaFin, followed by the Netherlands and France. Together, Germany, France and the Netherlands account for more than half of all CASP approvals issued across the EU and EEA, a distribution that mirrors the broader concentration of financial assets in those three economies. Only 14 platforms hold full trading authorisation across Europe.

Estonia Once Had 641 Licensed Crypto Firms and Now Contributes Almost Nothing

The conversion rate tells the real story. Of the 1,200-plus firms that previously held national VASP registrations, only around 210 have completed the MiCA authorisation process, a rate of roughly 17%. The collapse is most visible in Estonia. The country was once Europe's crypto licensing capital, having built a permissive and inexpensive registration regime that attracted hundreds of firms. At its peak, Estonia had 641 licensed virtual asset service providers. Today it contributes almost nothing to the authorised CASP register. The vast majority chose not to pursue full MiCA licensing, either because the cost and compliance burden did not justify the EU market access or because they were operating entities that were unlikely to pass proper regulatory scrutiny.

Poland presents a different kind of failure. Three presidential vetoes of MiCA implementation legislation left the country without an active licensing framework by the deadline, meaning there is no Polish NCA with the authority to issue CASP approvals. In France, only 30% of roughly 90 unlicensed firms had applied for authorisation as of January 2026, and a further 40% did not intend to apply at all. Greece is notable for a different reason: Binance applied for CASP authorisation there and subsequently withdrew its application, an episode that drew attention to the difficulty of securing approvals even for the world's largest exchange.

Italy Leads the Non-Compliant Register While Licensed Firms Gain Passporting Rights Across 30 Markets

The other side of the ledger is the non-compliant CASP register that ESMA began publishing alongside its authorised list. Italy accounts for an overwhelming share of entries: 160 of the 162 non-compliant CASPs listed as of June 26 were Italian, with the Netherlands and Slovakia contributing one each, linked to MEXC and LWEX respectively. The scale of Italy's non-compliant register reflects a combination of a large domestic crypto market and a licensing process that moved more slowly than many firms needed. Firms on the non-compliant register are not able to passport services across the bloc and face the prospect of enforcement action from national regulators.

For the firms that did secure authorisation, July 1 marks the start of a significant competitive advantage. A CASP licensed in one EU or EEA country can passport services across all 27 member states. Licensed platforms include Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, OKX and Bitpanda. The enforcement dynamic is expected to mirror what happened after GDPR took effect in 2018: a consolidation of activity around compliant players as unlicensed competitors exit or reduce their EU presence. For a broader look at how Europe's regulatory architecture is developing across crypto and DeFi, and for context on how the tokenisation infrastructure regulated under MiCA is being built, see our respective guides. The CASP Tracker provides a searchable version of the ESMA register for users who want to verify whether their exchange is authorised before the deadline passes.