MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is the EU's harmonised perimeter for crypto-assets that fall outside existing financial-instrument legislation. The regulation creates three issuance categories (asset-referenced tokens, e-money tokens, and other crypto-assets) and a single licensing regime for crypto-asset service providers (CASPs). For tokenisation operators, MiCA matters less for what it permits and more for what it forecloses: any single-fiat stablecoin marketed in the EU has to come through the EMT (e-money token) route, which collapses the issuer set to credit institutions and authorised electronic money institutions. Stablecoin issuance, custody, and trading inside the bloc now run on a passportable EU licence supervised by ESMA and the EBA alongside national competent authorities (ESMA MiCA overview).

Scope

MiCA covers three categories of crypto-asset. Asset-referenced tokens (ART) reference a basket of assets, currencies, or commodities. E-money tokens (EMT) reference a single fiat currency and function as electronic money. The third bucket is other crypto-assets that fall into neither category and are not MiFID II financial instruments. Crypto-assets that already qualify as financial instruments, deposits, structured deposits, securitisation positions, or insurance products sit outside MiCA. Decentralised arrangements without an identifiable issuer or service provider, unique non-fungible NFTs, and intra-group services are also out of scope (Latham MiCA tracker).

The CASP perimeter under Title V covers ten activities including custody, trading-platform operation, exchange of crypto-assets for funds or other crypto-assets, order execution, placing, reception and transmission of orders, advice, portfolio management, and transfer services. Any of these performed in or from the EU on a professional basis triggers authorisation.

Mechanics

ART issuers must be either credit institutions or legal persons specifically authorised under Article 21. They publish a white paper, hold a reserve of assets fully segregated from their own balance sheet, and meet own-funds requirements set at the highest of EUR 350,000, two percent of average reserve assets, or one quarter of fixed overheads from the prior year (Dechert MiCA Phase 1 note). EMT issuers must be credit institutions or authorised electronic money institutions; the EMT is treated as electronic money and the holder has a redemption right at par value at any time. Both ART and EMT issuers are barred from paying interest tied to the holding period of the token, a deliberate design choice to keep these instruments from competing with deposits or money-market funds.

Reserves for both categories must be high-quality liquid assets, segregated from the issuer's own assets, custodied by a regulated third party, and managed under prudent investment policies. Disclosure of reserve composition runs at minimum monthly. Tokens classified as significant trigger direct supervision by the EBA rather than by the home-state national competent authority, with the thresholds set at more than 10 million holders, more than EUR 5 billion in reserve assets, or more than 2.5 million transactions per day on average (ESMA MiCA overview).

CASPs require authorisation in their home member state, with passporting across the EU. Capital, governance, conflict-of-interest, custody, and operational-resilience requirements track the analogous MiFID II provisions, with crypto-specific overlays for safekeeping arrangements and on-chain reconciliation.

Status

MiCA entered into force on 29 June 2023. The ART and EMT chapters became applicable on 30 June 2024, and the CASP regime under Title V became applicable on 30 December 2024 (ESMA MiCA overview). Member states may apply a grandfathering window under Article 143 allowing existing crypto-asset service providers to continue operations until 1 July 2026 or until their MiCA authorisation is granted or refused, whichever is earlier. Roughly half the member states have used the maximum window; others have shortened it materially. ESMA and the EBA continue to publish Level 2 and Level 3 measures, including regulatory technical standards and supervisory guidelines that operators need to read alongside the Level 1 text.

Implications for tokenisation

For a single-fiat stablecoin marketed in the EU, the EMT route is the only path. The issuer set collapses: anyone outside a credit institution or an authorised EMI has to secure one of those licences, partner with a holder, or stay out. Circle restructured its EUR and USD offerings around a French EMI authorisation in 2024 to clear this bar, and the public consequence has been gradual delisting of non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins from EU-licensed venues. Multi-asset reserve designs are pushed into the ART perimeter, a heavier supervisory load and effectively foreclosed for retail-facing payment use cases.

For tokenised funds, tokenised securities, and tokenised deposits, MiCA is the perimeter check rather than the operating regime. Those instruments remain under UCITS, AIFMD, MiFID II, or the relevant deposit-taking framework, with MiCA explicitly carving them out. The DLT Pilot Regime sits alongside MiCA as the sandbox route for tokenised financial-instrument market infrastructure. Cross-border tokenisation programmes typically need both a MiCA strategy and a non-MiCA strategy.

The CASP passport is the most under-priced piece of the regime. Once authorised in any member state, the licence travels across the bloc, a meaningful single-market unlock relative to the pre-MiCA fragmented national regimes.

Open questions

• Whether the significance thresholds will trigger frequent EBA-level redesignations, or whether the largest stablecoins will manage their growth to stay below the thresholds.
• How the foreign-issuer perimeter under MiCA interacts with the GENIUS Act's reciprocal foreign-issuer provisions in the US, particularly for USD-pegged stablecoins distributed in both jurisdictions.
• The treatment of tokenised money-market funds under MiCA versus UCITS where the on-chain wrapper is a CASP service rather than a fund-issuance activity.