The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has expanded its Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) register to 300 authorized crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) after adding 57 new firms around the July 1, 2026 transition deadline. The rapid expansion marks a shift from rulemaking to direct market supervision and includes major institutions such as Standard Chartered, institutional trading platform FalconX, digital asset bank Sygnum Europe, and the asset servicer CACEIS from Crédit Agricole and Santander.
Standard Chartered gained its MiCA authorization from Luxembourg’s CSSF on June 25, along with an Electronic Money Institution license, granting the bank passporting rights to offer custody, token services, and payment-linked digital asset services across all 27 EU member states. FalconX received approval from Malta’s Financial Services Authority shortly before the deadline. The influx of licenses pushed the official register from 243 providers on June 26 to 300 just days later.
The close of the transitional period on July 1 reshaped Europe’s regulated crypto landscape. Firms that failed to secure a MiCA license were required to stop onboarding new EU customers and begin winding down operations. Consequently, Tether’s $186 billion USDT stablecoin lost its MiCA-compliant pathway, prompting major exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com to remove USDT trading for European users. This effectively ended the world’s largest stablecoin’s presence on regulated EU order books, even though it remains dominant globally.
Cyprus led the new approval wave with six additional service providers, while France, Italy, and Malta each added five. Germany remains the overall leader with 58 authorizations from BaFin. The updated ESMA register now serves as a verified reference for market access, counterparty checks, and institutional due diligence across the European Union.
