News, data and analysis on tokenized assets, market design and digital economic systems.
MiCA is fully applicable: the last national grandfathering windows closed on July 1, 2026 and the ESMA register lists more than 300 authorised service providers, but not one authorised asset-referenced token issuer.
MiCA's stablecoin rules applied from June 30, 2024 and its CASP rules from December 30, 2024, with the last national grandfathering windows closing on July 1, 2026, after which unauthorised firms may no longer serve EU clients. The ESMA register listed 309 authorised CASPs as of July 24, 2026, alongside roughly 19 authorised e-money token issuers and no authorised asset-referenced token issuers as of Q1 2026. The EBA's no-action letter on e-money token transfer services expired on March 2, 2026 following its February 12, 2026 opinion treating EMT transfers as payment services under PSD2, while the Commission's December 4, 2025 market integration and supervision package proposes moving supervision of all MiCA CASPs other than credit institutions to ESMA. On the central-bank side, the European Parliament's ECON committee approved the digital euro regulation 43-14 with one abstention on June 23, 2026, with the ECB planning a twelve-month pilot in the second half of 2027 and possible first issuance in 2029.
| Framework | Status | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA): Titles III and IV, asset-referenced and e-money tokens | In force | 30 June 2024 | Reserve, redemption-at-par, own-funds and significance requirements for ART and EMT issuers; EMT issuance restricted to credit institutions and electronic money institutions. |
| Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA): Title V, crypto-asset service providers | In force | 30 December 2024 | Authorisation and conduct regime for custody, exchange, order execution, placing, advice, portfolio management and transfer services. |
| MiCA national transitional (grandfathering) windows | Expired | 1 July 2026 | Final member-state transitional periods closed; firms without CASP authorisation may no longer serve EU clients. |
| Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 (recast Transfer of Funds Regulation / travel rule) | In force | 30 December 2024 | Originator and beneficiary information requirements for crypto-asset transfers, with no de minimis threshold. |
| Regulation (EU) 2022/858 (DLT Pilot Regime) | In force | 23 March 2023 | Time-limited exemptions for DLT market infrastructures trading and settling tokenized financial instruments. |
| EBA opinion on e-money token transfer services and PSD2 | Guidance | 12 February 2026 | Treats transfers of EMTs as payment services, requiring payment institution or credit institution status alongside CASP authorisation; the accompanying EBA no-action letter expired March 2, 2026. |
| ESMA guidelines on knowledge and competence for CASP staff | In force | 28 January 2026 | Minimum qualification and experience standards for staff giving information or advice on crypto-assets. |
| ESMA statement on MiCA data reporting standards and iXBRL white papers | Guidance | 28 November 2025 | Machine-readable crypto-asset white paper format applicable from December 23, 2025. |
| Commission market integration and supervision package (proposed transfer of CASP supervision to ESMA) | Proposed | 4 December 2025 | Would centralise supervision of all MiCA CASPs other than credit institutions at ESMA; in the ordinary legislative procedure. |
| Digital euro regulation | Proposed | 23 June 2026 | ECON committee approved its report 43-14 with one abstention; ECB has signalled a twelve-month pilot from the second half of 2027 and possible first issuance in 2029. |
Every development we have evidenced under European Union, newest first.
The ESCB's 57-page response to the Commission's MiCA review argues the prohibition on remunerating holders should reach unregulated crypto borrowing, lending and staking, naming loyalty benefits and liquidity mining incentives. The same document asks for the requirement that 30 per cent of reserves, or 60 for significant tokens, sit as bank deposits to be removed.
The central bank says it will invest a small portion of its own funds portfolio, a non-monetary policy portfolio that funds operating expenses, in tokenized securities settled in central bank money through Pontes. Initial purchases are to focus on euro-denominated euro area government, regional, agency and European supranational paper. No size or date is given.
Pontes links market DLT platforms to TARGET Services so the cash leg of a wholesale tokenized trade settles in central bank money, with finality achieved in T2 and delivery versus payment run through the Hash-Link protocol. Thirteen market participants, four ledger operators and the Bundesbank onboarded at launch. Full implementation is expected by 2028.
The call for expression of interest closes on 27 October 2026 for a twelve-month pilot from the second half of 2027. The beta instrument is a Eurosystem liability that the document says is not legal tender and not the digital euro of the draft regulation. Merchants receive no fee and pay none, and are settled into ordinary accounts rather than holding a balance.
The supervisor's second risk monitor of 2026 puts tokenized equities at about EUR 1.9bn, nearly all of it wrapped claims that convey no legal title, and warns that multiple representations of one share fragment liquidity. It states that the largest prediction market platforms hold no EU authorisation and questions their partial geo-blocks.
Vlad Tenev told CNBC that a listed company cannot control securities other firms issue referencing its shares, and would not say how Robinhood will vote the shares held against its Stock Tokens. Robinhood's own pages say the tokens are debt securities of an unregulated Jersey issuer conveying no legal or beneficial rights in the underlying.
The ZKsync developer put the permissioning engine of its institutional chain platform on GitHub under Apache 2.0 and named the Deutsche Bundesbank as the first institution to deploy the platform self-hosted. The repository describes the released component as an access-control service in front of a ZKsync sequencer, with administration tooling and core banking connectors still commercial.
Nasdaq, Boerse Stuttgart, Securitize, Axiology, Cashlink and twenty-two other firms and associations wrote to the Council and the Parliament's economic committee asking for the cap on instruments admitted to DLT infrastructure to be removed, or set at EUR 1,500bn, and opposing a lower threshold for DLT venues than for designated depositories.
The ECB published on 19 August 2026 the 61 participants selected to advise the Eurosystem on Pontes and on the Appia roadmap, replacing two earlier groups from September 2026. Nineteen seats belong to the Qivalis euro stablecoin consortium or to Qivalis itself. Axiology said a day later that Pontes goes live on 21 September with four registered DLT operators.
Kraken made more than 7,000 US-listed stocks available to eligible customers across the European Economic Area on 18 August 2026 under a MiFID authorisation held in Cyprus, in the same account as its xStocks tokens, which are issued in Jersey and distributed from Bermuda and which the company says are registered with no securities regulator.
The Austrian Financial Market Authority published a penalty of 70,000 euros against Bitpanda GmbH on 14 August 2026 for sending a crypto-asset white paper to it later than twenty working days before publication and for marketing failings under article 7. The proceeding was ended on an expedited basis and the decision is legally final.
A notice of 14 August 2026 tells users not to transact with sixteen crypto platforms from 7, 13 and 23 August. Fourteen of the names and both later dates reproduce Annex VIII of Council Regulation (EU) 2026/1848. The notice cites no authority and no jurisdiction, and says an attempt may breach Binance's terms of use.
Aviva Investors launched a tokenized share class of its US Dollar Liquidity Fund on the XRP Ledger on 29 July 2026, approved by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ripple supplies the ledger, Komainu the institutional custody of the tokens and Licuido the tokenization infrastructure, with The Bank of New York Mellon remaining the fund's custodian. The conventional fund has run since 2020 and the tokenized class carries the same investment terms.
The Council of the European Union adopted its 21st package of sanctions against Russia on 23 July 2026, extending the transaction ban to 14 crypto-related service platforms based in Georgia, Panama, the UAE, the Marshall Islands, Kyrgyzstan and Belarus, and introducing for the first time a power to prohibit dealings with crypto-asset service providers of an entire third country. The Council's summary does not name the 14 platforms.
Luxembourg's CSSF said the transitional period under which virtual asset service providers could continue operating in the European Union without a MiCA authorisation ended on 1 July 2026. Firms without a crypto-asset service provider authorisation must wind down EU activity in an orderly way: they may not onboard new customers or market products, and may only allow existing customers to convert holdings into legal tender, transfer them to an authorised platform or move them into self-custody.
The ECB Governing Council approved a plan for settling distributed ledger technology transactions in central bank money on two tracks. Pontes is to link DLT platforms to TARGET Services, with a pilot planned by the end of the third quarter of 2026; Appia examines a longer-term integrated tokenised ecosystem. The decision followed exploratory work between May and November 2024 that involved 64 participants and more than 50 trials.
Robinhood began offering more than 200 tokenised US stocks and exchange-traded funds to customers in 30 EU and EEA countries, issued on Arbitrum and traded with no commission or added spread from Robinhood. The company said it was also building its own layer-2 network, based on Arbitrum technology, for tokenised real-world assets.
Coinbase said the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier had authorised it as a crypto-asset service provider under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, with Luxembourg as its EU hub. The single authorisation replaces the separate national registrations Coinbase held in Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain and allows it to passport services across the 27 member states.
The remaining titles of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 took effect, requiring firms providing crypto-asset services in the European Union to be authorised and supervised. National regimes were replaced by a single set of rules with passporting across member states, subject to transitional arrangements set by each state.
The ECB reported the conclusion of Eurosystem trials and experiments settling transactions recorded on distributed ledgers against central bank money. 64 participants ran more than 200 transactions across more than 40 trials and experiments between May and November 2024, with a combined value of about €1.59bn.
In a 57-page response to the European Commission's review of MiCA, the European System of Central Banks asks that the prohibition on remunerating holders apply to unregulated crypto borrowing, lending and staking too, naming liquidity mining as an…
Pontes went live on 21 September, linking market ledger platforms to TARGET Services so that the cash leg of a tokenized trade settles in central bank money. Thirteen market participants, four ledger operators and the Bundesbank have onboarded.
The central bank says it has begun preparatory work to invest a small portion of its own funds portfolio in tokenized securities, settling the purchases in central bank money through Pontes.
Applications close on 27 October for a twelve-month test starting in the second half of 2027. The instrument is a Eurosystem liability that is not legal tender and not the digital euro of the draft regulation.
The European supervisor's second risk monitor of the year puts the tokenized equity market at about EUR 1.9bn, almost all of it wrapped claims whose transfer conveys no legal title, and says Polymarket and Kalshi lack the authorisation the EU…
AMC's chief executive calls the practice abhorrent and asks whether the shares backing the tokens can be lent to short sellers.
What issued, what settled, what the supervisors changed, with the numbers behind it and a note on what the numbers do not show. One email, Thursday mornings.
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