MiCA Restrictions Leave 14 EU Stablecoin Issuers Without Custody Rights

TL;DR

• Stablecoins issued by 14 of the 23 authorized issuers in the EU cannot offer custody of their own tokens under the MiCA regulation.
• Only nine companies obtained full authorization covering both EMT issuance and CASP services, leaving the rest with severely limited commercial capabilities.
• Circle and Société Générale-Forge emerge as the biggest beneficiaries of this fragmentation in the competition for institutional capital.

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, known as MiCA, has produced a consequence that most of the industry did not anticipate: 14 of the approximately 23 authorized issuers of stablecoins under the electronic money token (EMT) framework cannot offer custody services for their own assets on behalf of corporate clients. This was flagged by Patrick Hansen, Circle’s Director of EU Strategy and Policy, who expressed surprise at the passivity of competitors in the face of this restriction.

According to the interim register of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), only nine companies obtained full authorization covering both EMT issuance and crypto-asset service provider (CASP) services. The rest became trapped in a regulatory gap that severely limits the range of services they can offer, in Hansen’s own words.

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