Crypto license in Europe

The European Crypto License allows you to work legally in the EU, makes crypto-business transparent, and increases the trust of customers, partners, and state regulators. This is a promising direction for entrepreneurs to engage in cryptocurrency activities.

The European Parliament approved MiCA on April 20, 2023, making it a groundbreaking global legislation that sets a precedent for other jurisdictions.

MiCA is a regulatory framework developed by the European Commission to regulate markets for crypto assets and related services that are not currently covered by EU regulations.

It has been developed since 2018 and aims to provide a single licensing regime for all EU member states to harmonize regulation on the creation and trading of cryptocurrencies in line with the European Digital Finance Strategy. MiCA is expected to become effective sometime between mid-2024 and early 2025.

The adoption of MiCA will directly affect the regulation of any company that wants to operate in the EU, even if it seeks customers outside the EU. However, MiCA will not affect national regulatory frameworks that are already in force in some EU countries. These frameworks may supplement MiCA regulations and impose additional requirements that companies and crypto-asset service providers will also have to comply with. That being said, MiCA advocates that every company should be subject to regulation, hence being a CASP license holder.

Even before the MiCA implementation, European countries’ regulations had a single scenario, corresponding to the laws of the EU. However, in practice, they were having significant differences, especially in business models related to crypto-assets.

Therefore, choosing a jurisdiction must entail considering the specifics of regulations, conditions, and advantages of the crypto licensing scope in the EU countries. In most cases, a cryptocurrency license will be necessary. Regardless of the chosen jurisdiction, each regulator defines several specific requirements that must be met to obtain a crypto license successfully.