State of MiCA — July 2026: the transition is over, the banks have arrived

As of 21 July 2026, 323 crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) are authorised under MiCA across 26 EEA home states, according to ESMA's interim register — tracked daily in Penning's public CASP register. This is the first monthly summary of what the register actually shows: who arrived, who left, and what it means if you use a crypto platform in the EU.

The transition is over#

1 July 2026 was the end of the road for MiCA's transitional arrangements. Every member-state grandfathering window has now closed, which means providing crypto-asset services to EU/EEA clients without a CASP authorisation is illegal — full stop. ESMA said as much in a public statement in June, and the market reacted accordingly: the most prominent example was Binance, which told its EU users it was exiting after failing to secure an authorisation. The register now cleanly separates the market into firms that can serve you and firms that cannot.

The numbers#

• 323 authorised CASPs across 26 EEA home states
• Germany leads with 60, followed by the Netherlands (34), France (33), Malta (30), Cyprus (23) and Ireland (15)
• 68 register changes in the last 30 days — the register is still moving fast even after the deadline
• Only 26 of 323 are authorised to operate a crypto trading platform (service b)
• 46 of 323 are authorised for portfolio management of crypto-assets (service i)

That last pair of numbers matters more than the headline count. A MiCA authorisation is not all-or-nothing: each CASP is authorised for a specific combination of the ten services in Article 3(1)(16), and may not offer the rest. Most authorised firms are brokers, custodians or transfer providers — not exchanges. Before assuming what a provider can legally do for you, check its services column in the register.

July's entry wave: the banks have arrived#

The most striking pattern in this month's new entrants is who they are. Alongside crypto-native firms, the July register additions include Standard Chartered, Ripple Payments Europe S.A. (Luxembourg), Kaiser Partner Privatbank, Bison Bank, and a string of German cooperative banks — Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank entities appearing directly in the CASP register. Eighteen months ago, MiCA sceptics predicted the regime would push finance out of Europe. The register shows the opposite: traditional finance is using the licence as its on-ramp into crypto-asset services.

What to watch next#

• The formal ESMA register. Today's data comes from ESMA's interim register — five CSV files updated weekly. The formal Article 109 register was slated for mid-2026 and is running late; when it ships, expect a data migration and, possibly, better official tooling.
• Delistings and the warning list. With the land-grab over, the interesting churn is now firms leaving the register — lapsed authorisations, withdrawals, and ESMA's list of non-compliant providers. Our register tracks removals daily.
• Consolidation. With 323 authorised firms competing for the same EEA passport footprint, expect mergers — the service-mix data suggests many small single-service CASPs will struggle to stand alone.

About this data#

Everything above is computed from Penning's public MiCA CASP register, which pulls and diffs ESMA's interim register daily and supplements it with Norway's Finanstilsynet (ESMA's files omit EEA/EFTA states). The full dataset is freely available as JSON or CSV, CC BY 4.0.

Penning Financial Services ApS is itself an authorised CASP (home state Denmark, Finanstilsynet). This post is informational — not legal or financial advice. Always verify a provider's authorisation in ESMA's or the national supervisor's official register.