MiCA’s Grace Period Is Over: Who Got Licensed and Who Didn’t

On 1 July 2026, MiCA Crypto License transitional period expired across the European Union. There was no extension, no partial-compliance carve-out and no discretion at national level. Spain’s CNMV ruled out exceptions outright. ESMA told unauthorised providers to take immediate steps to wind down.

Two months later, the shape of the surviving market is visible. It is smaller, more concentrated, and considerably more traditional than the pre-MiCA European crypto sector.

The numbers

THE REGISTER, TRACKED

End of June 2026 — 213 authorisation entries across 23 jurisdictions on ESMA’s interim register.

17 July 2026 — 297 authorisation records covering 293 firms across 26 EEA home states.

12 August 2026 — 325 authorised providers. · 1 September 2026 — 331 on a verified snapshot.

Against that: roughly 1,700 unlicensed platforms have halted EU services, with up to 10 million users needing to migrate.

The register updates weekly. Always check the live ESMA register rather than any snapshot, including this one.

The growth curve is worth noting. Authorisations built slowly through 2025 and then spiked as the deadline approached — December 2025 alone produced 41 authorisations, the single largest month. The register has continued adding roughly a dozen firms per update since July, so this is a market still being licensed rather than a closed list.

But set 331 against the pre-MiCA population. Estimates put the share of previously registered EU platforms that are now unlicensed at somewhere between 75% and 80%. Whatever the precise figure, the direction is unambiguous: the European crypto market lost the large majority of its registered providers in a single day.

Where the licences sit

Figures from a 17 July snapshot of ESMA’s register; totals have grown since. Germany’s lead is decisive, and the France and Netherlands numbers reflect national regimes that closed their transitional windows early — the Netherlands a full year before the EU-wide cutoff, Germany in December 2025. Firms in those states had no choice but to apply sooner.

Who got licensed: the surprise is how much of it is TradFi

Read the register as a whole rather than filtering for exchanges and the composition is striking. This is not a list of crypto companies. It is a list of financial institutions, a good number of which happen to be crypto companies.

• Custody and market infrastructure: BNY Mellon’s Belgian subsidiary, Clearstream, Société Générale–Forge for institutional asset servicing and stablecoin issuance.

• Banks and brokers: Commerzbank, Trading 212, Interactive Brokers, alongside neobanks N26 and Trade Republic, which secured German approvals covering crypto within their broader platforms.

• Payments infrastructure: Circle, Ripple, and Stripe-owned Bridge, which joined the register after Luxembourg approval in August.

• Crypto-native platforms: Crypto.com through Foris DAX MT, OKX through Okcoin Europe, Bitpanda, Bitvavo, Bitonic, bitFlyer Europe, MoonPay Europe, BitPay, and NAGA’s CySEC-regulated entity, which was authorised on 24 June — days before the cutoff.

MiCA did not just filter out unlicensed exchanges. It opened a regulated door that European banks and brokers walked through.

That is arguably the most consequential outcome of the whole exercise, and it gets far less coverage than the exits. A custody bank on the same register as a retail exchange is what a regulated market looks like.

Who didn’t: the Binance problem

The largest exchange in the world is not on the register.

Binance filed its MiCA application with Greece’s Hellenic Capital Market Commission in January 2026 through a newly created Greek subsidiary. On 24 June, six days before the deadline, it withdrew that application — reportedly ahead of an expected rejection. Binance said it acted after considering the status and timeline of the Greek process, with users’ interests at the centre, and that it had engaged constructively and in good faith with no formal decision forthcoming before the window closed.

Press reporting indicated regulators had focused on the fit-and-proper test, the firm’s anti-money-laundering history and its majority owner, rather than on deficiencies in the paperwork.

The consequences were immediate. Binance emailed users in France, Italy, Poland and Spain that it could no longer accept new registrations and would restrict services from 1 July. EU residents lost new sign-ups, new spot orders, deposits and certain Earn and staking products. Withdrawals remained open, and Binance has been consistent that user assets remain safe and accessible and that it is not leaving Europe.

The company said it would reapply in another member state, reportedly France, and expected to return within months. As of mid-August it did not appear in ESMA’s register, and no country or date had been publicly named.

Related Blog: Why the ECB Won’t Loosen MiCA

The wider exit list

Binance is the headline but not the whole story. MEXC and HTX are among other significant platforms that lost EU access, and the long tail is where the volume of closures sits — roughly 1,700 platforms in total.

ESMA’s wind-down instruction was specific: stop onboarding new EU clients, cease all marketing, promotional and solicitation activity, and restrict services to what clients need in order to withdraw, transfer, reallocate or close positions. National regulators were expected to verify the adequacy of wind-down plans and take enforcement action against unauthorised provision after the deadline, with France and the Netherlands signalling active enforcement.

Why the licensed list is shorter than it looks

Here is a nuance that a raw register count hides. A MiCA authorisation is not a single undifferentiated permission — firms are authorised for specific services, and many hold only one or two.

By late June, approximately 14 entities held authorisation specifically to operate a trading platform, the licence category covering crypto trading venues. A register entry for order reception and transmission, or for custody, is a genuine MiCA licence but it does not make the holder an exchange.

So when you see a headline number in the hundreds, the correct mental model is: a few hundred regulated financial firms, of which a much smaller subset run trading venues at meaningful scale.

Two things users and firms are getting wrong

1. Reverse solicitation is not a business model

The exemption exists, but it is genuinely narrow. An EU user must initiate contact for a specific service at their own exclusive initiative. Any marketing, SEO, referral programme or paid acquisition aimed at EU users breaks the defence, and enforcement has already been opened against firms that overclaimed it.

Any firm treating reverse solicitation as a way to keep serving EU customers without a licence is running a legal risk, not a strategy.

2. The migration itself is being exploited

Regulators have warned that fraudsters are impersonating both EU regulators and MiCA-licensed exchanges to target users moving accounts after the transition ended. Millions of people migrating assets on a deadline is close to ideal conditions for that kind of fraud.

The practical defence is simple and worth repeating to any audience: verify the provider in ESMA’s official register before moving anything, and treat unsolicited contact about account migration as suspect by default.

What happens next

1. The Commission’s MiCA review. A targeted consultation on reviewing the regulation closed on 31 August 2026, feeding into reports the Commission is required to prepare. The first real indication of what the industry asked to change should surface in the coming months.

2. Binance’s reapplication. Which member state it chooses, and whether that regulator reaches a different conclusion from Greece, is the single biggest open question in European crypto.

3. Further departures. Gate Europe’s chief executive has warned that several MiCA-licensed firms could still leave the EU market — a reminder that holding a licence and finding the market worth serving are different things.

4. Relocation. The UAE has been a visible destination for firms reconsidering their European footprint, and the UK opens its own authorisation gateway on 30 September 2026.

5. Enforcement. The test of MiCA is not the register; it is what national regulators do about firms that quietly kept serving EU users after 1 July.

The bottom line

MiCA did what it was designed to do. It replaced a patchwork of national registrations with one passportable licence, it removed the large majority of previously registered providers from the market, and it brought European banks, brokers and market infrastructure into regulated crypto services for the first time.

Whether that counts as success depends on what you thought the point was. Consumer protection improved and the licensed perimeter is real. Choice narrowed sharply, the world’s largest exchange is currently outside the system, and some firms concluded that Europe was not worth the paperwork.

The honest summary two months in: Europe now has a smaller, more institutional and genuinely regulated crypto market. The open question is whether it is a market big enough to be worth having.

Important:

This article is general information and is not legal, regulatory or investment advice. Register figures are snapshots on the dates stated and change weekly — always verify a provider’s current status in ESMA’s official register before relying on it. Firm-specific licensing positions may have changed since publication.

Sources: ESMA statements and the interim MiCA CASP register, national regulator communications including the CNMV, plus reporting and register tracking from Elliptic, CoinDesk, Euronews, Finance Magnates, Cointelegraph and independent CASP register trackers.

Bitnxt tracks licensed exchanges, custodians, stablecoin issuers and payment providers across the EU, UK, UAE and US. Explore the directory at bitnxt.io.