MiCA shifts euro stablecoin distribution to licensed banks

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets rules moved into a new phase after July 1, when a transitional period ended and licensing began to determine which firms can offer crypto services in the bloc. The European Securities and Markets Authority updated an interim MiCA register on July 3 to reflect the change in status for many providers.

ESMA’s June 23 guidance instructed unauthorized crypto-asset service providers to stop onboarding new EU clients, halt marketing and new account openings, and limit custody to what is needed to sell, transfer or close positions for an orderly exit.

Traditional financial firms have begun using their regulated status to issue euro-denominated electronic money tokens and to integrate wallet services. Crédit Agricole and CACEIS launched EURXT on July 1. EURXT is an electronic money token issued on Ethereum, pegged one-to-one to fiat euros held on the balance sheet of CACEIS Bank. The token was initially offered to institutional and corporate clients and was used to settle a subscription into a tokenized money market fund.

DZ Bank obtained BaFin authorization under the MiCAR rules in December 2025 for meinKrypto, a wallet and trading service to be embedded in the VR Banking App. Participating Volksbanken and Raiffeisenbanken must complete their own notifications before they can offer the service. When live, customers will be able to buy and hold selected cryptocurrencies through their existing banking app, with an initial lineup including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Cardano.

At the same time, access to dollar-denominated stablecoins is changing at the platform level. A major retail app has communicated a timetable limiting USDT for European users: purchases allowed only until early July, new deposits stopping by the end of July, external withdrawals and selling permitted through the end of August, and remaining balances converted to euros after that date. USDT had an estimated market value of about $184.1 billion and a 24-hour trading volume near $45.6 billion on July 5.

Under MiCA, authorization and supervision are now the conditions for continued distribution inside the EU. Firms that combine an on-chain instrument with a regulated balance sheet, custody arrangements and existing client channels can offer on-chain settlement inside institutional workflows and retail banking apps. Non-authorized issuers and offshore dollar stablecoins depend on whether EU platforms continue to list them or whether users move to self-custody and non-EU venues.

Licensed exchanges, brokers and banks can onboard customers who leave platforms that no longer operate in the EU market. Products that remain outside MiCA rely on offshore liquidity and services. Market participants will watch venue listings, wallet integrations and settlement use cases to track how euro-denominated, MiCA-compliant instruments are adopted after the licensing deadline.