The MiCA transition window closed on 1 July 2026. ESMA confirmed the end of the transitional period in a public statement on 23 June, and for most of Europe the grey zone is now gone. The headline number tells the story on its own: the continent went into MiCA with thousands of registered crypto firms and has come out with a few hundred licensed ones.
The numbers
Before MiCA, national VASP registrations were everywhere. Industry tracker Coincub counted roughly 2,747 VASP registrations across Europe in 2024, with Poland alone accounting for more than 1,400. A VASP registration was, in most member states, an anti money laundering checkbox rather than a licence.
As of late June 2026, the ESMA MiCA register lists around 240 authorised CASPs, alongside about 20 e-money token issuers and more than 150 entities flagged as non compliant. So the population of firms cleared to serve EU clients has fallen from thousands to a few hundred. On the widest count that is fewer than one in ten of the old registrations, and industry estimates put more than 80 percent of EU crypto firms still unlicensed as the deadline arrived.
Where the approvals cluster
Authorisations are not spread evenly. Germany leads the register with roughly 56 CASPs. Malta has become the preferred home for crypto native exchanges, hosting names such as OKX, Crypto.com, Gemini, Gate, Blockchain.com and BVNK among its authorised firms. The Netherlands moved early, and the Czech Republic went from zero authorisations in February to a handful by late spring, one of the fastest movers of the year.
The most telling case is Poland. The country that held the largest legacy VASP population, more than 1,400 registrations, has been the slowest to put the MiCA framework in place, leaving that population with the least clear path forward.
Why so few converted
The gap is not an accident. A VASP registration and a CASP authorisation are different animals. The first was largely an AML formality. The second is a full prudential and conduct licence: minimum capital, fit and proper governance, safeguarding and custody rules, operational resilience and ongoing supervision. Many registered VASPs were dormant, thinly resourced, or simply could not meet that bar. National regulators also have finite throughput, so even willing applicants sit in a queue.
What it means now
After 1 July 2026, providing crypto asset services to EU clients without a CASP authorisation is a breach of EU law. Firms without one must stop, operate under another entity's licence, or leave the market. Several member states ran earlier national cutoffs, so for many providers the practical deadline had already passed.
The LicenceMap take
The real lesson is not that Europe suddenly got strict. It is that a registration was never a licence, and the market is only now feeling the difference. This is exactly why LicenceMap tracks the count of CASPs approved under each home regulator: throughput, not marketing, tells you where an application actually completes. If you are choosing a MiCA home state today, weight the regulators that are genuinely granting, and read the capital and safeguarding requirements as the true gate rather than the fee schedule. We refresh these approval counts fortnightly, so the comparison stays current as the register fills out.
Figures verified on 2 July 2026 against the ESMA MiCA register and the sources below. Counts update weekly as new authorisations are granted.
Sources
- ESMA public statement: end of the MiCA transitional period, 23 June 2026
- MiCA Register: 243 CASPs, 20 EMTs (Micahub, ESMA data)
- EU CASP Licence Tracker (Helms Advisory)
- MiCA Countdown and the Poland question (FinTelegram)
- July 1 MiCA deadline: more than 80% of EU crypto firms still unlicensed (Yahoo Finance)