EU Crypto Market Contracts to 367 MiCA-Authorized Firms After Transition Ends

Germany leads as old crypto hubs fade

Germany holds the largest share of MiCA authorizations with 103 firms, close to 28% of the register. It is followed by France with 36, the Netherlands with 29, Cyprus with 25, and Malta with 23. Spain has 15 authorized CASPs, Luxembourg 13, Czechia, Ireland, Latvia, and Liechtenstein 12 each, Austria 11, and Italy 9.

The new map looks very different from the pre-MiCA era. Lithuania, once seen as a major venue for crypto registration, has only six authorized CASPs in the register, while Estonia has three. Poland, Hungary, and Romania had no home-authorized CASPs listed as of October, while Greece, which had none over the summer, had reached four by early autumn.

The shift suggests that past VASP totals no longer say much about a country’s standing under MiCA. The source article argues that outcomes now depend less on how easy it is to establish a company locally and more on whether a regulator is prepared to handle MiCA applications and supervise firms under the new standard.

Authorizations accelerated ahead of the July cutoff

The ESMA register was built gradually and then surged just before the transition ended. The first four CASP authorizations appeared in late December 2024. Another 39 were added in the first half of 2025, followed by 109 in the second half of that year, including 44 in December alone.

From January through May 2026, the register added 66 more companies. The biggest monthly increase came in June 2026, when 75 authorizations were recorded, making it the busiest month of the entire rollout and the final major push before the July 1 deadline.

The process did not stop once the transition ended. From July through early October, new firms continued to appear in the register, showing that authorities were still granting approvals after the cutoff for operating on legacy national regimes had passed.

Lithuania and Estonia show the break with the VASP era

The Baltic states illustrate how far MiCA has moved the market away from the lighter registration model used in earlier years. In Lithuania, more than 370 companies had filed notifications to provide virtual asset services before the reform, although the source says roughly 120 were actually operating. By October 2026, only six Lithuanian CASPs remained in the MiCA register. Operating without authorization in the country has been fully prohibited since January 1, 2026.

Estonia’s contraction was even steeper. At the end of 2019, the country had 1,234 active crypto licenses issued by its Financial Intelligence Unit. After anti-money-laundering rules tightened in 2022, that total dropped quickly, and by May 2023 around 100 remained. Under MiCA, the October 2026 register shows only three Estonian CASPs: Lightyear Europe, LHV, and Lightspark Payments Europe.

According to the source, MiCA requires much more than the older setup process common in some jurisdictions. Firms are expected to have capital, governance, internal controls, compliance capacity, a real local presence, and clearer ownership and management structures. That higher threshold helps explain why so many previously registered businesses did not carry over into the new regime.

Big crypto firms are spread across countries, while banks gain ground

The register already includes many globally recognized crypto and fintech groups, among them Coinbase, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Gemini, eToro, Bitstamp, Bitpanda, Crypto.com, Revolut, N26, Trade Republic, MoonPay, BitGo, and Circle. Their authorizations are spread across multiple jurisdictions rather than concentrated in a single dominant hub. The source notes, for example, that Coinbase is authorized in Luxembourg, Kraken in Ireland, Crypto.com in Malta, and Circle in France.

At the same time, more than 85 entries in the register belong to banking groups. The list includes Société Générale FORGE, BBVA, Clearstream, BNY, DZ Bank, DekaBank, and institutions from Germany’s Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank networks. This banking presence also helps explain Germany’s lead: of the 44 German authorizations added after July 1, 43 went to banks and traditional financial institutions.

The picture that emerges is not simply one of fewer crypto-native firms. It is also a market increasingly shared with established financial institutions operating under the same regulatory framework.

What the first post-transition snapshot confirms

The first broad view of the market after the transition period shows a smaller and more selective European crypto sector, but not an inactive one. Authorizations are still being added, major international firms are present, and no single country has become the universal base for every business model.

What has clearly changed is the entry standard. The old system of large national VASP counts has been replaced by a much narrower pool of MiCA-authorized firms, with stronger compliance demands and a more visible role for traditional finance. The next confirmed marker will be further updates to the ESMA register as additional applications continue to move through the process.