A single market worth protecting: Getting the MiCA review right

What happened

As the European Commission’s MiCA review consultation closes, Europe must decide whether its crypto rulebook is protecting the market without making it too costly to build in. As the consultation on MiCA’s review closes , the focus should now be on calibration: keeping what works, and being honest about where the compliance burden has grown faster than the risks it is meant to address.

When the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) came into force, it did something that had eluded the digital asset sector in Europe for years: it created a single, coherent rulebook. For the first time, a crypto asset service provider (CASP) authorized in one Member State can passport its services across the European Union and European Economic Area, and clients across the bloc can choose among a growing field of licensed, supervised providers.

That is a genuine achievement, and one the industry should not take for granted. The value of a unified market Start with what MiCA got right. Before it, a firm wanting to operate across Europe faced a patchwork of national regimes, divergent registration requirements, and, in some markets, no bespoke regime at all.