CASP Capital Requirements & the 3 MiCA Classes

MiCA sets minimum CASP capital by service class: €50,000 (Class 1), €125,000 (Class 2) and €150,000 (Class 3), and that capital shapes the business far more than the state fee does. Most operators budgeting a MiCA licence fixate on the state fee and miss the number that actually shapes the business: the capital. Under MiCA a Crypto-Asset Service Provider must hold prudential safeguards of at least €50,000, €125,000 or €150,000 depending on the services it offers, and that figure is the same in every EU country. The capital line is where founders either under-plan and stall, or over-engineer a jurisdiction choice that changes nothing, because the one variable they are shopping for is fixed by the regulation itself.

This is the capital and prudential deep-dive. If you want the broad picture of what MiCA is, start with our MiCA regulation explainer; if you want the cheapest route to a licence, our cheapest crypto licence guide ranks the field on fees. Here we go one layer down — into the three classes, what counts as own funds and when insurance can replace them, the fixed-overheads test that catches scaling firms, and the wider prudential stack around the capital.

The three CASP classes and their minimum capital

MiCA sizes the capital requirement to the risk of the service you provide. Annex IV, which Article 67 points to, groups the crypto-asset services into three classes, each with a permanent minimum capital floor. The more custody and market risk a service carries, the higher the floor. Here is the full mapping:

The classes are cumulative. A firm that runs a trading platform and also holds client assets is a Class 3 CASP, and it holds the €150,000 once for the whole authorisation; the figure is not multiplied per service. In practice, most operators building a real product land in Class 2 or Class 3, because the moment you touch custody or run an exchange you are past the €50,000 tier. The €50,000 Class 1 floor is for the lighter, advisory and order-routing models that never hold client crypto.

One point that trips up first-time applicants: these are permanent minimum capital figures, the entry ticket. They are not the whole prudential requirement, and they are not the number a growing firm will actually be held to for very long. That is where the fixed-overheads test comes in.

What counts as own funds, and when insurance can replace them

MiCA does not let you satisfy the requirement with just any money on the balance sheet. Article 67(4) allows two forms, used alone or together. The first is own funds, and here MiCA borrows the definition from banking law: Common Equity Tier 1 items and instruments under the EU Capital Requirements Regulation, which in plain terms means paid-up share capital, share premium, and retained earnings and reserves, after the full deductions.

What that rules out matters more than what it includes:

• Client money is never own funds. Assets you hold for customers are safeguarded and segregated; they can never double as your capital. This is the single most common misconception we correct.
• Loans and shareholder debt do not count. Own funds are equity that absorbs losses; a liability you have to repay does not qualify. A director’s loan on the books is not capital.
• Intangibles are deducted. Goodwill and other intangible assets are stripped out, so a balance sheet that looks well-capitalised on paper can fall short once the deductions bite.

The regulator assesses composition as well as the headline figure. A CASP showing €150,000 of “capital” that is really a convertible loan plus capitalised software costs is not meeting the requirement, even though the number matches. Get the structure right at incorporation, with genuine paid-up equity cleanly documented, and the capital section of the file becomes a formality rather than a rework.

The second form is an insurance policy covering the EU territories where you provide services, or a comparable guarantee. Article 67(5) and (6) set the minimum terms. The policy needs an initial term of at least one year and at least 90 days’ notice of cancellation, it must come from a third-party insurer authorised under EU or national law, and you must disclose it on your website. It also has to cover the risks listed in Article 67(6), from loss of documents and misleading statements to business disruption and, where relevant, gross negligence in safeguarding client assets. A policy can reduce the equity you tie up, and it can be combined with own funds. The VASP, CASP & MiCA explainer sets out how this fits the broader authorisation.

The fixed-overheads test: the number that scales with you

Here is the part most cost comparisons omit entirely. MiCA does not cap the requirement at the class minimum. A CASP must have in place, at all times, prudential safeguards equal to the higher of two amounts:

1. the permanent minimum for its class (€50,000, €125,000 or €150,000); or
2. one quarter of the preceding year’s fixed overheads.

For a small, pre-revenue firm, the class minimum is the binding number; a Class 2 startup holds €125,000 and the overheads test produces something lower. But the moment your annual fixed overheads exceed four times your class floor, the overheads calculation takes over. A Class 2 CASP with €1,000,000 of fixed overheads must hold €250,000 rather than €125,000, because the quarter-of-overheads figure is higher. A firm that has not yet been in business for a year uses the projected fixed overheads from the business plan it filed with its application.

Article 67(3) defines the calculation. You start from total expenses after distribution of profits in your most recent audited annual accounts, then subtract staff bonuses and other pay that depend on net profit, employees’, directors’ and partners’ profit shares, other fully discretionary profit appropriations and variable pay, and non-recurring expenses from non-ordinary activities. Regulators expect to see the calculation itself. For a firm scaling toward serious volume, this is the requirement that actually determines how large the safeguards have to be, and it is easy to under-provision if you only ever read the class table.

Capital is identical EU-wide — so compete on everything else

Because MiCA is a directly-applicable EU regulation rather than a directive each country transposes its own way, the capital figures are the same in every member state. Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Malta, Ireland — the Class 2 floor is €125,000 in all of them. There is no member state where custody-tier capital is cheaper, and any provider implying otherwise is misreading the regulation.

This is why the jurisdiction question is real but the capital question is not. In our experience Lithuania and Estonia offer the shortest review queues and the most established crypto-banking relationships, Bulgaria a flat 10% tax and FSC fees below Malta’s, and Malta a strong reputational signal. Our Estonia vs Lithuania comparison works through that specific choice. What none of them change is the €50k–€150k you must fund. Decide on the levers that actually move, and treat capital as a fixed cost of doing business anywhere in the union.

The wider prudential picture: DORA, insurance and ongoing monitoring

Capital is only one pillar of the prudential regime. A MiCA authorisation carries a stack of ongoing obligations that sit alongside the prudential safeguards, and a serious application has to address all of them:

• DORA operational resilience. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (EU 2022/2554) applies to CASPs. You need ICT risk management, incident reporting, resilience testing and oversight of critical third-party providers. This is a technology-governance programme, and regulators increasingly want to see it evidenced in the file.
• Insurance terms, if you use them. A policy counts towards the requirement only if it meets Article 67(5) and (6), including the one-year initial term, 90 days’ cancellation notice, an authorised third-party insurer, disclosure on your website and the listed risk cover. Choosing insurance over own funds has a cost either way, in premiums or in tied-up equity.
• Safeguarding of client assets. Custodial CASPs must segregate client crypto and funds from their own, hold them so they are insulated from the firm’s insolvency, and are liable for losses of client assets within their control. Segregation is a hard line: client assets are never a funding source.
• Continuous monitoring. The requirement is not a one-time gate at application. A CASP must ensure its safeguards never fall below the required level, monitor the position on an ongoing basis, and notify its regulator if capital is or is likely to be breached.

Read together, these obligations are why we treat a CASP file as a full financial-services application. Undercapitalising or thinning out one pillar to save money leaves the risk in the file for the regulator to find. If your users sit outside the EU, an offshore VASP may carry a lighter prudential load at lower cost; our EU CASP vs offshore VASP guide weighs that trade-off. And for a sense of how many firms actually cleared this prudential bar, what the MiCA register reveals is the sobering counterpart to the numbers above.

The capital requirement, then, is simple to state and often misjudged. The three class figures are identical across the EU, but they sit alongside a fixed-overheads test, rules on the form the safeguards can take and a prudential stack that grows with the business. We build the file so every one of those holds up under review. Compare the full field on the crypto licences hub, then book a free consultation and we’ll model your class, your overheads-test trajectory and your all-in capital against the market you actually serve.

Christina S.

Crypto Licensing at Vantegris

Christina S. is part of the Vantegris team, which prepares and files licence applications across 40+ jurisdictions. This article was reviewed by Vladyslav S. (Compliance & Legal).

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This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before acting.