The MiCA CASP Register: What ~294 Licences Reveal

The register is now the scoreboard, and it is reading brutally. Two-plus weeks after MiCA’s transitional period closed on 1 July 2026, ESMA’s public register of authorised Crypto-Asset Service Providers listed roughly 294 CASPs across the EEA. Set that against the 1,200-plus firms that held national VASP registrations before MiCA, and the story writes itself: industry estimates put the number that actually converted to full licensing at around 210 — a conversion rate near 17%. Europe did not license its crypto industry. It filtered it.

Read the register, not the press release

The headline number sounds healthy until you anchor it. ESMA added 37 CASPs on 3 July and 14 more on 16 July, so the count is still climbing as national authorities clear their queues — expect ~294 to keep drifting up over the coming months. But the trajectory does not rescue the conversion story. The register is filling from a starting base that was already tiny relative to the pre-MiCA field.

That ~17% is the number every operator, investor and counterparty should be quoting. It means roughly five in six firms that were legally providing crypto services in the EU a month ago are now, at best, mid-application and, at worst, unauthorised. ESMA has left no ambiguity about what “unauthorised” means: there is no intermediate status — a firm is either authorised under MiCA or in breach of EU law — and unauthorised entities were expected to have implemented wind-down plans by 1 July.

The signal hiding in the new entrants

The more interesting data point is not the size of the register but its composition. Among firms added recently were traditional financial institutions — two cooperative banks, reported as German and Liechtenstein-based, and Liechtenstein’s Kaiser Partner Privatbank. That is not a footnote. When incumbent banks put themselves on the same register as crypto-native exchanges, two things change.

First, it is a credibility signal. A register dominated by crypto-native firms invites the “regulatory theatre” critique; a register with private banks on it reads as a genuine market that established finance has decided is worth entering under the full weight of MiCA’s capital, governance and DORA obligations. Second — and this matters more to operators than they usually admit — bank entry chips away at crypto’s oldest structural problem: banking access. The scarcest resource for a licensed crypto business has never been the licence; it has been a stable settlement rail and a bank that will hold the fiat. Institutions arriving on the CASP register, as issuers and as counterparties, is how that bottleneck loosens. Pair the licence with an EMI or a crypto-friendly neobank early — that half of the build is the one that quietly sinks timelines.

That upward drift has since flattened, and the register has changed character as a result: it is no longer a scoreboard of who converted but a permanent lookup that counterparties actually use. We follow what that means for licensed firms in your MiCA licence as a ten-second public check.

What the gap means for the unconverted tail

Strip out the firms still legitimately in the application queue, and a large residue of former-VASP activity now has only three honest destinations: exit the EU, wind down in an orderly way, or route through a provider that actually holds a CASP. There is no fourth option where you keep serving EU clients on a lapsed national registration and hope the register’s upward drift covers you — that drift is other firms getting licensed, not your exposure disappearing.

For firms that missed the window, the routes forward are narrow but real, and we have written the decision guide separately rather than repeat it here — start with what unlicensed crypto firms do now for the full sequence. In short: if EU clients are core, a fresh CASP authorisation is the only lawful door, and it passports across the bloc once issued. If they are not, a properly run offshore VASP serving non-EU markets is the cleaner structure — the trade-offs are laid out in our EU CASP versus offshore VASP comparison. For the mechanics of how the regime actually fits together, the MiCA regulation explainer and our VASP, CASP and MiCA explainer cover the definitions the register is enforcing, and our best crypto licences of 2026 round-up shows where the fast, credible filings are happening.

Where the register goes from here

Watch two curves over the next two quarters. The first is the CASP count itself — it will keep rising as backlogs clear, but the interesting question is whether the conversion rate meaningfully improves or whether ~17% is roughly where the pre-MiCA field settles once the queue empties. The second is composition: if bank and institutional entries keep appearing alongside crypto-natives, the register stops being a compliance ledger and starts being a map of who Europe has decided can hold crypto for its citizens. Either way, the number to cite is no longer “how many crypto firms are in the EU” — it is how many are on the register. Everyone else is now on the outside, and the register is the only side that counts.

Christina S.

Crypto Licensing · Vantegris

Part of the Vantegris desk that runs these licences end to end — writing from live applications across 40+ jurisdictions, not recycled marketing. 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.