The Regulation has applied in full since December 2024 and the transitional window for existing providers ran out on 1 July 2026. Advice and transfer services are inside the licensed perimeter, the provider must actually sit in the Union, and marketing into the Union closes the reverse-solicitation door.
The transitional window has closed
Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 — MiCA — has applied in full since 30 December 2024, with the stablecoin titles running from 30 June 2024. Article 143(3) then gave existing providers room: a firm lawfully providing crypto-asset services before 30 December 2024 could continue until 1 July 2026, or until its authorisation was granted or refused, whichever came first.
That outer date has passed. Member States were also free to disapply the transition or shorten it where their own framework was stricter, and each had to notify that choice by 30 June 2024 — so the question of what applied in a given Member State, and until when, is a national one to confirm rather than read off the Regulation.
What needs authorisation
Article 59 is a prohibition before it is a licensing regime: no person may provide crypto-asset services in the Union unless authorised as a crypto-asset service provider, or unless they are one of the listed financial institutions — a credit institution, investment firm, electronic money institution, UCITS management company, alternative investment fund manager and others — permitted to provide them under Article 60.
The services themselves are defined, and the list is wider than “running an exchange”:
custody and administration of crypto-assets for clients, including control of the means of access;
operation of a trading platform;
exchange of crypto-assets for funds, or for other crypto-assets;
execution of orders, reception and transmission of orders, and placing;
advice on crypto-assets and portfolio management;
transfer services for crypto-assets on behalf of clients.
Advice and transfer services are the two that catch businesses who do not consider themselves crypto firms at all.
Where the provider must sit
An authorised provider must have its registered office in a Member State where it carries out at least part of its services, its place of effective management in the Union, and at least one director resident in the Union. A letterbox in one Member State serving clients from outside the Union does not satisfy Article 59(2).
The reverse-solicitation exception, and how narrow it is
Article 61 keeps the door open a little: where a client established in the Union initiates, at its own exclusive initiative, a service from a third-country firm, the Article 59 authorisation requirement does not apply to that service for that client.
The next sentence closes most of it. Where the third-country firm — including through anyone acting on its behalf or with close links to it — solicits clients or prospective clients in the Union, by whatever means of communication, promotion or advertising, the service is not treated as provided on the client's own initiative. Marketing into the Union and then pointing at the client's sign-up form does not work.
Legacy tokens already trading
For crypto-assets other than asset-referenced and e-money tokens that were admitted to trading before 30 December 2024, Title II applies only in part: Articles 7 and 9 catch marketing communications published after that date, and operators of trading platforms must ensure by 31 December 2027 that a white paper is drawn up, notified, published and kept updated where the Regulation requires one. Offers to the public that ended before 30 December 2024 are outside Articles 4 to 15 altogether.
What to check
Whether any part of what you do falls in the Article 3 list — advice and transfers especially. Whether your authorisation is granted, refused or still pending, and what your Member State decided about the transition. Whether your marketing reaches the Union, because that is what decides whether Article 61 is available to you at all. And, for a platform with legacy listings, whether the 2027 white-paper deadline is in anyone's plan.
Supervision and penalties sit with the national competent authority, and which Latvian authority that is, with what powers, is the part to settle locally.