July 1, 2026, the transition period according to the regulation Mica has officially ended: any crypto platform serving European customers must now hold an appropriate CASP license, or cease operations. On paper, the regime promised a clear and rapid path. In practice, even Binance, the world’s largest exchange, has found the opposite. We take a closer look at this with Yuliya Barabashfounder and managing partner of SBSB Fintech Lawyers, who has advised on more than 150 licensing cases worldwide.
In brief
- The MiCA transition period ended on July 1, 2026; Unauthorized platforms must stop serving EU customers.
- Around 244 valid CASP licenses were registered at the end of June 2026, out of almost 3,000 active companies before the deadline.
- Binance withdrew its Greek application on June 24 and suspended part of its services in the EU.
- The law provides 25 + 40 working days for the examination; the realistic time frame on the ground is more like 10 to 12 months, according to Yuliya Barabash (SBSB Fintech Lawyers).
- Rising compliance costs are pushing some young projects to look elsewhere, including Canada.
A Sharper Cut Than Expected
The regulations Mica (Markets in Crypto-Assets) became fully applicable to crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) on December 30, 2024. Member States could grant companies already registered locally a transitional period up to 18 months to obtain full authorization.
This grace period expired on July 1, 2026: according to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), any unauthorized entity still providing crypto-asset services to EU customers is now in breach of the law and must cease operations in an orderly manner.
The figures show how clean the sorting was. At the end of June 2026, the ESMA provisional register recorded approximately 244 valid CASP authorizationscompared to nearly 3,000 providers previously registered under national schemes. Authorizations are heavily concentrated in five jurisdictions: Germany, the Netherlands, France, Malta and Cyprus. A few days after the deadline, Tremplin.io tracking showed 280 authorized providers on the ESMA registry. Among the platforms followed by our editorial staff, WhiteBIT obtained its MiCA license from the Austrian FMA in June 2026, while OKX And Bybit EU already operate as authorized European hubs.
Binance, proof that size is not enough
The most discussed case remains that of Binance. The exchange submitted its license application to the Greek regulator (HCMC) in January 2026, and was informed in April that the file was complete. The decisions were continually postponed, and Binance withdrew its application on June 24, a week after several media outlets reported that the regulator was preparing to reject it. The Wall Street Journal also reported that ESMA had privately advised national authorities not to approve the filing, citing gaps in anti-money laundering controls. Binance disputes these claims.
The practical result: since July 1, the exchange has suspended new registrations and certain services in France, Italy, Poland and Spain, while ensuring that user funds remain accessible.
Binance’s Europe manager, Gillian Lynch, maintains that the group “don’t leave Europe” and plans to file a new application, this time via France. For Yuliya Barabashthe episode illustrates a point she’s been making for months: “MiCA was designed for deep-pocketed players and even then, Binance’s setback is a reminder that no company, no matter how well-resourced, goes through the process without difficulty. »
The gap between the text and the field
Beyond the Binance case, Yuliya Barabash points to a more structural problem. MiCA has established a single regulation for very different business realities: she argues that reviewing a young local startup has little in common with reviewing a global exchange operating in dozens of jurisdictions. “The regulation underestimated the impact of a company’s size and complexity on the licensing process”she explains.
The second problem is that of deadlines. On paper, the permitting process seemed quick and predictable. In fact, many companies have publicly stated that they waited more than a year for a license. National regulators have received far more requests than expected, while requests for additional information and limited regulatory capacity have slowed everything down. “A process meant to create certainty has become one of the biggest business risks for crypto companies”she emphasizes.
On paper, the legal deadlines appear short: a completeness check of 25 working days, followed by a substantial evaluation of 40 working days, or around 65 working days in total. But this counter only begins once the file is deemed complete, and it does not stop during requests for information (RFI), which can extend over several months. “A more realistic time horizon is 10 to 12 months. No less »affirms Yuliya Barabash, who identifies four main causes: completeness checks, regulator RFIs, internal coordination on the candidate’s side, and the workload specific to national regulators.
The real price of entry and why some look elsewhere
For Yuliya Barabashthe rigor of the framework is not a coincidence: “MiCA is a serious framework. This is precisely the goal. It was designed for companies with deep pockets”she said, citing the Binance setback as proof. This is an observation drawn from her work with her clients: fintech projects, according to her, do not choose Canada rather than MiCA because jurisdiction would be “better” in abstraction, but because regulation, like any other cost, must be paid for with real money and real organizational capacity. “When the cost of entry increases faster than the expected return, rational actors look elsewhere”she summarizes.
The argument fits the makeup of the sector: crypto projects are, for the most part, neither large enterprises nor companies with in-house legal departments. These are startups, which generally do not like to spend their first cash reserves on office space, local staff and regulatory architecture before they have even confirmed that there is a market for their product.
Other voices in crypto compliance nuance the picture. In a separate interview, Yuliya Barabash herself acknowledges that the filtering effect works both ways: companies that cannot build institutional-level governance do not necessarily disappear, but they remain structurally limited in their growth potential. “The real barrier is not capital, but operational maturity”she emphasizes; a clearer regulatory story that she says also makes fundraising and banking conversations easier for licensed businesses.
Two readings confront each other for the moment:
The first considers the post-MiCA sorting as a healthy purge: of around 3,000 companies active before July 2026, the minority still standing can rely on a single passport valid in 27 markets, a real selling point with banks and institutional investors.
The second sees a risk of exit in slow motion: each month without a license pushes a few more projects towards jurisdictions that consume less time and money, with Canada, El Salvador and Costa Rica regularly returning to the files followed by specialized law firms.
A question remains open in this second half of 2026: how many of the hundreds of files still under examination by national regulators will obtain their authorization by the end of the year, and how many will have packed up by then.
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