You have the entity. You have the address. You even have the capital. So why is the regulator still not satisfied? Because under MiCA, substance is an empirical test of whether your business genuinely operates from within the EU, and most applicants underestimate what that actually demands.
This week’s entry has been written by Krystian Lapka, Lawyer at LegalBison. Krystian specializes in cross-border corporate and commercial transactions, alongside strategic risk management at the intersection of civil and common law.
Most founders approaching their first CASP application understand, at least abstractly, that MiCA requires a real EU presence. What they underestimate is how the regulator defines “real.”
The typical early-stage setup looks coherent on paper: a registered office in a favorable EU jurisdiction, a director named in the governance documents, ICT systems either cloud-hosted or managed from the group’s global infrastructure, and paid-in capital sitting in a newly opened bank account.
From the inside, this feels like an EU company. From a National Competent Authority’s perspective, it may look like a letterbox with a director attached.
