Europe’s years-long effort to bring crypto firms under one of the world’s most comprehensive regulatory frameworks reached a key milestone on Wednesday, as the final transition period under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation came to an end.
The question now is how the end of MiCA's final transition phase will affect users, companies, and the market.
For the industry’s largest players, the answer is fairly clear. Exchanges that secured MiCA authorization can operate across the EU under a single regulatory regime, while firms left without licenses must wind down or restrict services to EU clients. Based on crypto trading volume data, MiCA's impact on many users may be limited.
Data from research firm Kaiko suggests Binance's absence will have little impact at scale, saying that "as of June 2026, exchanges with a MiCA license account for approximately 83% of trading volume in Europe."
On the other hand, according to the European Securities and Markets Authority's interim MiCA register, there were 244 authorized Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs) listed as of last week. Trezor's CCO Danny Sanders told The Block that before MiCA there were “more than 3,000 that were operating across Europe under national regimes.”
