Germany leads MiCA licenses as EU tightens crypto rules

August saw several notable digital asset-related developments in the European Union.

For crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), Germany continued to cement its place as the leading provider of licenses under the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation, with 10 of its cooperative banks added in the last month.

However, just as the list of locally authorized firms continues to expand, several non-EU CASPs have found themselves added to a transaction ban list aimed at stymieing Russian sanctions evasion. As a result, EU citizens and companies are now banned from doing business with 14 non-EU digital asset firms, including cryptocurrency exchange HTX.

Elsewhere, the European Central Bank (ECB) is still determined to push ahead with its long-in-the-works central bank digital currency (CBDC), with a leading bank executive reiterating support for the proposed “digital euro” while quashing concerns around privacy.

Germany leads in MiCA licenses

On August 21, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the authority responsible for enhancing investor protection, promoting orderly markets, and ensuring financial stability, updated its register of MiCA-authorized CASPs, bringing the total to 331.

Germany is the leading contributor to this list, with 79 firms authorized, more than double any other nation; France has authorized the second most with 35, while the Netherlands is next with 29.

Germany is also conspicuous for having authorized 10 firms since the beginning of August—the only country to have handed out any licenses this month—all of whom were cooperative banks: Deutsche WertpapierService Bank AG, VR Bank Ried-Überwald eG, Volksbank Backnang eG, Ihre Volksbank eG, Neckar Odenwald Main Tauber, VR-Bank Mittelfranken Mitte eG, Volksbank Euskirchen eG, Raiffeisenbank Aidlingen eG, Volksbank Beilstein-Ilsfeld-Abstatt eG, VR-Bank Erding eG, and VBU Volksbank im Unterland eG.

The landmark MiCA regulatory framework came fully into force on December 30, 2024, and requires CASPs operating in the EU to apply for a license and obtain authorization from the national competent authority (NCA), the designated regulatory body in an EU member state where their operations are based.

Under a transitional regime, CASPs operating in the EU could continue operating while they apply for MiCA authorization for up to 18 months after the implementation date, or until their MiCA license is granted or refused, whichever comes sooner. Meaning, firms that failed to apply for a license by July 1, 2026, or fail in their application, would have to cease operating across the 27-nation bloc immediately.

Since the July 1 transitional deadline passed, 70 firms have been added to ESMA’s MiCA register, 20 of these authorized by the German authorities.

The EU regulator also maintains MiCA’s other two registers: issuers of asset-referenced tokens (ARTs) and issuers of e-money tokens (EMTs); the former being tokens that maintain a stable value by referencing one or more assets, the latter being tokens that maintain a stable value by referencing a single fiat currency.

There is yet to be a single EU-authorized ART issuer, but the register of EMT issuers saw three firms added in a recent update, bringing the total to 44; namely Dinaro, Bridge Building S.A., and Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS.

The latter is perhaps the most significant addition to the register, as Circle Internet Financial Europe SAS is the French-regulated entity of Circle (NASDAQ: CRCL), the United States-based financial technology company best known for issuing USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market cap.

For many in the digital asset space, the expanding lists of EU-authorized firms will make for welcome reading. And yet, it may be another, less flattering list that has drawn more attention in recent weeks—the list of entities subject to a transaction ban in the EU.

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Transaction bans to curb sanctions evasion

Initially proposed by the European Commission—the executive arm of the EU—on June 9, 2026, the EU adopted its 21st package of sanctions targeting Russia, alongside parallel amendments to the EU’s Belarus sanctions regime, on July 23, 2026.

Additionally, 11 CASPs became subject to the transaction ban on August 23, bringing the total number of crypto-related service platforms subject to the transaction ban to 14. The new additions were: HTX (Huobi Global SA), EXMO Ltd, Rapira, Aifory Pro (Sooty Ltd.), ABCeX (Nueva Cryptologia S.A.S. de C.V.), WhiteBird, NoOnecrypto INC., Tradex (Brightum LLC), Monease Ltd, BitPapa, and Exnode and Exnode Pay (Arvix).

Of these, by far the most significant, by global scale, is HTX, a major international crypto-asset exchange. In its Q1 2026 ‘Crypto Industry Report,’ published in July, CoinGecko ranked it 10th among spot centralized exchanges, with $133.6 billion of quarterly spot volume and 4.9% market share.

However, the designation does not necessarily mean that each platform has been individually identified as having directly participated in a specific sanctions-evasion transaction. Rather, the entities were designated under the EU’s criteria for entities that “significantly frustrate” the purpose of the Russia sanctions prohibitions.

The broader policy objective of the move is to prevent Russia from accessing alternative financial and crypto channels that could undermine the effectiveness of EU restrictions, hence the use of a transaction ban, rather than an automatic freezing of the listed entity’s assets.

As such, from August 23, EU persons and entities were prohibited from carrying out transactions with those on the ban list.

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ECB tries to calm privacy fears

Elsewhere in the EU, Piero Cipollone, a member of the ECB’s Executive Board and one of the leading voices driving the bank’s digital euro push, gave a recent interview in which he sought to assuage privacy concerns, a common refrain among anti-CBDC campaigners.

The digital euro has been in the works since 2021, when the ECB launched an investigation into a Eurozone CBDC, which would be used by citizens and businesses for retail payments.

The ECB has remained keen on a CBDC, in part as a means of reducing Europe’s dependence on predominantly non-European payment networks, strengthening the EU’s strategic autonomy, and accounting for an increasingly isolationist and hostile United States under President Donald Trump, who once described the EU as a “foe” on trade.

However, the bank has been frustrated by legislative procrastination, with some EU lawmakers skeptical, citing common CBDC-related concerns about privacy, financial inclusion, and cybersecurity.

In July, the European Parliament took a significant step forward, adopting its negotiating position and approving the launch of negotiations with the Council of the EU, in a vote of 416 votes in favor, 169 against, and 22 abstentions. The next stage is interinstitutional negotiations (so-called “trilogues”) between the Parliament, Council, and Commission, with the ECB hoping that the legislative process will be completed by the end of the year.

When adopting its position, one of the EU Parliament’s key negotiating points was that privacy safeguards be built into the digital euro, so that “transactions would be verified without exposing personal data, which would be processed only to the extent strictly necessary for the system to function.”

This demonstrated that privacy remains a significant concern for EU lawmakers when it comes to the digital euro, a point not lost on the CBDC’s advocates at the ECB.

In an August 10 interview, Cipollone was asked about concerns that the digital euro could create more transaction-related data compared with cash, and whether the ECB would thus be able to monitor payment habits and track how each citizen uses the digital euro.

In his response, the ECB Executive Board member made three important clarifications: first, that the digital euro will not replace cash but will complement it; second, it is designed to function offline, so transactions will take place directly between individuals and the related details will only be available to the payer and the payee; and third, under the proposed design, only the banks involved in an online transaction would be able to identify the users, including for anti-money-laundering (AML) purposes.

But he went even further, arguing that the digital euro could actually provide more privacy than the current system.

“At present, in the case of a bank transfer, all the transaction details are known to the parties involved in the transaction. The digital euro would guarantee greater protection for privacy,” Cipollone said. “In practice, whether used online or offline, the Eurosystem would not be able to directly link specific individuals to digital euro transactions.”

He added that “the digital euro guarantees the maximum level of privacy that current technology can offer.”

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