"MiCA reaches its six-month milestone: early takeaways and challenges ahead"

Two factors explain the unhurried pace. First, MiCA rests on a cascade of secondary standards and guidelines, many of which have yet to take effect. Second, the European Securities and Markets Authority’s July register listed only 44 authorized crypto‑asset service providers and 14 stablecoin issuers; just one of the issuers is a credit institution, the rest operate as electronic money firms. Spain’s market regulator, the CNMV, has moved faster: BBVA became the EU’s first credit institution to secure registration as a crypto‑asset service provider.

Calls for a “MiCA 2” are already echoing through the market, driven by two core concerns. While MiCA offers a broad regulatory canvas, it leaves entire swathes of activity unregulated: most notably decentralized finance (DeFi) and crypto‑based lending. The framework does not abandon these segments entirely, insofar as it tasks the European Commission with monitoring their development and delivering a report to the European Parliament and Council, paving the way for a targeted legislative follow‑up if the analysis points in that direction.

The election of Donald Trump at the close of 2024 unleashed a wave of optimism for the crypto sector in the United States, propelling dollar‑pegged stablecoins onto the regulatory agenda with the passage of the Genius Act. European policymakers watch closely, fearing that a U.S. regime that, for instance, permits interest‑bearing stablecoins could outpace Europe’s own rules and pave the way for an American‑issued stablecoin to dominate the continent, eroding monetary sovereignty. In practice, however, the Genius Act is no threat to MiCA: it targets only the issuance of dollar‑linked stablecoins and, where the two regimes do intersect, they converge on the core principles.

Both regimes obligate stablecoin issuers to secure supervisory authorization, although the Genius Act widens the pool of eligible issuers. Each law also mandates that a stablecoin be fully collateralized by a reserve of liquid, secure assets equal to 100  percent of the coin’s value. In addition, both statutes ban interest payments to holders, and guarantee holders’ redemption rights.

The convergence of MiCA and the Genius Act can foster cross‑border coordination, helping to keep a truly global market from fragmenting. The Genius Act already leans in that direction, as its approach to foreign stablecoin issuers is broader than MiCA’s, and it expressly envisages bilateral accords with jurisdictions whose frameworks resemble the US model. MiCA’s most immediate shortcoming is the lack of a mechanism to recognize third‑country regimes that are substantially equivalent or similar, even though the regulation does embed safeguards against the use of stablecoins unlinked to the euro for payment purposes.

MiCA stands as a landmark framework, opening the crypto‑asset space to new players, including credit institutions, and extending to Europeans the protections needed for confident market participation. It has already become a reference point for jurisdictions crafting their own crypto rules. However, with just over six months of operation, policymakers still require a longer runway before they can gauge the regime’s full impact and identify any lingering weaknesses.