MiCA register grows to 324 authorisations, Germany still leads
The count of authorised crypto-asset service providers in the EU and the EEA stands at 324, issued by 26 competent authorities. Germany has 69, France 35 and the Netherlands 29. Since last week that register has also been searchable outside ESMA.
The state of play on 10 August
On 10 August 2026 the MiCA register listed 324 authorised crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), spread across thirty markets in the EU and the EEA and issued by 26 national competent authorities.
The breakdown across the ten countries with the most authorisations:
For comparison: at the end of June that same register held 244 authorisations. Those two numbers come from different publications by the same source — ESMA's public register — and were read off at different moments. So read the difference as a direction, not as an exact gain of eighty.
Why Germany is ahead
Germany had a head start: BaFin was already issuing authorisations for crypto custody under its own Kreditwesengesetz before MiCA. Firms that already held that paperwork did not have to convince their supervisor from scratch. The same applies to a lesser degree in the Netherlands and France, where the DNB registration and the French PSAN regime respectively served as an antechamber.
That also explains why the numbers say nothing about the size of the market. A country with many authorisations mainly has many firms that were already in a register somewhere.
The register is now searchable
On 5 August the MiCA Crypto Alliance launched a tracker that turns the data from the ESMA register into a searchable list: filter by firm, country, competent authority, date of authorisation and exactly which services that authorisation covers.
That last point is what matters. An authorisation for custody is something other than an authorisation to operate a trading platform, and in providers' marketing that difference often disappears behind the phrase ‘MiCA-authorised’. Anyone who wants to know what a party is actually allowed to do has to look at the service categories.
The makers themselves point out that their tracker is an independent tool and not an official database. That is a fair caveat: the ESMA register remains the source, and the tracker is a mirror of it that is updated weekly.
What this means when you choose a platform
Three things are worth checking yourself before you open an account anywhere.
Which legal entity holds the authorisation. Big names work with several entities. An authorisation in the name of the European subsidiary says nothing about the global platform, and the other way round.
Which services it covers. Custody, execution of orders, operation of a trading platform and exchange for funds are separate categories.
Whether it covers derivatives. MiCA does not. Anyone offering derivatives needs a different authorisation for that, under MiFID.
On this site we only name parties that appear in the register themselves. We do not publish the fact that a firm is not in it: there are innocent explanations for that, such as an application in progress or an authorisation in another member state that has not yet been passed on.