BingX and YouHodler Join ESMA's MiCA Register as CASP Count Reaches 375

ESMA's Friday Update Adds Nine Firms

Nine new crypto-asset service providers entered the European Union's official register under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation in the latest revision, and the batch includes the European entities of two consumer-facing platforms: BingX and YouHodler. The update was published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) on Friday, October 16, and it lifts the number of authorized providers to 375. Previous revisions had put the count of authorized operators at 321, and the register has kept expanding since. BingX's Austrian entity, MEGE zweite, and the Italian subsidiary of YouHodler, a lending platform that offers yield products, both secured authorization, and each company announced the milestone last week.

BingX EU CEO Daniel Lai said the approval allows the exchange to operate under a clear regulatory framework, adding that the company is preparing to launch regulated services across the European Economic Area. The two authorizations are not interchangeable. Austria's Financial Market Authority granted BingX's entity approval for four services: safekeeping of client crypto assets, exchange between fiat money and crypto assets, crypto-to-crypto exchange, and transfers. Running a trading platform and executing client orders sit outside that scope. YouHodler's Italian arm, whose parent's name borrows from the HODL slang for holding through volatility, received permission for custody, exchange, execution of client orders, and transfers.

A MiCA registration authorizes a specific legal entity for a defined list of services, not a brand as a whole and not a company-wide license. What a user can lawfully access depends on that entity's scope and on the countries it serves. Once an entity is licensed by its national supervisor, passporting carries those authorized services across the EEA, which is why a single national approval matters well beyond the issuing country. The full entries are public on ESMA's MiCA register.

Santander Subsidiary Among New Entries

Banking groups fill out the remainder of the batch. Spain's Prakma Markets, an operator of a savings and investment platform associated with the Goin crypto app, was added to the list. Germany contributed three names: Openbank Deutschland, a subsidiary of Spanish banking group Banco Santander, and two cooperative lenders, VR-Bank Alb-Blau-Donau and VR Bank im südlichen Franken. Openbank's entry is among the most prominent of the revision, since it places a retail online bank owned by one of the euro area's largest banking groups inside the authorized perimeter. One entry moved the other way. Denmark's Penning Financial Services no longer appears on the register, even though it had been listed in updates dating back to July 3. ESMA does not publish reasons for deletions, so whether the firm withdrew or was struck off is not disclosed. The same revision that admits nine firms therefore records at least one exit, a reminder that register entries are conditional rather than permanent.

The token registers barely moved. The e-money token register, which lists stablecoin-style tokens issued under the framework, stayed at 50 entries representing 25 unique entities, with no new issuers admitted. E-money tokens are the category the regulation uses for crypto assets that track the value of a single fiat currency, and issuing them requires authorization comparable to that of an e-money institution. The asset-referenced token register, designed for tokens whose value references other assets or a basket of them, remains empty, so no firm has yet been authorized to issue that category. Meanwhile, the register of non-compliant crypto-asset service providers, which lists firms deemed to offer services without authorization, grew by five entries to 178, roughly half the size of the authorized register.

Enforcement List Grows to 178

The register rewards close reading of its own columns. Entity-level licenses mean that custody approval alone does not turn a firm into a trading venue, so users in the EEA should verify which legal entity and which services sit behind the interface they use. Self-custody sits outside the perimeter entirely: investors keeping their own keys in a device such as the Tangem Mobile Wallet do not interact with the CASP regime at all. The parallel growth of the non-compliance list, now at 178 entries, shows enforcement running alongside admissions rather than behind them. For readers weighing licensed venues against offshore alternatives, our Best Crypto Exchanges guide tracks which platforms hold EU authorization.