Ripple Secures Full MiCA License, Now Holds 75+ Global Permits

MICA News

Ripple has secured full authorization under the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework after Luxembourg’s financial regulator granted it a Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) licence, the company confirmed. The approval builds on a preliminary green light in June and, combined with Ripple’s existing Electronic Money Institution licence, lets the payments firm passport regulated crypto services across the 30-nation European Economic Area under a single permit. Ripple now holds more than 75 regulatory licences worldwide, including a UK Financial Conduct Authority registration obtained in January. The company said the CASP nod places it among a small group of digital-asset firms fully compliant as MiCA’s post-transitional era begins.

The wider industry is scrambling to fit inside the same regulatory perimeter. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published an updated register listing 280 authorized crypto-asset service providers across the bloc, up from 243 a week earlier. The 37 additions included Standard Chartered, FalconX and Sygnum Europe, signalling that both traditional banks and specialist digital-asset firms are racing to lock in EEA passporting rights. The register expansion followed the close of MiCA’s transition window on July 1, the hard deadline by which firms had to be authorized or stop offering regulated services. ESMA maintains the list while national regulators handle day-to-day supervision across member states.

Not every major player cleared the bar in time. Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, withdrew its MiCA application in Greece ahead of the July 1 transition, saying it would instead pursue authorization in a different member state while taking steps to comply with the bloc’s rules. The move leaves the exchange temporarily outside the harmonized licensing regime that now governs how platforms serve European customers. Because MiCA lets an authorized firm operate across all member states from one licence, the choice of home regulator carries lasting weight, shaping supervision, capital treatment and how quickly a platform can scale its altcoin offering across the region.

Enforcement is already visible at the national level. Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority identified six crypto-asset service providers it said were operating without authorization and added them to its public list of unauthorized firms. The action echoes ESMA’s June 23 directive instructing unlicensed operators to stop onboarding new EU customers, halt marketing and limit activity to winding down, transferring or liquidating existing positions. With supervision devolved to national watchdogs, implementation is expected to vary across the bloc, and firms navigating a bear-market environment face added pressure as compliance costs rise. Unauthorized platforms now risk penalties or forced closure as the enforcement phase tightens.

Traditional lenders are moving into the vacuum. CACEIS, the asset-servicing arm of Crédit Agricole, launched a euro-denominated electronic-money token called EURXT on Ethereum on July 1, one of the first bank-issued stablecoins to arrive under the new rules. In Germany, DZ Bank — the central institution for the country’s cooperative banks — obtained MiCA approval from regulator BaFin and is integrating a wallet-and-trading service, meinKrypto, into its banking app, initially covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Cardano. Unlike algorithmic-stablecoins, MiCA-compliant tokens must be fully reserve-backed, a structure that favours licensed banks holding both regulatory capacity and large customer bases.

Access to dollar stablecoins, meanwhile, is narrowing. Fintech group Revolut is phasing out support for Tether’s USDT for its European users: purchases were cut off on July 6, while sales and withdrawals to external wallets remain open until August 31, after which residual balances will be converted to fiat. MiCA does not ban specific tokens outright, but its authorization, custody and reserve requirements are becoming a gate that determines which assets reach compliant distribution. Should European users keep seeking offshore USDT liquidity, demand may persist beyond the regulated perimeter. Stablecoin-native infrastructure such as arc-blockchain underscores how issuers are re-architecting around compliance.

A note on our own data: because MiCA is a regulatory framework rather than a tradable asset, COINOTAG’s proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine returns no spot price, support or resistance levels for it — there is no order book to score. Our reading therefore leans on the aggregate backdrop the same engine tracks. As of this writing, COINOTAG’s market gauges put the Fear & Greed Index at 24/100, or Extreme Fear, with Bitcoin dominance at 69.3% and total crypto market capitalization near $1.84 trillion. That risk-off tone matters: tighter European rules land while capital is already rotating toward Bitcoin, and the bullish case for compliant venues rests on flows returning — a deeper slide in total market cap would invalidate it.