Germany’s financial regulator (BaFin) has granted a full MiCA license to one of Europe’s biggest fintechs, Trade Republic.
The license allows German-based Trade Republic to offer crypto custody to its four million customer base across 17 markets. “This means Trade Republic can now operate almost its entire crypto offering in-house across all 30 EEA states,” he wrote on X.
As of April, only 15 CASPs were registered under the MiCA framework in the first 100 days of implementation. The number has since increased to 25, per Hansen’s latest post. “The race is on: neobanks, brokers, other fintechs, and even traditional banks are all moving quickly to secure their MiCA licenses before transition periods end.”
Hansen emphasized that BaFin has granted “an impressive” 9 of the first 25 MiCA CASP licenses across the EU. This represents 36% of all EU-wide CASP licenses, he added.
So far, some of the key industry players such as Circle, OKX, BitGo Europe, MoonPay, among others, have obtained licenses. However, other global crypto players like Binance, Kraken, and Tether are not listed in the EU region. Interestingly, most of them have started the application process.
In April, a crypto lawyer Ilja Nikiforov predicted that up to 75% of Europe’s registered crypto companies (VASPs) will lose their status if they fail to get a MiCA license in time, which is by mid-2025.