The European Securities and Markets Authority has told national supervisors that licensed EU crypto firms must wind down services tied to non-compliant stablecoins within three months. The opinion, issued Thursday, pulls custody and transfer services into scope for the first time and gives firms until early January 2027 to comply.
Licensed EU crypto firms have until early January 2027 to wind down services for stablecoins that fail MiCA, ESMA said on Thursday. The opinion covers asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens that don't meet MiCA's conditions for a lawful offer or trading in the EU, without naming any individual token.
Supervisors must now check whether a firm lets EU clients buy, trade, hold, or add to such tokens. That review spans every service type, from trading platforms and order execution to advice and portfolio management, and firms offering those services should block new purchases by EU clients with technical and contractual controls.
Custody and Transfers Now in Scope
ESMA first addressed non-compliant stablecoins in a January 17, 2025 statement that told trading platforms to stop offering them, with sell-only access allowed until the end of March 2025. That earlier statement said custody and transfer of those tokens could continue. Binance kept to that timeline and delisted nine non-MiCA stablecoins, including Tether's USDT, for European users on March 31, 2025, after which Binance users could only sell those tokens through its Convert tool.
Thursday's opinion changes that. Both custody and transfers now sit on the list of services supervisors should review, and the opinion rejects investor warnings as a fix: ESMA says warnings, disclosures and client acknowledgments would not address its concerns.
A Second Legal Basis for Enforcement
ESMA's 2025 guidance turned on whether a service amounted to a public offer of the token. Thursday's opinion keeps that public offer analysis but adds a second basis, citing the MiCA duty for licensed firms to act honestly, fairly and professionally in their clients' best interests. Serving a non-compliant token should be presumed to breach that duty, ESMA said.
Sources: ESMA, CryptoPotato
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