Coincub Releases Europe Crypto Report 2026

Dublin, April 2026 – Coincub has published its Europe Crypto Report 2026, mapping the post-MiCA landscape across all EU and EEA markets as of April 2026.

The report tracks what happened to Europe’s crypto market after MiCA took full effect: how many entities survived the transition, who actually got licensed, which jurisdictions won and lost, and what structural changes the new framework created. It draws on Coincub’s full CASP dataset, the ESMA interim register, and pre-MiCA national registration data to compare market structure before and after.

The headline number is 183 CASPs, down from approximately 3,167 national VASP registrations. But the report argues that entity count is the wrong lens. Through passporting, 183 licensed firms generate roughly 2,726 country-access pairs – 86% of pre-MiCA market coverage, delivered by a fraction of the entities.

Key findings from the report:

• MiCA produced two distinct populations. 78 CASPs (42%) cover just 1 to 5 countries, almost exclusively German banks treating crypto as an add-on service. 84 CASPs (45%) hold full EU passport access covering 26 to 30 markets. Only 13 CASPs sit anywhere in between.
• The biggest passport gains went to offshore-originated firms. Binance (Cayman Islands), Bybit (UAE), OKX (Seychelles), Crypto.com (Cayman Islands), and Revolut (UK) anchor the new map. Cyprus and Ireland, not Germany, are the real passport powerhouses.
• Lithuania went from 345 registered firms to 4 MiCA CASP licenses – a 99% attrition rate. Its first MiCA CASP was Robinhood Europe UAB, an American company.
• Poland has not implemented MiCA into national law. A bill was vetoed twice, a parliamentary override fell 20 votes short, and no legislative timeline exists. More than 1,400 VASPs are stateless in regulatory terms.
• Only 14 of 183 CASPs are licensed to operate a centralized exchange with an order book and matching engine. That is 7% of the total.
• USDT was delisted from every regulated EU exchange by mid-2025. Tether’s $138B market cap held steady. Asian markets absorbed the volume.
• The compliance cost floor – €50,000 to €100,000 minimum in legal and setup costs, before capital requirements and staffing – is survivable for offshore firms backed by institutional capital. It is not survivable for European pre-seed startups. Only 8 EU-origin brands appear in the global top 100 exchanges by traffic.
• The grandfathering period ends July 1, 2026. Every entity that hasn’t received MiCA authorization must cease operations. For firms still on transitional status without an active application, the window is effectively closed.
• The European Commission’s Market Integration Package, published December 2025 and backed by the ECB on April 9, 2026, would move CASP supervision from national authorities to ESMA directly. The decentralized model MiCA launched with is already being renegotiated.

The report concludes that MiCA succeeded as a regulatory architecture but created market conditions that primarily benefit offshore giants and incumbent banks rather than the EU-native startups the Digital Finance Strategy exists to support.

Full report and dataset available at data.coincub.com.

For methodology details or media inquiries, contact press@coincub.com.

Media Contact

Dren Hima

Research Lead

Coincub

press@coincub.com