ESMA tells MiCA-licensed firms to drop services for non-compliant stablecoins
Serguey Asael Shinder2 min readThe EU's securities regulator ESMA published an opinion on 8 October setting out what national supervisors should expect from crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) when it comes to stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA — tokens pegged to a currency or a basket of assets (EMTs and ARTs in MiCA terms) whose issuers have not met the regulation's requirements.
The core message. Firms licensed under MiCA should stop offering EU clients any service involving stablecoins that fall short of MiCA. ESMA spells out that this covers the full range of MiCA services — operating trading platforms, exchange, order execution, placing, reception and transmission of orders, investment advice, transfers, custody and administration, and portfolio management — whether offered alone or in combination.
What supervisors are asked to do.
- Ensure market participants neither maintain, introduce nor facilitate access to such tokens through their services.
- Require CASPs to implement technical, contractual and organisational controls that keep these tokens unavailable in the EU, including controls that stop clients acquiring or increasing exposure.
- Where pre-existing exposures remain, require remediation as soon as possible and no later than three months after the opinion's publication.
What is still allowed. Any continued service should be limited strictly to what is needed for liquidation, conversion, withdrawal, transfer or safekeeping of such assets — and should be time-limited, risk-based and closely supervised. In practice that means a client holding a non-compliant stablecoin at an EU-licensed firm should expect to be able to get out of it, not to trade or add to it.
What the opinion is. It is an ESMA opinion addressed to national competent authorities, not a new regulation; ESMA does not name specific tokens. Its effect comes through supervisors who license and inspect CASPs. The timing is concrete: counted from 8 October, the three-month limit for remediating existing exposures runs to early January 2027.
Why it matters. The opinion closes the space between "an EU platform may not offer this token to the public" and "an EU platform keeps the token available through custody, transfers or advice". For users, the practical question is which stablecoins their EU exchange will keep supporting — and how long they have to move out of the others.
Source: ESMA news release on its opinion about unauthorised stablecoins, 8 October 2026 — https://www.esma.europa.eu/press-news/esma-news/esma-sets-out-supervisory-expectations-services-related-unauthorised