Since 1 July 2026 you have been reading that crypto platforms in the EU need a licence, that Binance froze its accounts in France and that USDT has disappeared from European exchanges. The obvious question is: what am I still allowed to do? The answer is shorter than the news: everything you were allowed to do before. MiCA does not impose a single rule on you. It imposes rules on the platform, and when the platform fails them, what you lose is not your legality but your protection.
That changes how you choose a platform. Not "is this allowed?", but "what do I hold in my hand if something goes wrong?"
Who needs a licence and who does not
MiCA, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, has applied to stablecoin issuers since mid-2024 and to service providers since 30 December 2024. Member states were allowed transition periods; the last of them ended on 30 June 2026. Since 1 July nobody may serve EU clients as a crypto-asset service provider, a CASP, without authorisation. A licence from one member state is valid in all the others.
Exchanges, brokers, custodians, wallet providers with access to your keys and platforms that swap crypto for euros need the licence. You do not. Someone using a hardware wallet or a software wallet nobody else can access is outside MiCA, and so is someone sending coins from their own wallet to another private wallet.
MiCA is a law about providers that protects users. It is not a law about users.
Which platforms you can use
On 11 September 2026 the ESMA register listed 343 authorised providers, most of them from Germany (86), France (35) and the Netherlands (29). Among the large exchanges, Coinbase and Bitstamp are licensed in Luxembourg, Bitpanda and Bybit in Austria, Bitvavo in the Netherlands, Börse Stuttgart in Germany; Kraken and OKX are in the register too. Binance and MEXC are not.
The number flatters the choice. Of the providers that were nationally registered before MiCA, only about one in six had an authorisation by May 2026. Many smaller platforms left the EU market rather than apply.
You can check this yourself in two minutes: the ESMA register is public. If your platform's name is not in it, it is not licensed, whatever its website says. The register check is the only question you need to ask a platform, and the only one it is not allowed to answer for itself.
May I use an unlicensed platform?
You may. The obligation sits with the provider, and MiCA provides no sanction for users. But you should know what you do not have.
A licensed platform must hold your coins separately from its own assets, legally ring-fenced so that its creditors cannot reach them in an insolvency. It must place your cash with a bank in a segregated account by the next business day. It is liable to you for losses of coins or access keys caused by its own failures. It must run a complaints procedure, disclose conflicts of interest and keep a plan for an orderly wind-down. An unlicensed platform must do none of that.
And there is a second risk that has nothing to do with insolvency: the supervisor. On 1 July Binance put about two million French accounts on withdrawal-only; margin positions there liquidate automatically on 1 October. The users did not decide that. With an unlicensed platform, a regulator picks the day your account gets restricted, and you find out by email.
Some unlicensed platforms keep serving EU clients through "reverse solicitation": the client declares that they came on their own initiative. ESMA said on 30 June that the exemption applies only where the client acts "entirely on their own, without any solicitation, marketing or promotion", and that websites, apps, social media, sponsorships and influencer campaigns aimed at the EU count as solicitation. Whether an exchange with millions of existing customers can rely on that exemption is now before the national supervisors. For you it means: those accounts run on a legal basis that is being tested right now.
What happens to stablecoins
MiCA requires stablecoin issuers to be authorised in the EU. Tether has not applied for USDT. Licensed platforms that offer unauthorised stablecoins put their own licence at risk, which is why Coinbase in December 2024, Crypto.com in January 2025 and Binance on 31 March 2025 removed USDT pairs for EEA customers. USDC and EURC, among others, are MiCA-compliant.
What you may hold does not change. USDT in your own wallet is allowed, and so is swapping it on a decentralised exchange. What changes is what a licensed platform offers you. The stablecoin is not banned. It has been taken out of the regulated shop window.
What about DeFi
This is where MiCA is least precise. Services provided "in a fully decentralised manner without any intermediary" fall outside the regulation; that is Recital 22. What "fully decentralised" means, the text does not define. A protocol with a company behind it, a governance multisig or an operated front-end could be in scope; whether it is, no authority has so far decided.
For you as a user the same applies as above: you break nothing by using a protocol from your own wallet. You also have none of what a licence brings, and that was true before MiCA too. DeFi under MiCA is neither permitted nor prohibited. It is unregulated, and the word for that is not "free" but "without recourse".
Your wallet, and the rules that actually reach you
MiCA leaves self-custody alone. Two other EU rulebooks do not, quite.
The Travel Rule has applied since 30 December 2024: every transfer through a licensed platform carries sender and recipient data. If you send coins from the exchange to your own wallet or back and the amount exceeds 1,000 euros, the exchange must verify that the wallet is actually yours. Between two private wallets with no platform involved, the rule does not apply.
From July 2027 the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation adds to that: anonymous accounts at crypto service providers are banned, and privacy coins leave regulated platforms. Again, that binds the providers, not your wallet.
And since 1 January 2026 platforms report your transactions to the tax authorities. DAC8 obliges every platform with EU customers, including those outside the EU, to collect your data; the first exchange between authorities runs until 30 September 2027. Your tax obligation never had anything to do with MiCA, and an unlicensed platform does not release you from it.
The objection
"My exchange is outside the EU, I have traded there for years, and there has never been a problem."
That is true until the day it is not. For two million French Binance customers that day was 1 July. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng put a number on what happened next: 70 percent of European outflows went to self-custody wallets, 30 percent to licensed platforms. Seven in ten did not change exchange. They changed custody.
What you can do
Four steps. Look your platform up in the ESMA register. Find out which legal entity your account actually sits with, because an exchange can be licensed in Luxembourg and still serve you through a third-country entity. Keep what you are not actively trading in a wallet of your own, where neither a regulator nor an insolvency can reach. And with stablecoins, expect USDT not to return to licensed platforms as long as Tether does not apply.
The open question is the one from the Binance case: whether the reverse-solicitation exemption, written for the individual who finds a foreign firm unprompted, can carry a book of millions of accounts. National supervisors will answer that, not ESMA, and the answer decides how many platforms outside the register EU users can still reach next year.
Sources
Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Articles 61, 62, 65, 70–72, 75, Recitals 10, 22, 94 · ESMA, Public Statement on the end of transitional periods, 23 June 2026 (ESMA75-113276571-1710) · ESMA to Cointelegraph on reverse solicitation, 30 June 2026 · ESMA CASP register, snapshot 11 September 2026 (casptracker.eu) · Bloomberg, 4 September 2026, on Binance (via crypto.news) · Cointribune, "Deux mois après MiCA, Binance vise un retour en France via l'AMF", 8 September 2026 · Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 (Travel Rule), applicable since 30 December 2024 · Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 (AMLR), applicable from July 2027 · Directive 2023/2226 (DAC8), reporting since 1 January 2026 · USDT delisting dates: Coinbase December 2024, Crypto.com January 2025, Binance 31 March 2025
Not investment advice, not legal advice, not a forecast — historical patterns are no guarantee.
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