Regulations
By Evie Vavasseur
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Two Licenses, One Product. Issuing a stablecoin in Europe still requires an EMI license — not just a MiCA registration.
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The ECB's Digital Euro Play. The European Central Bank isn't exactly rooting for private stablecoins to succeed.
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What This Means for the Market. Unlimit's MiCA registration is still a meaningful milestone.
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Unlimit just got onto the CySEC MiCA register. Good news for the payments firm — but the harder regulatory fight is barely starting.
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The company, which already holds an Electronic Money Institution license in Cyprus, can now operate under the EU's unified crypto asset framework.
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Issuing a stablecoin in Europe still requires an EMI license — not just a MiCA registration. The two regimes sit side by side and don't fully talk to each other.
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Short answer, based on what's already happened: it's pretty much killing the market for smaller players.
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Compliance costs under MiCA have pushed a notable chunk of crypto firms out of the European market entirely.
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Bigger firms can absorb legal costs, compliance teams, multi-jurisdiction filings. Smaller ones can't. So the market consolidates, or it shrinks.
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Read also: Samsung SDS and Dunamu Target Stablecoin Infrastructure With 4% Stake Backing
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The European Central Bank isn't exactly rooting for private stablecoins to succeed. ECB President Christine Lagarde has warned publicly about risks to financial stability and…
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That's not a neutral position. When the central bank of a currency bloc actively works to build a competitor to private stablecoins while simultaneously maintaining regulatory…
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And the ECB's firm stance makes any loosening of the dual-licensing requirement unlikely in the near term.
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Unlimit's MiCA registration is still a meaningful milestone. Having both an EMI license and a MiCA registration puts the company in a relatively small group of firms that can…
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But the stablecoin gap in MiCA's coverage isn't going away quietly. The framework was supposed to bring clarity. For crypto asset services broadly, it has.
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