What to know:
- BNY Mellon adds institutional custody, BitPay expands licensed payments under MiCA.
- One license for 27 states gives legal certainty, lowers risk, and sets standards for reserves and governance.
- TradFi adoption is accelerating. Next: ESMA stablecoin rules and cross-border enforcement.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) announced the inclusion of 15 new Crypto Asset Service Providers to the official MiCA registry, making the current total 309 registered providers.
These 15 included BNY Mellon’s Belgian subsidiary and payments giant BitPay, so a major custodial bank is being regulated for the first time in the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation.
ESMA Oversight Expands Across EU CASPs
More ESMA-regulated CASPs across the EU have emerged with time, and now it is ESMA’s job to watch over them. The BNY Mellon case means that the institutional custody infrastructure is being introduced inside MiCA’s scope, and BitPay’s registration has the effect of widening the number of licensed payments.
Other providers listed include exchanges, wallets and platforms allowing tokenization.
Also Read: Ripple CASP License Expands as ESMA Adds 14 New Crypto Firms Under MiCA
MiCA Delivers Legal Certainty
First of all ESMA registry offers legal certainty and passporting rights in 27 EU states which is extremely beneficial for investors. That means investors themselves, asset funds, and exchanges looking for compliant venues would be exposed to a much lower risk if their counterparts fail.
Also, for developers, MiCA gives them one route only through which they can put their products on the market in the EU instead of getting a bunch of fragmented national licenses while at the same time MiCA establishes regulatory requirements that would be very interesting to the regulator to monitor like reserve management, governance, and consumer protection.
Also Read: Coinbase AiFi Could Drive Crypto Growth as AI Adoption Accelerates
Past Trend, Industry Development, and Future Outlook
This growth mirrors the overall 2026 trend of traditional finance getting to the bottom of cryptocurrency and using it on regulated platforms. The compliance moat is growing as there are 309 companies currently on the list. Compliant CASPs are well-placed to attract enterprise volume as MiCA becomes more embedded in the markets.
Source: BitPay’s X Post
The coming main points will include the ESMA’s guidelines on the regulation of stablecoins and the enforcement of the law beyond national borders, which are essential for the development of cryptocurrency in the EU. The main registry will probably be used as a standard for crypto legislations by different countries that are also institutionalised.
Also Read: CLARITY Act Gains Senate Support as US Moves to Tighten Crypto Regulations
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