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The European Commission launched a formal assessment of the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) this week, days after the framework’s transitional grace period ended on July 1, 2026, and the regulation came into full force across all 27 member states.
The commission is gathering feedback from industry participants and other stakeholders until Sept. 30 before deciding whether to expand or modify the framework.
An unnamed EU diplomat told Euronews that reopening the regulation “seems unavoidable at this stage,” citing positions from several European institutions, including the European Central Bank, and the rapid pace of global regulatory and technological development since MiCA was originally drafted.
The EU is already weighing updates to its MiCA crypto framework just a week after its full rollout.
Proposed changes could expand oversight to tokenized assets and non-EU stablecoin issuers, as the European Commission gathers stakeholder feedback. pic.twitter.com/qTUQBp1sVt
— SWFT Blockchain (@SwftCoin) July 9, 2026
The review has two primary focuses. The first is stablecoins and specifically the regulatory treatment of non-EU issuers serving European users. MiCA’s current framework requires stablecoin issuers targeting EU residents to obtain authorization as an electronic money institution (EMI) or credit institution under the regulation’s Title III and Title IV provisions.
Tether’s USDt (USDT), which holds approximately $184 billion in global circulation and dominates trading volume across major exchanges, has explicitly stated it does not intend to pursue MiCA authorization. Major EU-regulated exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Crypto.com, all delisted USDT for European Economic Area retail users between December 2024 and March 2025 to maintain compliance.
The commission’s concern is that MiCA’s current language does not provide sufficient clarity on how non-EU issuers operating from outside the bloc but serving EU users should be regulated, creating a gap that extraterritorial enforcement cannot currently fill cleanly.
The second focus is tokenization. Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) held onchain reached about $33.48 billion in total value this week, according to RWA.xyz, rising 4.28% over the previous month. The majority of that value comes from tokenized securities, including stocks, bonds, and fund units.
MiCA does not directly regulate tokenized securities. These assets remain covered by existing EU securities frameworks, including the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and the EU’s DLT Pilot Regime.
The commission is assessing whether the rapid growth of tokenized stocks and the emergence of new tokenized payment systems and digital deposits require explicit inclusion in MiCA or in a parallel dedicated framework.
The review also follows the US GENIUS Act stablecoin legislation, signed into law in July 2025, which created a federal framework for payment stablecoins that is structurally different from MiCA’s approach and may create competitive divergence between the two largest regulated markets for digital assets.
EU officials have flagged the risk that regulatory arbitrage between MiCA and the US framework could drive issuers toward whichever jurisdiction imposes lighter requirements, particularly on reserve composition, yield restrictions, and extraterritorial reach.
Only about 280 firms have secured full MiCA authorization as the framework reaches full force, out of an estimated pool of more than 3,000 crypto businesses that operate across the bloc.
The review’s Sept. 30 feedback deadline gives the commission approximately three months to assess whether the framework it spent four years building requires expansion before many of its authorized companies have completed their first full compliance cycle.
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