Article 48 of MiCA states that: “A person shall not make an offer to the public or seek the admission to trading of an e-money token, within the Union, unless that person is the issuer of such e-money token and: (a) is authorised as a credit institution or as an electronic money institution...”.
The cited part of first paragraph of Art 48 of MiCA allows an interpretation in accordance with which a MiCA registered CASP can still either receive and transmit (to a non EU entity) or execute an order (on a non EU trading platform) to buy or sell a non-EUR denominated EMT whose issuer is not MiCA compliant. Namely, it seems that the provision of either of the two mentioned crypto asset services does not fall either under offer to the public nor under admission to trading.
It is quite clear that the provision of the two described crypto asset services does not fall under “seek the admission to trading.”
Nevertheless, an argument can be made that the provision of the two described crypto asset services does not fall under “offer to public” as well. Namely, MiCA defines offer to the public “a communication (...) in any form presenting (...) sufficient information on the terms of the offer. When a CASP receives and transmits an order or when a CASP executes it, a CASP usually only receives order instructions and does not provide any information on the asset that will be bought. Consequently, it can be argued, that when acting as described, a CASP does not offer an EMT to public. This interpretation is further supported by the Recital 28. This one states that “The mere admission to trading or the publication of bid and offer prices should not, in and of itself, be regarded as an offer to the public of crypto-assets.”.
Therefore, one could argue that a CASP can execute orders for non-EUR denominated EMTs, whose issuers are not authorised as a credit institution or as an electronic money institution.
- Legal act: Regulation (EU) No 2023/1114 (MiCAR)
- COM Delegated or Implementing Acts/RTS/ITS/GLs: Not applicable