CASP status under MiCA: JurisClasseur chapter by William O’Rorke
Since 31 March 2025, the JurisClasseur Droit bancaire et financier, LexisNexis’s French encyclopaedia of banking and financial law, has carried chapter (fascicle) 2505 on crypto-asset service providers (CASPs). Its authors are William O’Rorke, the partner in charge of ORWL Avocats’ Regulatory practice, and Aliénor Nin, a doctoral candidate at Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas. They describe the status created by the MiCA Regulation and implemented in French law by the Ordinance of 15 October 2024: a regime modelled on that of investment firms, but which applies only where no other Union legislation does.
Reference
William O’Rorke and Aliénor Nin, “Prestataires de services sur crypto-actifs. – Règlement MiCA du 31 mai 2023 et Ordonnance du 15 octobre 2024” (in French), JurisClasseur Droit bancaire et financier, LexisNexis, fascicle 2505, first published on 31 March 2025. Subscribers only.
A status modelled on investment services, but residual
The chapter starts with the concept of crypto-asset. Broad as it is, it remains residual: MiCA excludes tokens already covered by other Union legislation, above all financial instruments (Article 2(4)). Classifying the token is therefore the first question in any project. According to the authors, a mistake exposes the issuer and the provider to penalties for carrying on a regulated activity without authorisation, or even to the invalidity of contracts with investors. They also exclude non-transferable crypto-assets and NFTs, whose exclusion is assessed case by case, on an economic reading of non-fungibility.
The chapter then covers the ten services listed in Article 3, which the authors group into families: custody, operation of a trading platform, exchange and execution of orders, advice and portfolio management, then placing, reception and transmission of orders, and transfer services. It dwells on the dividing lines met in practice: custody, which the authors liken to deposit-taking or to the safekeeping of securities by a central securities depository; exchange, where the CASP interposes its own accounts; and reception and transmission of orders, which bars the CASP from acting without the client’s prior instruction, failing which the service may be reclassified as portfolio management.
Three activities fall outside the Regulation. Staking is not in itself a crypto-asset service, but offering it to third parties may amount to one, such as custody. The exclusion of decentralised finance (DeFi), in the authors’ view, covers only a service that is fully decentralised and has no intermediary, distribution included. Collective investment remains governed by the UCITS and AIFM Directives: a CASP must take care not to engage in it, in particular when it offers yield products.
The last two parts deal with status and supervision. A CASP bears common obligations, from acting honestly, fairly and professionally to prudential and governance requirements, and obligations specific to each service. It obtains authorisation from the AMF (Autorité des marchés financiers, the French financial markets regulator), subject to the binding opinion of the ACPR (Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution, the French banking supervisor). Credit institutions, investment firms and the other entities listed in Article 60 need only notify, at least 40 working days before providing a service for the first time. A third-country provider escapes authorisation only where the client approached it on the client’s own exclusive initiative. The AMF and the ACPR supervise; ESMA keeps the register of CASPs and the register of non-compliant entities (Articles 109 and 110); and MiCA punishes market abuse in crypto-assets.
Key points of the chapter
- Crypto-assets are a category of digital assets with certain technical, economic or legal features that justify ad hoc financial regulation. To avoid overlapping rules or avoidance strategies, the MiCA Regulation applies residually, to instruments not already covered by existing rules, in particular financial instruments.
- The MiCA Regulation is implemented in French law by a MiCA Ordinance of 15 October 2024 and a Decree of 21 February 2025. The AMF General Regulation (RGAMF) was amended by an Order of 3 February 2025.
- Under the MiCA Regulation, crypto-asset services are the financial services relating to crypto-assets that call for regulation. MiCA lists ten services, drawing on the rules for investment services in financial instruments. Some services, however, such as staking, decentralised finance or collective investment, fall outside this European framework.
- Crypto-asset services are provided by crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), subject to an authorisation regime. The MiCA Regulation imposes strict obligations on them, similar to those of investment firms, which may be common to all CASPs or specific to certain crypto-asset services.
- To provide crypto-asset services, a CASP must first obtain authorisation from its national regulator. Certain regulated entities, however, such as credit institutions or investment firms, benefit from a lighter regime of prior notification.
- CASPs are supervised mainly by the financial and banking authorities of the Member State where they are established. It is ESMA, however, that keeps a white list of authorised CASPs and a black list of entities providing services illegally on the European market. Finally, CASPs must prevent market abuse, which is now punished on the European crypto-asset market.
William O’Rorke and Aliénor Nin, JurisClasseur Droit bancaire et financier, fascicle 2505, LexisNexis, 31 March 2025 (translated from French; cross-references and citations omitted). Reproduced with the permission of LexisNexis.
What has changed since publication
The chapter announced the end of the transitional regime for PSANs (the French registration regime for digital asset service providers, which applied before MiCA). That deadline has passed: since 1 July 2026, a PSAN that has not obtained authorisation under Article 59 of MiCA may no longer provide its services in France (MiCA, Article 143(3)).
The rules for services on e-money tokens (EMTs) have also tightened. In its no-action letter of 10 June 2025 and its Opinion of 12 February 2026, the European Banking Authority (EBA) considers that some EMT services, such as transferring them on behalf of clients, are also payment services. Since the tolerance period ended on 2 March 2026, the CASP concerned must hold authorisation under PSD2 or rely on an authorised payment service provider. William O’Rorke challenges this dual licensing in a study published in the Revue de droit bancaire et financier.
For practitioners and students alike, the structure of the status set out in the chapter remains that of the law in force; its passages on the transitional period and on EMTs should be read in the light of these two developments.
Read the chapter on the publisher’s website
A crypto-asset service project?
ORWL Avocats classifies a project’s services under MiCA, handles CASP authorisation applications before the AMF or the notification of an already authorised institution, and then advises the provider on its compliance.
You can also talk to a partner.
