Esma

The opinion tells national regulators to presume that any service touching a non-compliant stablecoin is incompatible with a platform's duty to act in its clients' best interests. Its three-month clock covers clearing leftover customer balances, not a grace period for listings.

The European Central Bank's formal endorsement of centralised crypto oversight threatens the licensing arbitrage that has made Ireland, Luxembourg and Malta the preferred jurisdictions for exchanges seeking the easiest path to MiCA compliance.