The Bank of Spain register and MiCA authorisation

For a few years, offering virtual-currency exchange for fiat in Spain, or custody of wallets, came with an entry at the Bank of Spain. Many websites showed it as if it were a licence. It was not. Authorisation to provide crypto-asset services under Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 is something else, granted by the competent authority — in Spain, the CNMV where the home state is Spanish — and published in ESMA’s file. What that authorisation is sits in the MiCA licence guide. This page only separates the old register from that authorisation.

Updated November 2026. The Bank of Spain note on the closure of the register says that, because the Article 143(3) transitional period ended on 1 July 2026, the Bank closed on that day the register under the second additional provision of Law 10/2010. The information remains as a historical record. The CNMV’s MiCA page says that from 1 July 2026 only authorised providers may operate in Spain.

Who had to register

The note places the register in the second additional provision of Law 10/2010 on preventing money laundering. The Bank’s client-portal note describes who it reached while it was in force: anyone offering in Spain the purchase and sale of virtual currency against euros or another legal tender, and anyone offering custody of private cryptographic keys on behalf of clients in order to hold, store and transfer virtual currency. The same text says registration did not mean the Bank of Spain had approved or verified the activity, and that the duty was only to register because no supervisory rule had been laid down for these providers.

The closure note is more explicit about the regime up to 30 December 2024. Registration was conditional on two things: adequate procedures and bodies for preventing money laundering and terrorist financing, and commercial and professional repute. The anti-money-laundering statute listed these providers as obliged entities. It did not, the note says, lay down rules of financial or prudential supervision, corporate governance, technological security, market conduct or transparency. As a result the Bank did not supervise financial, operational or security risks, and had no conduct powers over them. The closing sentence is that registration did not imply any approval or verification of the activity.

What changed on 30 December 2024 and on 1 July 2026

The note says that from 30 December 2024 the register ceased to have effect because of the EU regulation on information accompanying transfers — the note as printed cites Regulation (EU) 2023/113; the regulation on that subject in the Official Journal is Regulation (EU) 2023/1113 — which removed registration requirements in Directive (EU) 2015/849. Between that date and 1 July 2026, the note says, the register was kept only for information, in respect of earlier entries that could rely on the Article 143 transitional regime.

On 1 July 2026 the Bank closes the register. The cause it writes is the end, that day, of the transitional period in Article 143(3) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. It does not turn historical entries into authorisations. The timetable and the CNMV statements, which this page does not repeat, are in the transitional-period guide. What to do if the platform you used had only that entry, or none, is in CNMV and ESMA notices.

What a MiCA authorisation looks at, and the register did not

A CASP authorisation, in Articles 59, 62 and 63 of the regulation, is applied for at the home-state authority, assessed, and granted or refused for named services. It requires, among other things, the legal entity identifier, a programme of operations, and a check that the application is complete. In Spain, the CNMV is the authority named on ES-home rows in the ESMA file, and the authority that says on its own page that provider authorisation belongs to the CNMV or to another European authority. The Bank of Spain register did not grant those service letters or a passport. How to read the row is in the checklist.

The CNMV page still describes, in the transitional section, that firms on the Bank of Spain register at 30 December 2024 could keep providing the same services until 1 July 2026 or until an earlier refusal. That sentence explains the window. It does not say the entry survives as an authorisation after closure. The Bank’s note, later than the design of that window, is the text that records the closure as done.

What does not change for someone who only buys

The Bank of Spain FAQ answers that a natural person who buys crypto-assets in their own name, without offering services to third parties, does not need prior authorisation from the Bank or an entry on that register. That clears a different confusion: the register was for providers, not for customers. It does not say the choice of provider is irrelevant, or that the purchase is free of tax duties. Those duties, where they exist, are in the guides to form 721 and the income-tax return, with the warning that they are not advice.

If a brand has a CASP row today, the profile on this site comes from that row, not from the Bank of Spain’s historical file. MiCA-licensed alternatives gathers some of those profiles. It does not reopen the closed register.

Common questions