How to check whether an exchange is authorised under MiCA

Checking whether an exchange is authorised is a pass over documents, not an impression of the brand. A crypto-asset service provider authorisation is granted to a legal person, for named services, by the authority of its home member state. What that means, and what a brand licence is not, is in the MiCA licence guide. This page does not redefine it. It is the checklist, in the order worth following.

The search on the home page filters the copy of the register this site shows. Use it to find a profile by commercial name or legal name. It is not a second census. This guide does not add its own search box: the home search is tied to that list, and embedding it here would duplicate the block. Aggregate counts, without the wall of profiles, are on CASP register data.

1. The row in CASPS.csv

Open the CASPS.csv file ESMA publishes, the same file this project syncs. Search the commercial name and, in a second pass, the legal name. An app can share a name with a row that belongs to a different company. Note five cells: competent authority (*ae_competentAuthority*), home member state (*ae_homeMemberState*), legal name (*ae_lei_name*), LEI (*ae_lei*) and service code (*ac_serviceCode*). Host countries, where present, are in *ac_serviceCode_cou*, service by service. An end date, if any, is in *ac_authorisationEndDate*. An empty cell is not a promise that the authorisation lasts forever.

If there is no row, do not invent an authorisation from traffic, an old registration or a transitional window that has closed. What the CNMV and ESMA have published about firms without authorisation is in if your platform is not authorised. The timetable of that window is not repeated here: it is in the transitional-period guide.

2. The LEI

The LEI is the legal entity’s identifier, 20 characters under ISO 17442. Copy it from the row and look it up at GLEIF. The legal name on the LEI record has to be the name in *ae_lei_name*. If GLEIF does not resolve the code, or the names diverge, stop. A profile on this site repeats the LEI from the row; it does not correct it. Article 62 of the regulation asks for the legal entity identifier already in the application for authorisation. How that application sits for a Spanish registered office is in how a CASP authorisation is applied for in Spain.

3. The competent authority

The authority is the one in the cell, not the one you infer from the country you connect from. On rows with home state ES, the file names the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores. The CNMV’s MiCA page says providers must be authorised by the CNMV or by another competent authority in the Union. Compare the legal name and the LEI at the CNMV when the home state is Spain. If the home state is another country, open the authority on the row, not the Spanish one. The map of those authorities is in MiCA licence by country.

4. The service codes

Article 3(1)(16) lists ten services, letters a to j: custody, a trading platform, exchange for funds, exchange for other crypto-assets, execution, placing, reception and transmission, advice, portfolio management and transfers. A row may carry one letter, several, or prose. A letter that is absent is not part of what was notified. The services guide says what each letter covers and what sits outside, including lending. On an exchange profile on this site, the codes the file carries link to that guide.

5. The passport into Spain

Article 65 requires a CASP that intends to provide services in more than one member state to send its home authority the list of states, the cross-border services, the start date and the other activities not covered by the regulation. The home authority sends that information to the host states’ contact points, to ESMA and to the EBA within ten working days. The provider may start from the date it receives confirmation or, at the latest, on the fifteenth calendar day after it submitted the information. Spain in the host column means the notified service includes ES. It does not mean the CNMV granted the authorisation. The passport guide sets out that mechanism. The Spain page keeps a home block and a passport block apart.

An earlier Bank of Spain registration does not finish this pass. The Bank of Spain note on the closure of that register explains that an entry under Law 10/2010 was not a MiCA authorisation. The difference is in the Bank of Spain register and MiCA.

If the row exists and you want other profiles this site already publishes, MiCA-licensed alternatives gathers a selection with legal name and LEI. It is not the full file and it is not a ranking.

Common questions