How to choose a MiCA-licensed exchange in Spain

Choosing a MiCA-licensed exchange, if you use it from Spain, means choosing a legal person authorised for the service you will use, with Spain as home state or as a notified host country. It is not choosing the best-known logo or the row with the most letters. The table that puts some profiled brands side by side — legal name, LEI, authority and whether Spain is home or passport — is on MiCA-licensed alternatives. This page does not repeat it. These are criteria for reading.

The legal person, before the brand

An authorisation under Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 belongs to a company, for services, from the authority of the registered office. Two companies can share a brand. The contract, the footer and the LEI have to describe the same entity as the row in CASPS.csv. How to match name, LEI and authority is in the licence guide and, as a list, in how to check the authorisation. If the brand you want has no row, no selection criterion fills that gap: see what the CNMV and ESMA have published.

Home or passport: either can be enough

Spain as home member state means the authority on the row is the Spanish one. In the file, those rows name the CNMV. Spain only as a host country means another authority granted the authorisation and the service was notified here, under Article 65. Both are an authorisation, limited to what was notified. Dropping a profile because “it is not the CNMV” confuses home state with the ability to serve you. The mechanism is in the passport guide. The Spain page keeps the two blocks apart. Which authority authorises in other states is in licence by country.

The service you will use, not the whole catalogue

A row with many letters is not, for that reason, a better fit. If you will leave crypto-assets on the platform, the letter that matters is a, custody and administration on behalf of clients, with the duties in Articles 70 and 75. What that custody does not guarantee — those articles do not set up a public compensation fund — is in the custody and client-funds guide. If you will only send an order to someone else’s market, the letter may be e or g. The map of letters is in CASP services.

Staking the exchange offers is not a letter of its own. ESMA Q&A 2067 treats it as ancillary to custody. The detail is in staking under MiCA. A lending or “earn” product that is not that staking is not in the Article 3(1)(16) list: see lending and earn. A stablecoin the platform lists is judged under the token’s regime, not under the exchange’s authorisation: EMTs and ARTs.

What a sensible criterion does not do

• It does not treat an old Bank of Spain entry as a licence. The difference is in the Bank of Spain register.
• It does not use the country of the app store as the home state.
• It does not confuse a marketing line with the service cell.
• It does not ask you to hurry. An authorisation does not expire because this page was published in November 2026. It ends if the file carries an end date or if the authority withdraws it under Article 64.
• It does not replace the file. This site can lag ESMA until the next sync. Counts for the loaded cut are on register data.

If several profiles remain after those filters, the alternatives page sets them next to each other so you can read them. Choosing among them — fees, the market, the currency you pay in — is no longer a question MiCA answers in Article 65 or Article 75. This guide stops at the authorisation.

Common questions