The MiCA transition period is over, and the market has already told us who was built to survive it.

Of the roughly 3,000 crypto firms that operated across the EU under national regimes before MiCA, only around 309 held a full MiCA license as of late July 2026, according to the ESMA register — close to 10% of the previous field. The pace of new approvals is slowing too: 37 new licenses were granted in the first week after the deadline, just 14 two weeks later. The straightforward applications cleared first. What's left in the queue is working through capital adequacy and governance requirements that simply take longer to satisfy.

The most telling data point isn't one that appeared — it's one that hasn't. One of the world's largest exchanges by volume withdrew its MiCA application in Greece and, as of this writing, still isn't on the ESMA register. Market-share data suggests the practical impact has been limited, since licensed venues already handle the large majority of EU trading volume. But for a compliance audience, the signal matters more than the market-share number: MiCA didn't bend for scale.

Geography is doing a lot of the explaining. Germany alone holds roughly a fifth of all licenses issued, with France and the Netherlands rounding out the top three. Notably, Switzerland doesn't appear on this list at all — it sits outside the EU/EEA and outside MiCA's scope entirely, running its own regime under the DLT Act and FINMA supervision instead. A license from any of the 30 EU/EEA passporting markets carries identical legal weight across the bloc — so the concentration among the top three isn't about who has better market access. It's about supervisory speed and institutional experience with crypto-asset service providers.

The jurisdiction you pick decides how fast you move, not whether you're allowed to.

For compliance teams still mapping an EU market-entry strategy, that's the practical takeaway. MiCA isn't a binary yes/no gate anymore — it's a question of which regulator's queue you're willing to join, and how long you can afford to wait in it.