Why does code no longer rule in Europe?
MiCA and DORA: The ‘Moat’ of Stablecoins
The European crypto ecosystem has gone from self-regulation by code to a chessboard designed in Brussels. With MiCA now fully in force and DORA reinforced, users face a paradox: while their exchange delists assets for ‘security’ reasons, their traditional bank begins to offer its own tokens. This is no coincidence; it is an institutional design to recentralise value.
1. The end of laissez-faire for Stablecoins
Under MiCA, stablecoins are no longer neutral assets but are divided into Electronic Money Tokens (EMTs) or Asset-Referenced Tokens (ARTs).
THE BLOW TO LIQUIDITY – MiCA imposes a limit of €200 million on daily transactions for stablecoins that are not linked to the euro (such as USDT or USDC). In a global market, this is an artificial bottleneck that attempts to force volume towards the euro, making the most commonly used trading pairs less competitive.
THE LICENCE FILTER – Exchanges operating legally in the EU cannot afford to list assets without an e-money licence issuer. It is not that the assets are ‘irregular’ per se, it is that the cost of compliance creates a ‘moat’ that only issuers aligned with banks can jump.
2. DORA: When the Exchange must resemble a Bank
While MiCA monitors the token, DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act) monitors the infrastructure.
DORA requires exchanges to implement institutional-level audits, contingency plans, and penetration testing.
THE BACKGROUND – This law eliminates the technological agility of crypto platforms by imposing an administrative burden identical to that of a bank. This reduces the ability to innovate quickly and increases fees for the end user.
3. Banking privilege: Why them?
The law gives traditional banks an automatic competitive advantage:
INHERITED LICENCE – Banks are already authorised credit institutions. MiCA assumes that their supervision by the ECB is sufficient guarantee, allowing them to issue stablecoins with minimal bureaucracy compared to a native crypto company.
RESERVE CAPTURE – MiCA requires that up to 60% of stablecoin reserves be held in banks. In other words, crypto users’ money ends up, by law, feeding the balance sheets of traditional banks to ensure their liquidity.
4. DeFi: The big loser from ‘targeted ambiguity’
Decentralised finance (DeFi) enters a dangerous grey area that many analysts consider a direct attack on its existence on European soil:
THE PROBLEM OF THE “ISSUER” – MiCA requires each asset to have a responsible legal entity behind it. Who is the issuer of a currency issued by an ownerless smart contract? As they do not fit the definition, these assets are excluded from regulated exchanges, pushing DeFi to the margins.
SOVEREIGNTY VS. COMPLIANCE – DeFi protocols based on privacy and the lack of intermediaries clash head-on with the KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements imposed by MiCA and the new AML directives.
THE RESULT – A ‘permissioned DeFi’ or CeDeFi is being created, where only protocols that give up their decentralisation in favour of a legal banking structure will be able to operate legally, killing the original purpose of Web3.
5. What is behind it? The reconquest of the Euro
The masterstroke is clear: clean up the garden before the Digital Euro arrives. By limiting private stablecoins and favouring banks, the regulator ensures that users have no choice but to return to the banking system (this time tokenised) to move their capital.
Final reflection: The Dilemma of the New Digital Board
The implementation of MiCA and DORA marks the end of an era and the beginning of a continent-wide experiment. This is not a narrative of winners and losers, but rather a redefinition of trust. On the one hand, the crypto ecosystem gains legal legitimacy that it did not have before; on the other hand, that same legal certainty seems to have been tailored to the financial structures that already dominated the analogue scene.
The question that remains unanswered is not whether regulation is necessary, but what price stability comes at. By centralising the issuance of digital assets in entities with banking licences and subjecting exchanges to an institutional operational burden, Europe has drawn a clear line:
Is this the path to mass adoption that the crypto sector has always called for, or is it, on the contrary, a technical assimilation that dilutes the essence of decentralisation to turn it into a new banking product?
Time will tell whether this regulatory framework fosters a healthy symbiosis between banking and digital assets, or whether it has simply transferred the old walls of the traditional financial system to the world of code. Users, meanwhile, will have to decide whether they prefer the freedom of open source or the certainty of a monitored environment.
– THE BOARD IS IS READY…
NOW WE NEED TO SEE WHO MAKES THE NEXT MOVE –
Disclaimer: The information set forth herein should not be taken as financial advice or investment recommendation. All investments and trading involve risk and it is the responsibility of each individual to do his or her due diligence before making a decision.
