The European Securities and Markets Authority has called on national authorities in the European Union (EU) to ensure that exchanges no longer make non-compliant stablecoins available for trading within the next two months.
The regulator has requested that the 27 member states of the European Union ensure that crypto-asset providers (CASPs) comply with their stablecoin rules “by the end of the first quarter of 2025 at the latest,” ESMA said in a statement on Friday.
“In practice, this means that CASPs operating a trading platform for cryptoassets are expected to stop producing all cryptoassets that would qualify as ARTs and EMTs but for which the issuer is not authorized in the EU ( “non-MiCA compliant ARTs and EMTs”) available for trading,” ESMA said. ARTs are asset-referenced tokens and EMTs are electronic money tokens.
The move would affect stablecoins that do not comply with EU laws, such as Tether’s USDT, if offered to EU customers. Major issuers have already taken steps to try to comply with MiCA. Tether announced in November that it was retiring its euro stablecoin, EURT. The company has not succeeded in obtaining an e-money license to operate in the EU. Circle received an e-money license in July.
Exchanges such as Gemini and Coinbase, which are registered in the EU, would have to delist unauthorized stablecoins, according to ESMA’s statement. Coinbase previously announced that it would remove such tokens last December.
“Given our commitment to compliance, we restricted the provision of services to retail, exchange and Prime Vault customers of Coinbase Europe Limited, Coinbase Germany GmbH and Coinbase Custody International Limited in connection with stablecoins that do not meet the MiCA- requirements from December 13, 2024,” a Coinbase spokesperson told CoinDesk on Tuesday.
The exchange “will evaluate reactivation services for stablecoins that achieve MiCA compliance at a later date,” the spokesperson said.
CoinDesk contacted Gemini for comment.
Read more: EU’s restrictive Stablecoin rules are coming into effect soon, and issuers are running out of time
