From 30 June 2024, MiCA Title IV prohibits offering an e-money token to the public in the EEA — or admitting it to trading — unless the token is issued by an authorized issuer. USDT never obtained EMT authorization; USDC and EURC did (Circle, supervised by the French ACPR). The consequence played out across 2024–2025 as the largest coordinated delisting the EU crypto market has seen.
The timeline
Coinbase removed USDT for EEA users in December 2024. Bitstamp disabled USDT trading in January 2025, auto-converting balances to USDC. Crypto.com delisted USDT and nine other tokens for EEA users by 31 January 2025. Kraken completed its EEA delisting by March 2025. Bitpanda, Bybit EU, KuCoin EU, Coinmate, Bit2Me, Coinhouse, Deskoin, Meria, BTC Direct, Coinmerce and many mid-size platforms followed the same path — our desk research across the 114 exchange-and-transfer CASPs in the ESMA register found over twenty confirmed MiCA-driven USDT removals.
The nuance most summaries miss
Art 48(1) covers offering and admission to trading. Custody and transfer of an unauthorized EMT are not prohibited (ESMA Q&A 2404). That is why some venues moved to sell-only or withdrawal-only modes rather than full removal — and why a compliance tool has to distinguish the two, not flag every USDT touchpoint as a violation.
After 1 July 2026
The transitional period is over: national grandfathering has ended, and CASPs operate under full MiCA supervision. The open questions have moved on from “must we delist?” to ongoing ones — Travel Rule data completeness, unhosted-wallet verification, AML programme depth, and the reverse-solicitation boundary for groups with non-EU platforms. Those are exactly the areas a free MiCA check maps for your own profile.
Sources: MiCA (Reg. 2023/1114), ESMA MiCA Q&As, official venue announcements (Bitstamp, Kraken, Crypto.com, Coinbase).