A decision every country made in 2024 is still deciding who holds the licences.
MiCA let each member state give its existing crypto firms up to eighteen months of cover while they applied for authorisation. Six states gave six months. Spain gave eighteen. The firms that faced the earliest deadline were authorised first, and they have spent the intervening period passporting into everyone else’s market — including this one. The CNMV register still carries the imprint of that choice.
A MiCA authorisation is the same instrument wherever it is issued. It passports across the European Economic Area, and a firm authorised in Vilnius has exactly the same access to Spanish clients as one authorised in Madrid. That is the design, and it means the choice of home state is not a choice of market. It is a choice of regulator, timetable and cost base.
So why did so few firms choose Spain? Part of the answer is simply that Spain had a smaller pre-MiCA crypto sector than France, Malta or the Netherlands. But part of it is a decision made in 2024 that nobody presented as a competitive one.
What each state chose, and how many of its firms now serve Spain
Article 143(3) allowed a transitional period of up to eighteen months for firms already operating under national law. Member states notified their choice to the Commission and ESMA by mid-2024. The third column counts entries in the Spanish CNMV register whose home state is that country.
Grandfathering periods as notified by member states under article 143(3) and published by ESMA. Register counts are entries whose home state is that country; for Spain the figure is CASPs authorised by the CNMV and excludes the six Spanish credit institutions. Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway appear as EEA states.
The timing is not a coincidence
Group the register by what the firm’s home state chose, and take the median date from which each firm became entitled to provide services in Spain.
| The state chose | States in the register | Firms serving Spain | Median start date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six months | 4 | 31 | 18 December 2025 |
| Nine to twelve months | 6 | 44 | 16 December 2025 |
| Eighteen months | 10 | 87 | 24 June 2026 |
A firm in Amsterdam had until the middle of 2025 and no longer. A firm in Madrid had until July 2026. Both ended up with the same passport, but one of them had it a year earlier, into a market where nobody else was yet authorised. That is the whole of the first-mover effect, and it was handed out by a notification letter in 2024.
Worth weighing
- Regulator throughput and predictability. Some authorities had a national crypto regime and the staff to run it. Others started from nothing.
- The language of the file. A full application in Spanish is a different project from one in English, and it shapes who you can hire to write it.
- Where your people actually are. Authorisation requires real management in the home state. This is the constraint that decides most cases honestly.
- Cost base. Own funds are the higher of the Annex IV floor and a quarter of fixed overheads, so the overheads you run in the home state feed directly into your capital requirement.
Not a reason to choose
- Market access. The passport is identical. No home state gives you better access to Spanish clients than any other.
- The capital floors. 50,000, 125,000 and 150,000 euro are set in MiCA, not nationally.
- The substance of the obligations. Conduct, custody segregation, complaints, disclosure and prudential rules come from the Regulation directly.
- Escaping supervision. The host authority supervises your conduct in its market regardless of who issued the licence.
The honest version of this advice is uncomfortable for a Spanish firm to give. If your management, staff and operations are in Spain, you licence in Spain, and the fact that Lithuanian firms got a head start is history rather than a reason to relocate. Shopping for a home state where you have no real presence produces an application that fails on substance, and a regulator that has already returned thin files will return that one too.
Can I licence in a small member state and operate entirely from Spain?
Is a Spanish licence worth less than a Maltese or French one?
Does the CNMV supervise a firm that passported in?
What if I already trade in Spain with no licence anywhere?
The passport is the same everywhere. Where your people sit is not.
Scope the application ↗Alexander Baranov
Seventeen years designing and delivering cross-border corporate structures — incorporation, tax, holding, banking and market entry — for founders and companies expanding into Spain and the EU. Author of professional books on entering the Spanish market.
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