
Italy and France are gaining, and Belgium is missing in action.
The DL News Europe Crypto Tracker has a few surprising results, with many of it being a surprise.
With the markets in crypto-assets law, or MiCA, set to come into effect by the end of 2024, we wanted to see which locale will be the next crypto hub in the European Union.
DL News gathered data from every crypto registry we could gather across the 27-member bloc.
In a recent blog, we reported that Poland led the pack thanks to its simple and affordable process for registering crypto firms.
A true eye-opener, officials in Czechia responded to our longstanding request for crypto registration data and the result was a true eye-opener: The Ministry of Finance said that there were 9,372 virtual asset service providers, or VASPs, registered in the Central European nation as of May 2022.
It is 10 times the second-place of Poland.
Of those groups, 83% are individuals.
A third of Poland's 971 entities are individuals, making it easier for individual applicants to qualify as crypto legal entities.
In a letter to DL News, Jiri Beran, the director of the Financial Markets Department in the Czech Ministry of Finance, said it wasn't possible to provide a complete list of VASPs at this time.
It's likely that more than 14 companies have registered in the last 14 months.
While running down the list, several takeaways jump out:
At the top, 96% of the 11,474 crypto entities are registered in five nations, including Czechia, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, and France. The other six countries have less than 10 registrants, Hungary, Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, Finland and Latvia.
The rules surrounding the creation of cryptocurrency firms in the EU are bound to change profoundly in 2024. Unlike the muddled regulatory scene in the US, the MiCA law will provide much-needed clarification for crypto ventures.
The EU-based MiCA will replace the existing systems in EU countries with a uniform set of rules to license crypto firms.
France and Malta are already tailoring their domestic crypto regimes to MiCA.
And that's a big plus for heavy hitters like Binance and eToro, the Israeli-British discount broker, both of which have registered under its new MiCA-compliant licence in France.
By installing rules now for a post-MiCA world, regulatory authorities may provide businesses with something they crave: predictability.
Our data suggest that this trend will accelerate in the months to come and shake up the race to become Europe's top crypto hub.