What is a CASP? Crypto-asset service providers under MiCA, explained

If you buy, sell or hold crypto-assets with a provider in the EU, that provider is typically a CASP — a crypto-asset service provider. (This is not necessarily true for self-custody, transfers between private persons, or providers outside the EU.) This article looks at what the term means and why it is worth knowing.

Under MiCA (the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation), a CASP is a legal person or other undertaking whose occupation or business is the provision of one or more crypto-asset services to clients on a professional basis — and which is authorised to do so under the Regulation.

The key word is the last one: a CASP is not simply "a crypto company", but an authorised provider.

MiCA lists ten services. Anyone providing any of them professionally in the EU needs authorisation:

1. custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients
2. operation of a crypto-asset trading platform
3. exchange of crypto-assets for funds
4. exchange of crypto-assets for other crypto-assets
5. execution of orders on behalf of clients
6. placing of crypto-assets
7. reception and transmission of orders
8. advice on crypto-assets
9. portfolio management on crypto-assets
10. transfer services on behalf of clients

An exchange, for example, typically covers several of these at once: it runs a trading platform, exchanges assets and holds clients' assets in custody.

Under Article 59 of MiCA, only two groups in the EU:

• those authorised as a CASP (under the procedure in Article 63), or
• certain financial institutions that are already supervised — credit institutions, central securities depositories, investment firms, market operators, e-money institutions and fund managers — after the notification required by Article 60 of MiCA.

An authorised CASP must have its registered office in the EU Member State where it carries out at least part of its services, and its effective management must be in the EU. Its authorisation names exactly which services it may provide.

Authorisation is granted by one Member State's authority — in Hungary, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (the central bank) — but the authorised provider may then offer its services across the whole EU. It does not need an office in every country: the provider notifies its own authority, which passes the information on to the other countries' authorities. This is known as "passporting".

In Hungary, MiCA is supplemented by the Crypto Act (Act VII of 2024), and the competent authority is the MNB. Since 1 July 2025, crypto-asset services may be provided there with a MiCA authorisation — or with an authorisation from another EU country, the "passport".

Because authorisation can be checked. ESMA, the EU's securities markets authority, keeps a public register of authorised providers; the data comes from national authorities. It is worth checking — but if a provider is missing, that alone does not prove it has no authorisation, because updates can lag. In that case, check the national authority's list as well (in Hungary, the MNB).

MiCA also says that someone who is not an authorised provider may not use a name, corporate name or marketing, or do anything else, that suggests it is one — or that is likely to cause confusion.

How to check the register step by step is covered in our previous article: How to check whether a crypto provider is authorised

• CASP = an authorised crypto-asset service provider in the EU.
• Ten services need authorisation: from custody through exchange to advice.
• One national authorisation is valid across the whole EU.
• In Hungary, the competent authority is the MNB; since 1 July 2025 an authorisation (or an EU passport) is required.
• Authorisation can be checked — and it is worth checking.

Next in the series: what changed when MiCA's transitional period ended?

Educational content, not investment, legal or tax advice. The official text of the Regulation is published in the Official Journal of the EU; this summary does not replace it.