Lending Sits Outside MiCA, and Banks Know It
Crypto lending is the clearest regulatory gap in the sector. MiCA authorises ten crypto-asset services and lending is not among them, so a CASP licence does not cover a lending book. In their January 2025 report, the EBA and ESMA found that EU Member States generally had not introduced specific rules for crypto lending, although some activities could fall under existing national financial services law.[2] General financial, consumer-credit, and anti-money-laundering rules apply where the activity falls within their scope.
Lending platforms are therefore underwritten on their own documentation rather than on a regulator’s. Every control a licensed firm would evidence by pointing at its authorisation, a lending platform has to evidence directly.
Four Tests Decide the File, and Rehypothecation Comes First
Rehypothecation policy. This is the single question that decides the conversation: whether pledged collateral is re-used, and if so on what terms and with what disclosure. Centralised lending platforms were at the centre of the 2022 failures in this sector: Celsius and Voyager had lent or invested client assets in risky or illiquid positions they could not unwind when withdrawals came,[2] and institutions have not forgotten. A platform that does not re-use collateral should say so first and prove it, because the assumption in the absence of a clear answer is that it does.
Collateral, margin, and liquidation. Loan-to-value bands, margin-call mechanics, liquidation triggers, and what happens in a gap move when liquidation cannot execute at the trigger price. Institutions ask for the stress case, not the base case.
Segregation and insolvency treatment. Whether borrower collateral and lender funds are segregated from the platform’s own balance sheet, and what a holder’s position would be in an insolvency. An honest answer that the position is unsecured is better received than an implied protection that does not exist.
Consumer versus institutional. A retail-facing product extending credit in official currency to consumers may fall under national consumer-credit rules, with disclosure, affordability and conduct obligations where applicable. Lending crypto-assets themselves requires a product- and jurisdiction-specific assessment. National measures implementing the revised Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) apply from 20 November 2026.[3] A platform serving only institutional counterparties presents a materially simpler file, and structuring for that is a legitimate route to bankability.
The Fiat Leg Is the Placement
Most of a lending platform’s activity is on-chain and needs no bank. The bank matters for the fiat leg: drawdowns paid out in currency, repayments received, interest settled, and the operating business itself. That is a smaller flow than an exchange’s but a more scrutinised one, because each movement is credit-related.
Where the platform holds client fiat at any point, whether client-money or safeguarding rules apply depends on the jurisdiction and on how the funds are held. Where the entity is also a CASP, MiCA Article 70(2) and (3) apply to clients’ funds other than e-money tokens that its business model or crypto-asset services require it to hold, unless it is itself a credit institution, EMI or payment institution: those funds must be placed with a central bank or credit institution by the end of the following business day and held separately identifiable.[1]
Platforms that never touch client fiat, settling only in crypto and paying out through a licensed third party, avoid the hardest part of the placement, and that is worth designing for.
Client Fiat Is the Only Hard Layer in the Stack
| Layer | Institution | Difficulty | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operating account | Bank or specialist EMI | Moderate; unregulated status is the friction | 6–12 weeks |
| Drawdown and repayment rail | EMI with high per-item limits | Moderate; per-item limits are the constraint | 6–12 weeks |
| Client fiat (if held) | Credit institution | Hard; often the reason to avoid holding it | 3–6 months |
| Treasury | Bank or EMI | Routine | 2–6 weeks |
Pricing sits in the elevated band because the profile is unregulated rather than because volumes are risky: expect specialist EMI maintenance of €500 to €1,000 a month and enhanced ongoing review. Ranges are indicative across the partner network as of .
How Jagelski & Partners Helps
Lending placement starts by establishing what the platform actually is, because the regulatory gap means two businesses with the same description can present entirely different risk. Institutional-only, no rehypothecation, no client fiat held is a placeable profile. Retail-facing, collateral re-used, client fiat on the balance sheet is frequently not, and we say which one the case is at the assessment stage.
The assessment then covers the fiat leg specifically, since that is what a bank actually touches. It also covers the collateral and liquidation documentation institutions ask for, and the segregation position as it would stand in an insolvency.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. MiCA authorises ten crypto-asset services and lending is not among them, so a CASP licence does not cover a lending book. In their January 2025 report, the EBA and ESMA found that EU Member States generally had not introduced specific rules for crypto lending, although some activities could fall under existing national financial services law.
General financial, consumer-credit, and anti-money-laundering rules apply where the activity falls within their scope; a CASP licence alone does not settle the lending permission.
The opposite. A licensed firm hands a bank a supervisor to rely on; an unregulated platform hands it a judgement call, and institutions price judgement calls conservatively or decline them.
Every control a licensed firm evidences by pointing at its authorisation, a lending platform has to evidence directly.
Rehypothecation: whether pledged collateral is re-used, on what terms, and with what disclosure. The 2022 failures in this sector, Celsius and Voyager among them, came from platforms that had lent or invested client assets in risky or illiquid positions they could not unwind, and institutions have not forgotten.
A platform that does not re-use collateral should say so first and prove it, because the assumption in the absence of a clear answer is that it does.
Loan-to-value bands, margin-call mechanics, liquidation triggers, and specifically what happens in a gap move when liquidation cannot execute at the trigger price. Institutions ask for the stress case rather than the base case.
A model that only describes orderly liquidation has not answered the question that matters.
Substantially. A retail-facing product extending credit in official currency to consumers may fall under national consumer-credit rules, with disclosure, affordability and conduct obligations where applicable. Lending crypto-assets themselves requires a product- and jurisdiction-specific assessment. National measures implementing the revised Consumer Credit Directive (CCD2) apply from 20 November 2026.
A platform serving only institutional counterparties presents a materially simpler file, and structuring for institutional-only is a legitimate route to bankability rather than a workaround.
The fiat leg: drawdowns paid in currency, repayments received, interest settled, and the operating business. Most of the activity is on-chain and needs no bank at all. That is a smaller flow than an exchange’s but more scrutinised, because every movement is credit-related rather than transactional.
Often, and it is worth designing for. Settling only in crypto and paying out through a licensed third party avoids the hardest part of the placement, which is a client-fiat account at a credit institution running three to six months.
Where client fiat is held, check which client-money or safeguarding rules apply in the jurisdiction, whether or not MiCA safeguarding is engaged.
Pricing sits in the elevated band because the profile is unregulated rather than because the volumes are risky. Expect specialist EMI maintenance of 500 to 1,000 euro a month plus enhanced ongoing review.
Ranges are indicative across the partner network as of June 2026.
Operating and rail accounts run 6 to 12 weeks, longer than for a licensed firm because the diligence is direct rather than delegated to a supervisor. A client-fiat account, where required, runs three to six months.
No. Jagelski & Partners is paid by the institution that takes the business, through a referral or revenue-share arrangement, not by a fee billed to the client. The pricing is the institutional rate, with no markup and no onboarding fee.
Ready to Find Out Whether the Profile Is Placeable As Structured?
Book an assessment. We establish what the platform actually is on rehypothecation, retail exposure, and client fiat, then an introduced specialist places the fiat leg against institutions whose appetite admits an unregulated credit profile. Where it will not place as presented, we say so at the assessment stage. No markup on institutional pricing. No onboarding fee.
References
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- European Union, Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), Article 70 (safeguarding of clients’ funds: deposit with a central bank or credit institution by the end of the following business day, separately identifiable); Title V applicable from , eur-lex.europa.eu, accessed .
- EBA and ESMA, Joint Report on recent developments in crypto-assets (Article 142 of MiCA), ESMA75-453128700-1391, paragraph 9 (no specific national rules on crypto lending) and Annex 8 (failures of Celsius and Voyager), , esma.europa.eu, accessed .
- European Union, Directive (EU) 2023/2225 on credit agreements for consumers (CCD2), Article 48 (national measures adopted and published by and applied from ), eur-lex.europa.eu, accessed .