France pushes tougher MiCA limits
The Bank of France is urging the EU to tighten MiCA rules so non‑euro stablecoins face stricter payment limits and to require wallet reporting above €5,000. Paris says current MiCA provisions don’t fully address the monetary‑sovereignty and enforcement risks tied to dollar‑pegged stables, signalling a more restrictive European approach to stablecoin payments. That push could reshape liquidity patterns for platforms that rely on US‑denominated stables in EU markets. (tradingview.com) (pymnts.com)
France is trying to close two doors at once: one in Brussels and one in Paris. In late March, Bank of France First Deputy Governor Denis Beau said the European Union should tighten its stablecoin rules because dollar-backed tokens could push parts of Europe’s payment system toward “stablecoinisation” and “dollarisation.” (banque-france.fr) The Brussels door is called the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, the European Union law that sets one rulebook for crypto issuers and trading platforms across the bloc. It already treats stablecoins as a special category and gives supervisors power to step in when they become widely used for payments. (eur-lex.europa.eu) Under that law, a stablecoin starts looking systemically important when people use it like cash at scale inside one currency area. The trigger in the legal text is more than 1 million transactions a day and more than €200 million in daily value tied to use “as a means of exchange.” (eur-lex.europa.eu) France’s complaint is that these guardrails still leave too much room for non-euro coins, especially dollar coins, to become the rails for everyday payments in Europe. Beau said the risk is not just crypto volatility but the possibility that settlement moves outside the control of the euro area’s own monetary system and outside European firms. (banque-france.fr) That sounds abstract until you picture a French shopper paying a merchant in a token pegged to the US dollar instead of in bank money linked to the euro. If enough commerce shifts onto a foreign-currency token issued by a non-European company, Europe loses some control over the plumbing that moves money. (banque-france.fr) The second door is domestic reporting. France’s National Assembly adopted a provision on April 7, 2026, in an anti-fraud bill that would require taxpayers to declare self-custodied crypto wallets when holdings exceed €5,000 in fair value, according to multiple reports citing the parliamentary move. (coinalertnews.com) (msn.com) A self-custodied wallet is the crypto version of keeping cash in your own safe instead of in a bank account. France is targeting that corner because coins held there are harder for tax and enforcement authorities to see than assets sitting on a licensed exchange. (msn.com) This is not France acting in a vacuum. The European Securities and Markets Authority said in January 2025 that crypto platforms in the European Union should stop offering trading in stablecoins whose issuers are not authorized under the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, with national regulators expected to enforce compliance by the end of the first quarter of 2025. (esma.europa.eu) So the French push is less a sudden crackdown than a harder second draft of Europe’s crypto policy. First came a continent-wide licensing regime; now Paris is arguing that payment caps for non-euro stablecoins should be tighter and wallet visibility should go deeper. (eur-lex.europa.eu) (banque-france.fr) If that view wins support in Brussels, platforms serving European users may have to rely less on United States dollar stablecoins for trading pairs, payments, and on-chain settlement. The likely winners would be euro-denominated tokens, European banks building tokenized deposits, and any payment system that keeps settlement closer to the euro area’s own institutions. (banque-france.fr)
