The Crypto Asset Act (MİCA), which was first announced by the European Union in 2020 and passed by the European Parliament in 2023, came into force on December 30.
Tether’s market value fell by over 1% as it remains unclear whether the largest stablecoin USDT is compliant with MICA regulations.
At this point, Tether had its biggest weekly drop since the FTX crash.
This move by Tether comes after some cryptocurrency exchanges in the European Union and Coinbase decided to delist USDT due to the EU’s MiCA law.
According to the MİCA regulation, stablecoin issuers must have a MiCA license and meet certain conditions in order to be publicly traded within the EU. Therefore, EU-based investors will be able to continue holding USDT in non-custodial wallets, but will not be able to trade on MİCA-compliant centralized exchanges.
Given USDT’s central importance in the crypto market, the decline has raised speculation that a broader market downturn could be imminent. However, analysts have noted that the decline in Tether could be limited to Europe.
Karen Tang, head of APAC at Orderly Network, stated that the MICA regulation will not harm USDT’s market dominance.
“MiCA regulations are not expected to harm USDT’s market dominance.
Because the largest volume of USDT occurs in Asia and the USA.
These regulations slow down EU digital asset innovation, which is already slow due to complex over-regulation.”
Cryptocurrency analyst Bitblaze noted that most of the Tether volume occurs in Asia, and said that the delisting decision of Coinbase and European exchanges due to MiCA will have a very limited impact on Tether.
“USDT is the largest stablecoin with a market cap of $138.5 billion and a daily trading volume of $44 billion.
As of today, 80% of USDT’s trading volume comes from Asia, so delisting in the EU will not have a significant impact on its market dominance.”
*This is not investment advice.
