The European Commission is looking for feedback contributions as they opened a public consultation on MiCA in May, inviting industry feedback through 31st of August on what a second-generation framework already known as MiCA 2.0 should tackle.
The list of commentary were endless, but one number explained the urgency better than anything else on how euro stablecoins account for less than 1% of the global stablecoin volume, according to DeFiLlama data despite Euro's commanding role in world trade.
The gap wasn't noted as a market failure but rather a policy outcome and it traced directly back to two MiCA rules that the industry wants removed or rebuilt. The ban on interest payments puts euro stablecoins under a clear disadvantage compared to bank deposits and foreign stablecoins with expected yields, second the requirement that significant issuers hold at least 60% of reserves in bank deposits is a restriction not found in major stablecoin regulations elsewhere.
A joint report from the ECB official Ulrich Bindseil and Blockchain for Europe's Erwin Voloder put it rather straightforward “the combination of strict safeguards and zero interest has created a safe but structurally uncompetitive euro stablecoin segment.”
The stablecoin market despite no actionable change from the MiCA rules is changing accordingly. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino confirmed in April 2026 that MiCA's 60% bank deposit reserve requirement is fundamentally incompatible with the company's business model, so it did not apply for authorization. As a result, Coinbase, Kraken, Crypto.com, and Binance have slowly removed USDT trading pairs from European venues. The beneficiary, so far, is Circle's USDC but if European exchange books increasingly route through compliant alternatives, the wider market effect will depend on how much activity changes rather than disappears.
The person who arguably knows the framework best is less panicked than the industry. Peter Kerstens, one of MiCA's architects and a European Commission adviser, told attendees at the WAIB Summit Monaco 2026 that he does not believe MiCA is outdated but acknowledged the consultation will help reconfigure next steps as the framework approaches its July 1 transitional deadline. On DeFi specifically, Kerstens took a harder line, he argued that regulating DeFi would be difficult because laws apply to people and organizations, not computer networks, and questioned why DeFi should be regulated at all if no clear problem can be identified.
That view puts him at odds with how lawyers on the ground read the current setup. The dual licensing concern requiring both MiCA authorization and payment services licenses for EMT custody results in duplicated oversight and double compliance costs, a headlock industry leaders warn undermines euro stablecoin competitiveness.
The August 31 deadline closes the comment window, but any concrete legislation is distant. MiCA contains a built-in review clause requiring the Commission to report on its application by June 30, 2027, with the option to accompany that review with legislative proposals. Between now and then, the euro stablecoin market will keep losing ground to dollar alternatives which may arguably be the most persuasive submission Brussels receives.