We covered MiCA last month as a regulatory framework. That framework has now become an operating reality. On 1 July 2026 the transition period ended: the window during which crypto service providers could keep operating in the EU under old national regimes. From that day the prohibition on providing crypto services without authorisation applies in full, with no grace periods left.

For an ordinary investor this is not a legal curiosity. It is a practical question with a direct tax consequence, and most people will only realise it when an email lands telling them the platform is discontinuing services for EU clients and they have thirty days to settle their account.

What exactly ended on 1 July

Article 143(3) of MiCA allowed entities that were lawfully providing crypto services before 30 December 2024 to continue until 1 July 2026, or until authorisation was granted or refused, whichever came first. Member states were free to shorten this period but not to extend it. It was an outer limit, not a recommendation.

Two details are easy to miss. First: a pending application is not a licence. A platform that applied for CASP authorisation but did not receive a decision by 1 July cannot keep serving clients. It has to suspend EU-facing operations regardless of how far along its application is. Second: under the transitional regime a platform could not use the European passport, meaning it could not passport a single authorisation across borders. That only becomes available once a licence is actually granted.

National regulators are now moving into enforcement. In its statement on the end of the transitional periods, published in April 2026, ESMA confirmed that providing crypto services without authorisation after this date is a breach of Union law, irrespective of how any individual member state implemented the regulation.

Slovakia moved even earlier

Slovakia opted for a shorter transition period than the European maximum. For providers established in Slovakia it ended around the turn of 2025 and 2026, so since 1 January 2026 nobody may provide crypto-asset services here without authorisation from the National Bank of Slovakia.

In practice this means two calendars running at once. Slovak exchange offices and platforms had to be compliant at the start of the year. Foreign exchanges serving Slovak clients from another member state had until 1 July. And those are the ones that matter to most Slovak investors, because few people trade exclusively through a domestic provider.

How to verify whether your exchange is licensed

Verification takes minutes and there is no reason to postpone it. There are three reliable routes. The first is the MiCA register maintained by ESMA, which lists every authorised CASP in the European Union. The second is the register of the National Bank of Slovakia, if the provider holds a Slovak authorisation. The third is simply asking the exchange's support team for the authorisation number and the name of the authority that issued it. Public search tools that aggregate the European registers also exist.

An answer along the lines of "we are working on the licence" or "our application is in progress" currently means exactly the same thing as "we do not have a licence". Be equally careful with the claim that a platform operates "under a partner company". A European passport can be derived from a licensed entity within a group, but only if that entity genuinely provides the service in question. A shared brand is not enough.

If the platform will not give you a specific authorisation number, treat that as your answer.

Tax trap number one: a forced exit is not merely a transfer

Here is the core of the matter, and the part missing from the general coverage of MiCA. When a platform winds down its EU business it usually offers two options: transfer your assets elsewhere, or have your positions closed and the balance paid out.

Those two options have radically different tax consequences.

Transferring your coins to your own wallet or another account of yours is not a taxable event. There is no sale and no exchange, only a change of custody. Moving BTC from a closing exchange to a hardware wallet is equally tax-neutral.

If, however, the platform closes your positions, converts them into euros or into a stablecoin and sends you the result, that is a realisation of gain. The Slovak Income Tax Act has no concept of an involuntary sale. It does not care whether you wanted to sell or were forced out. The taxable moment is the exchange of a crypto-asset for euros, for another crypto-asset, for goods or for services. A forced conversion meets that definition exactly as if you had clicked "sell" yourself.

And note: an exchange into a stablecoin is still an exchange into another crypto-asset. If the platform converts your BTC into USDT while closing your account, you have a taxable event even though you never saw a single euro.

The consequence is unpleasant. The gain lands in 2026, the first year of the four-band progressive tax running from 19 percent to 35 percent, on top of which come health contributions of 16 percent. At higher amounts the combined burden approaches 51 percent. There is no holding-period test for directly held crypto, so it does not help that you have held the coins since 2017. And the tax is payable in cash, even if you immediately bought back the same position on another exchange.

Tax trap number two: your transaction history disappears with the exchange

This trap is quieter but more expensive. The tax base is the difference between the sale price and the demonstrable acquisition cost. If you cannot document the acquisition cost, the tax office will not accept it and will tax the entire sale proceeds.

Imagine you bought BTC for 8,000 € in 2019 on an exchange that is now closing. In 2026 you sell it for 60,000 €. With a transaction export in hand you are taxed on a gain of 52,000 €. Without it, once the platform has switched off its servers and its support desk, you cannot prove the 8,000 € and your tax base becomes the full 60,000 €. At these numbers the difference in tax and contributions easily exceeds 4,000 €. All because of one file you did not download.

Platforms that are shutting down have no obligation to keep your data available indefinitely. Support goes offline, account access is closed and emails go unanswered. Downloading the complete history is therefore the very first thing to do, and that applies even to exchanges where your balance is zero. What matters is the purchase history, not the current account balance.

What MiCA does not cover

Two clarifications, so that nobody panics unnecessarily. MiCA regulates crypto-asset service providers, not you as a holder. A non-custodial wallet, where you hold the keys, is not a service and needs no licence. Moving to a Ledger, a Trezor or a software wallet is legal, safe and tax-neutral.

MiCA also does not cover securities. If you hold crypto exposure through an ETN or an ETC with a regulated broker, you are in MiFID territory, not MiCA, and 1 July did not touch you. As a reminder of what we covered in our ETF, ETC and ETN article: an individual who holds such a security admitted to trading on a regulated market for more than one year has the income from its sale exempt under §9(1)(k) of the Income Tax Act. The specific product always needs to be assessed on its own terms.

On a licensed exchange, reporting begins

Moving to a licensed platform has one more consequence worth anticipating. Licensed providers are precisely the ones that, since 1 January 2026, are required to record client and transaction data under the DAC8 directive and the global CARF framework. The first report to the Financial Administration covers the whole of 2026, after which the data is exchanged automatically between tax administrations.

This does not make a licensed exchange the worse choice. It means the 2026 tax return will be filed into an environment where the state holds its own copy of your data. Any discrepancy between what you declare and what the exchange reports will surface automatically. Anyone who was thinking of quietly leaving the movements from a closing exchange out of the picture should reconsider.

What to do this month

The steps are simple and take one afternoon. Verify that every platform you use holds a valid CASP authorisation and write down the authorisation number. Download the complete transaction history from every exchange and wallet you have ever used, including those with a zero balance, and store it in two places. If a platform has notified you that it is ending its services, choose a transfer of assets over a euro payout wherever you can, and do not leave it until the final days before closure. And if a forced conversion has already happened to you, record the date, the amount and the exchange rate, because those three figures are exactly what you will need come March.

Regulation is not a reason to panic, and a licensed market is ultimately safer for anyone holding crypto. Only one thing is genuinely costly: discovering the tax consequences after the exchange is offline and the export can no longer be downloaded.

This article is a general overview, not individual tax advice. If your platform is closing, you have been through a forced conversion, or your transaction history is scattered across five exchanges, kryptotax.sk will prepare your tax return turnkey, including processing the exports and establishing acquisition costs. Get in touch. 🇸🇰