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Exclusive: Losing the Regulatory Race, France Pushes to Shift CASP Supervision to ESMA

On Monday, the French financial supervisor (AMF) published an op-ed co-authored with its Italian and Austrian counterparts calling for the supervision of MiCA-regulated CASPs to be transferred to ESMA, the EU’s financial regulator.

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Maximilian Vargas & Louis Tellier
September 18, 2025

While others are putting up “open for stablecoin business” signs, the Bank of England isn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat. Officials are still considering caps — £10–20k for individuals, £10 million for businesses — a proposal floated back in July that’s now facing pushback from UK crypto groups.

The BoE’s concern? Large outflows from bank deposits that could strain credit supply and pose risks to financial stability.

And while it’s reasonable for non-U.S. economies to worry about dollar-backed stablecoins, UK policymakers might ask whether putting a speed limit on the internet of money really is the smartest move.

Today, we also talk about:

  • Exclusive: France wants to centralize CASP supervision under MiCA

  • WisdomTree adds tokenized private credit fund to portfolio

  • Swiss banks complete tokenized deposit trial on Ethereum

Call for Stablecoins: Today at 4:30 PM, we’re hosting a 60-minute industry call on stablecoins featuring speakers from Fireblocks, AllUnity, and Morpho. Join us and get the chance to put your stablecoin knowledge to the test. (link for registration)

HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

REGULATION

Exclusive: Losing the Regulatory Race, France Pushes to Shift CASP Supervision to ESMA

France wants a change: On Monday, the French financial supervisor (AMF) published an op-ed co-authored with its Italian and Austrian counterparts calling for the supervision of MiCA-regulated CASPs to be transferred to ESMA, the EU’s financial regulator.

  • Why it matters: Since January 2025, MiCA has been fully in force, allowing any company that secures a license in one EU country to passport its services across all 27 member states. So far, regulators have granted 56 licenses, but industry participants are warning of “significant divergences in implementation” across jurisdictions.

Loss of influence: France’s call for centralization comes against the backdrop of its own declining influence in the licensing race. After playing a leading role in shaping MiCA through its early crypto legislation, France has so far issued only 6 MiCA licenses, while Germany has already granted 18 and the Netherlands 14. But even more significant, not a single major player or exchange platform has chosen to set up headquarters in France.

Regulatory bet gone wrong: Once seen as a prime destination for global platforms such as OKX, Crypto.com, Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini, France has lost ground. Market participants point to the AMF’s slow approval process and a sudden shift to a stricter stance.

  • “The AMF’s strategy was to enforce one of the strictest versions of MiCA, but other countries such as Germany did not follow,” a source close to the regulator told Blockstories. “This push for consistency is also a way to bring France back into play by aligning others with its doctrine.”

A change of leadership: The shift coincides with the arrival of Marie-Anne Barbat-Layani, who became AMF president in October 2022 after serving as Director General of the French Banking Federation (FBF).

The thorny Binance case: Barbat-Layani’s tenure has been marked by the stalled MiCA licensing of Binance. Since the platform’s legal troubles in the United States and the launch of a French judicial investigation in 2023, the process has been frozen.

  • “As long as Barbat-Layani heads the AMF, it is difficult to see how Binance could be authorized in France. This is now a reputational and political issue,” several sources told Blockstories. Transferring supervision to ESMA would ease the pressure.

Reservations against Malta: According to our information, the AMF has also not taken kindly to Malta registering platforms that had initially considered France for their licensing. In comments to Reuters, the executive even raised the possibility of “refusing the EU passport” for certain players in France, without naming them directly. Acting in this way could seriously undermine one of MiCA’s fundamental principles.

  • An ally named ESMA: To support its argument, the AMF can point to a report published by ESMA last July, which highlighted certain leniencies shown by the Maltese regulator when registering a CASP, whose name was not disclosed.

What’s next: Transferring supervision to ESMA would raise numerous questions, such as the conditions for revoking licenses from certain players or supervising entities that the European regulator itself did not authorize.

  • A long legal process ahead: More importantly, such changes would require a vote in the European Parliament, triggering a legislative process of three to five years, according to several legal experts interviewed by Blockstories. “Transferring these powers was already on the table during the MiCA negotiations. But now, implementing it seems extremely difficult,” a European official sighed.

Yannick Müller is the Chief Revenue Officer of tradias, a MiCA-licensed Frankfurt-based digital asset specialist and trading infrastructure provider powering the crypto trading offerings of leading European fintechs such as Trade Republic and flatexDEGIRO.

We’re seeing similar dynamics in the discussions with potential clients and venues. A two-tiered MiCA may become a concern when different countries apply different supervisory standards, while restricting or withholding licensees unevenly. This drives firms toward the lightest regimes, where the cost of doing business appears lower. The result is distorted competition and a false incentive across Europe — undermining MiCA’s very purpose of harmonization.

It’s also worth stressing that this debate isn’t confined to just licensing. Local AML frameworks remain fragmented and can weigh just as heavily on firms’ operational choices.

Unless these gaps are addressed, whether through ESMA oversight or stronger coordination among national regulators, the EU risks penalizing rigor while rewarding leniency, with investor protection caught in the middle.

TOKENIZATION

WisdomTree Expands Its Tokenization Portfolio — What’s the Bigger Play?

First tokenized private credit fund: Last week, WisdomTree unveiled its first tokenized private credit fund (CRDT), available to both retail and institutional clients. The fund replicates the price and yield performance of the Gapstow Private Credit and Alternative Income Index, offering a regulated, onchain way to access one of the fastest-growing segments of the alternatives market.

  • Why it matters: With 13 tokenized funds, WisdomTree is the most active traditional asset manager in the space. Its tokenized money market fund, WTGXX, has already crossed $860 million in assets, making it the world’s second-largest tokenized money market fund after BlackRock’s BUIDL. The rest of the lineup, however, has yet to gain meaningful traction.

  • “The idea isn’t to tokenize one product in isolation, but to build a full shelf of money market, fixed income, equity, and allocation strategies to create diversified portfolios,” said Maredith Hannon, Head of Business Development for Digital Assets at WisdomTree.

Interview: With her, we spoke about why private credit was the natural next step, why fund shares remain the most practical entry point today, and how the firm is building distribution rails through WisdomTree Prime and WisdomTree Connect.

__________________

On why private credit is next:

“Private credit has become one of the fastest-growing areas in alternatives, but access has traditionally been limited to institutions. What we wanted to do with CRDT was bring that yield potential onchain in a tokenized fund.

The fund tracks an index made up of publicly traded investment vehicles that specialize in lending to smaller and mid-sized businesses, often paying out high dividends, as well as closed-end funds and REITs that generate income from credit markets.

For crypto-native investors, that means you can now hold private-credit-like income streams alongside your stablecoins, Bitcoin, or money market funds, all in the same digital wallet.”

On native tokenization vs. tokenizing funds:

“Today, the underlying assets we invest in are not natively tokenized. That’s why the most practical approach is to tokenize the fund shares. Even at this stage, it delivers the benefits of tokenization: 24/7 access, faster settlement, and onchain portability.

That doesn’t mean we stop there. Over time, as the underlying assets themselves move onchain, we’ll be able to shift closer to native tokenization. That’s the long-term goal. It would mean more automation, coupons, or interest payments flowing directly onchain, greater transparency, and potentially even same-day settlement.

For example, in our tokenized private credit fund, subscriptions can be processed the same day because the cash is immediately put to work. Redemptions, however, settle on a T+2 basis to align with the liquidity of the underlying vehicles. Distributions are currently made on a quarterly basis, reflecting how coupons flow from the portfolio.”

On driving distribution across retail (WisdomTree Prime) and institutional (WisdomTree Connect):

“We’ve built two distribution platforms. WisdomTree Prime is our U.S. retail super app. For example, you can buy a money market fund, and then spend directly off those holdings with a Visa card. The blockchain complexity is completely abstracted away.

On the institutional side, WisdomTree Connect is designed for B2B and B2B2C. Clients onboard once receive a KYC NFT tied to their wallet, and from then on they can access any of our tokenized funds within their existing custody setup. They can even transfer peer-to-peer with other verified wallets. It’s a way to scale adoption without forcing institutions into a closed ecosystem.

Most of the growth so far in 2025 has come from institutions using WisdomTree Connect — in particular stablecoin issuers, blockchain foundations, and CFOs/treasuries who need 24/7 access to money market funds and other yield products.”

On their stablecoin strategy for USDW:

“Our stablecoin, USDW, is already live. In WisdomTree Prime, it shows up as ‘cash,’ but it’s actually our stablecoin backing it. Today it’s used internally, but the roadmap is to open it externally, including on- and off-ramps into DeFi. So basically, you can think of USDW as the cash rail and our tokenized funds as the yield rail, with the goal of making movement between the two effortless.

That interplay becomes even more important in light of the GENIUS Act: with new standards for stablecoin reserves, our Government Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX) will be fully compliant well ahead of the deadline.

This way, the same infrastructure that lets our clients shift seamlessly between cash and yield can also serve other stablecoin issuers who need regulated reserve assets.”

On their near-term roadmap:

“The next six to twelve months are all about utility and distribution. We’ve already proven demand with our tokenized money market fund, which now has hundreds of millions in assets.

The focus now is expanding functionality: deeper integrations with DeFi under the right regulatory guardrails, higher-frequency yield distributions, and broadening the range of funds available through both WisdomTree Prime and WisdomTree Connect.”

A conversation with Thomas Frei, Head of Strategic Product Initiatives at Sygnum. On Tuesday, the bank — together with PostFinance and UBS — announced the completion of an interbank tokenized deposit trial on the Ethereum blockchain, conducted under the supervision of the Swiss Bankers Association.

  1. Rewiring Wall Street with Ethereum (Etherealize) — A report on the transition from traditional finance to onchain finance and what makes Ethereum the blockchain platform of choice.

  2. RWA Report 2025 (Dune) — A data-driven study of trends, asset classes, and leading protocols in RWA tokenization, highlighting the rise of treasuries, long bonds, and DeFi integration.

  3. What Is a Stablecoin? (McKinsey) — An explainer on the mechanics, risks, regulation, and institutional impact of stablecoins as they become core to the digital money ecosystem.

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Disclaimer: The information provided in the Institutional Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.

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