MiCA’s Hollow Victory: Euro Stablecoins Hit 91% Dominance, But Liquidity is fractured
MiCA-compliant tokens captured 91% of the market, but a liquidity mismatch between Bitvavo, Kraken, and Binance is silently killing execution quality.
The Regulatory Win That Broke Market Structure
European regulators got exactly what they wanted: total compliance. They also got a market that doesn’t work.
According to a new Kaiko Research report, MiCA-compliant stablecoins, led by Circle’s EURC and Banking Circle’s EURI, have captured a staggering 91% of the European market share as of November 2024. The non-compliant giants are gone. Tether’s EURT is history.
But this victory lap hides a critical failure in market plumbing. While regulated stablecoins are booming, the actual trading infrastructure has fractured into two distinct, disconnected tiers.
The Venue Gap: Where the Coins Are vs. Where the Liquidity Is
The problem is location. The venues attracting the most stablecoin volume are not the venues providing the best execution.
Data reveals a stark divergence. Bitvavo and Kraken currently command the deepest order books for Euro pairs, with Bitvavo alone handling approximately 50% of spot EUR volume. These platforms offer the tightest spreads for BTC-EUR and ETH-EUR pairs, making them the efficient choice for institutional capital.
Conversely, the surge in MiCA-compliant stablecoin volume is concentrated elsewhere, heavily driven by Binance (following its listing of EURI) and Coinbase. The result? A liquidity mismatch.
The venues with the tightest euro spreads are not where euro stablecoin trading dominates.
Traders holding the new breed of compliant stablecoins on major international exchanges often face wider spreads and thinner order books than those interacting directly with fiat rails on localized European giants.
Execution Quality is the Casualty
This fragmentation imposes a hidden tax on the European ecosystem. For a trader, holding a “safe” MiCA-compliant token like EURC on a venue with poor EUR liquidity means paying a premium on every trade. Slippage is the price of regulatory certainty.
While the Euro trade volume surged to €12 billion weekly in November, the efficiency of that capital is being stifled. The market has split: highly efficient fiat gateways on one side, and a compliant-but-segregated stablecoin playground on the other.
Until arbitrage corridors between these two liquidity pools mature, European crypto remains a two-speed economy.
