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MiCA, the EU's regulation for digital assets, comes into effect on July 1st. We're proud to announce that our banking partner Lightspark Payments Europe has successfully secured MiCA and EMI licences in Estonia. These licences are now mandatory. They also give us the foundation to build more complete banking products for Europeans over the coming months (i.e. third-party bank transfers).
The new rules bring stronger account security and two compliance requirements: the Travel Rule, which asks who is on each side of a transfer, and SCA (Strong Customer Authentication), which adds an additional layer of account security.
In terms of product changes, we've handled every requirement pragmatically, with Bitcoiners and clean UX in mind. Due to the nature of a "0% tolerance" switch into new systems and a complete cut-off of old ones on July 1st, we expect to have some downtime or degraded services during the first day, until we bring everything back to stability. Please plan your Bitcoin transactions around that date.
Here's what's changing and what you need to do.
🟠 ACTION REQUIRED: new IBAN for buying Bitcoin
You're getting a new EUR IBAN for buying Bitcoin. To keep converting EUR to BTC automatically on every deposit, we had to make a small adjustment to our architecture.
On July 1st, open your BUY page, re-confirm automatic Bitcoin conversions, and save your new IBAN.
A few things to know:
- LINK's IBAN with auto-DCA is unaffected. It keeps working as before.
- Old IBAN will still credit accidental deposits, but no longer auto-convert to Bitcoin. Do not transfer any more EUR to it, and delete it from your saved recipients.
🟠 ACTION REQUIRED: Re-confirm automatic conversions for selling Bitcoin
Just like with buys, to keep your automatic Bitcoin conversions running on the sell side, you'll need to open your SELL page on July 1st, and complete a one-time confirmation with an SMS OTP.
Once done, selling works as before.
Declaring your wallets
Every wallet you deposit from or withdraw to now needs a quick self-declaration: is it yours, someone else's, or an exchange.
If you ONLY ever transact between your own wallets, you will be able to auto-declare it in the settings (to be launched a few days after the initial release on July 1st). Then, we will not ask you to choose the wallet type each time you transact with a new address. This auto-declaration is especially helpful for users that are using NWC auto-topups via Lightning, because it allows you to continue spending from self-custody automatically.
Alternatively, if you transact with third-party counterparties, you'll be asked to declare their name and country once per wallet address. Except for deposits coming from exchanges: even if you re-use the same address, the name and country will have to be defined for each transaction, as exchanges often reuse the same addresses among many customers.
Additional rules for transactions over €1,000
- To enable transfers of €1,000+ from or to your own self-hosted wallet, you'll need to do a one-time liveness check to prove ownership. It's a quick selfie (just like a Face ID on your phone), and it's the fastest way to prove a wallet is yours. We believe this solution is much better than wallet signatures or complex satoshi tests.
- If you transact between other KYC'ed exchanges, you'll simply need to declare the counterparty's name and country.
- Third-party deposits and withdrawals are capped under €1,000 per transaction. Transfers of €1,000 or more will be rejected.
- Lightning deposits and withdrawals are capped under €1,000 per transaction regardless of the wallet type. Transfers of €1,000 or more will be rejected.
Passkeys coming soon!
We're implementing passkeys across the platform, which you'll be able to use instead of SMS and email OTP codes. It will be the easiest and safest way to:
- log in to your account
- confirm transactions
- check your card details
SMS and email OTPs will keep working as a fallback. We're launching passkeys in a couple of weeks.
TLDR; In short
Open your BUY and SELL pages to re-confirm automatic conversions and save your new IBAN, and declare your whitelisted wallet types to continue receiving and sending Bitcoin smoothly.
