# Alexandru Stanescu - How to Structure and Comply With Launching Your Token in 2026 in Europe

- Channel: [ETHCluj Meetup](https://streameth.org/ethcluj-meetup)
- Date: 2026-09-09
- Duration: 26:08
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-yKvm11BCxC4
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKvm11BCxC4

## Description

The reality of launching a token or running a CASP in Europe in 2026 - drawn from live licensing files. What regulators actually push back on, and where the decentralization carve-out holds and breaks.

## Transcript

Morning everyone. My name is Alexandro. I'm here with Mihi. We are from Lexter's law firm and we would like to tell you more about how to launch your token in 2026 in the European Union. And for that we prepared a sort of a workshop. It's going to be pretty dynamic. Hopefully, you'll have questions. Um, and we would like to uh speak today how you would need to launch your token in Europe that you need a white paper. We would also be discussing about the this strange word called crypto asset service providers. We know that we are in a community of builders who care more about DeFi, but we also need to to take into account what's going to be centralized and what's going to be decentralized. so that you know when you build your product uh how it is going to be uh received by the authorities and the new regulations in the European market. So here we are. Let's uh discuss first about Mika and you would say look we are building products globally. So you don't we don't care only about Europe. However as a rule of thumb whenever you launch a token even if you launch it from Dubai or you launch it from France or Hong Kong as long as you would want to sell it to European or offering to the trading to European customers then you need a Mika white paper. And what's important for you to know is that this white paper is not like the white papers of 10 years ago when you'd write some, you know, marketing interesting ideas. It really needs to be well structured to have a couple of very clear statements. And why is that important? First, because you would not be able to sell it in Europe without that. And second, you have uh liability as a founder who's launching the token. You really have liability on that. So basically on your statements you have professional and personal liability. So make sure that what you put in the white paper it's in conformity with reality. So no more uh you know we're going to grow to the moon without being backed you know by by by facts and um good and clear assumptions about your token. These are the four questions that you need to answer when you are preparing for your token launch. Um, as you know in Europe, if you want to sell it via uh if you want to launch the token via Launchpad, um it's one thing if you want to um launch your token via crypto crypto exchange, a regulated crypto exchange, it's another thing. However, what boils down to is that crypto checks will be asking for the white paper. They will not be able to list you Europe without the white paper. And second if you even if you launch on an ICO or if you launch on the launchpad again you need to have published the white paper. Uh the four questions is first it's a sort of a legal classification. If your token it's really in relation to something which is a solution which is centralized or decentralized. We have a couple of exceptions in the mika and we need to read them carefully. For example, airdrops or free tokens are in general not within the mika. So you can send airdrops or you can launch if you don't ask for money for it or for another sort of economic value >> even without KYC. Even without KYC KYC so Mika does not cover we we are so Mika covers the the the the offering of the token the KYC and AML it's another framework but in general you know airdrops technically they are possible without any KYC you just you know airdrop it um the second question that you must ask if uh there's no offer to the public or admission to Tedic in the EU why Because if you're doing it via nice or launchpad, you have a one type of form. If you are working with the crypto exchange, you are working with another type of form when you when you build the the the white paper. And the type of information differs. Um you really need to in Europe, for example, if you want to launch it from Europe now, you need to be um an entity. So no more garage type of token launches. You you really need to create your you know limited company in order to be able to to offer to the public your your token. Uh that's why it's important to clearly identify who's launching the token. Uh so it's very difficult to launch a token only with an anonymous team like it happened in the past. uh in the white paper you'll need to identify who's launching the token because with every token with every white paper comes a promise we are giving you this token and we expect you know for our project to do x y z and those need to be backed by real you know persons by you know identified people um >> this is why the liability of the management is also very important in that regard >> yeah so this changes you are liable on the statements you're not liable if the product will go well or bad. This is an assumption of risk. It's normal. It doesn't mean that you you need to be super successful. But even if you fail as a project, you you you need to make sure that whatever you put in the white paper at the time of publishing was real information. That's the most important part. So on that you'd have liability if you lied basically to the public or not. Um and here on the marketing deck, Mihi, you have the floor. You can tell more because we've wor and you know we are not speaking about this theor theoretically. Uh we've been working on Mika white papers from last year. I think we've helped 10 uh various blockchain projects >> to enter on the European market. Yeah, >> most of them from Asia. We've seen a lot of interest from Asia. they are launching it in Asia but they also want to come to the European market and then they work with us on uh defining their white paper and the you know the legal opinion on the classification of their token although we are looking forward for the first entry on the Romania market uh we have tried until now and successfully apply to Ireland to Austria to Netherlands uh and we are sure that Romania will be uh very soon to come here uh the most important aspect is that when you're building this entire project you don't have to be a salesman. Uh the sales you do through marketing communications, you don't do it through the white paper. Why? Because the liability as Alex said is very very important through the management and the management is the one most important aspect for the founders. Uh public means public. This means that everything that you publish there will be all over the place. Everybody will have access to it and everybody will uh have the possibility to make you liable through what you've written in the white paper. Right? This is the first aspect. The uh the second most important aspect that usually when you apply for this type of u notification you only do a simple no not you do a simple notifying process. What does this mean that the most of the cases the regulator does not stop and actually reviews your white paper. Yeah. So what you'll do there is not will not be backed up and you will not have a safety net uh from behind the regulator. It will be okay. the regulator will see it and will ask me if something goes wrong or you'll have a second chance to review it. No, what you do there and if it's properly notified and accepted, it will be as accepted. It will be there in the market and everybody will can and will be able to uh make you liable for what you've written there. Uh uh and uh what is very very important is regarding the marketing communications, right? What we've written there like regarding the warnings and the public statements and all the disclosures. This means that once you've uh tried to enter by doing advertising to your process and your product, everything must be transparent. >> And if I may add here a point, you launched the token 2026. Everything is fine. The community loves you. You write your white paper. It needs to be well written because down the line, maybe in one or two or three years, the project will fail. What happens then and we've seen a lot of communities of disgruntled investors both basically you know those investors who at some point they they loved you and now they hate you and that will be the moment when whatever you have written in the white paper becomes important because if they want to do a mass claim or they you know a sort of litigation against you they will use what information was publicly available and what was communicated to them and the most important document is going to be the white paper. Can you do you have the possibility to update the Wi-Fi down the line in case you know like change or and then you have to reapply? >> You need you have a notification application and you're obliged. So if something happens material on your tokconomics and the substance of your project, you need to put it and publish it. Yeah. But again >> modify the authority of the changes. >> Exactly. Yeah. Um, and why is that important? Because at the end of the day, and I'm stressing this, you are not liable for being successful, but you are liable for writing truth in your white paper. You know, reality >> regarding the content, right? Uh, you have like eight, nine, even 10 fields that you have to properly complete at the end of the day. You don't have to know all those. Your lawyer has to know all those. But at the same time, there are some important aspects that for you that you'll be you'll expect to see over there. Uh as we've discussed until now is regarding the issuer details. We have to properly present it. The entity, where is it based? Uh where it will come from, where the the transfer of funds occur in the entire process, right? Uh second of all and this is mostly for the investors because it will be very clear what type of rights do they receive and uh they will be very interested in it. It will be one of the most important buy points for them in uh the entire white paper ecosystem because they will see that those and they will uh want and try to obtain all of them later. This is why here we encourage to not go and it's the most important thing to not go into uh economical or dividends benefits and to go mostly in u governance rights that will uh help them do a proper job on the platform. Um also there will be and this is very important for the founders the entire technology process has to be properly explained and developed in the in the white paper because uh you need and your lawyer will not be able to review on this one but you'll have to go through audits and this is why you'll have to have a proper explained technology process. Uh last one that is also on the map um and it's again very very very good to prevent any any issues that can come later on is to have a full risk map risk map disclosure. This means that and you can incorporate a lot of risks there. You can incorporate risks about the company, risks about the uh type of industry that you are into, risks about the security, risks about the hacking, but all those need to be incorporated and uh engulf the entire set of possibilities that can happen to your token because otherwise again liability will be against you. >> And why so? Because in general as we know here we are you know in a community who understands crypto who has been in crypto for some years you have a lot of your investors are consumers so basically you know simple people who are interested in your project they don't have the sophistication of institutional investors when they look at the type of risks and that's why you need to be uh very blunt and clear about all the risks potential risk if even if some of the risk may not occur which of course it's expected not to occur but it's they are still a risk and what we've seen also in terms of dynamics in the tokens as you know with the big era of ICOs and then we had softs you know simple agreements for future tokens you'd have venture capital uh or institutional money who were buying at the at the beginning tokens but they had some special conditions when they're buying when they were buying those tokens and only afterwards s the rest of the tokens were being sold to the public and when the public was buying they didn't know about you know all the agreements contracts between venture capital investors in in in crypto and the uh the crypto company this time whatever has been agreed with the investors needs to appear here not in terms of you know all the nitty-gritty but which rights and what type of tokens does do the VCs own and what's remaining for the community and that's very important to be put in the white paper. >> Uh due to time restrictions I'll go fast through these recurring mistakes and uh we'll move further on the cusps uh cusps chapter. So again regarding the marketing you have to be as transparent as possible to try to avoid the abusive practices or manipulation through the market. Uh you have to be sure very steady in your classification. This means that you have to properly say that that you have an OT or an ART or an EMT. you have to properly classify it. Uh the audits are very important. Uh you can have self-reviewed audits for the start but afterwards to proof your token you'll have to have some experted audits and vouch vouches for uh for uh its safety. >> You need to include this in the white paper >> the audits. Yes. And also the classification. >> Then when we talk audits what type of audit you mean like technical what we do like smart contract. Uh exactly because you have to >> you have to attach the import that we get from the auditor drive. >> Yeah. Yeah. It can be annexed or at least it can be specified because uh if you annex it then again you'll be liable through the entire content of the report. If you just conclude it and summarize it again, uh it's less but it's a safer manner for you to be sure that somebody verified actually and checked your uh entire situation and afterwards you can present it as a later uh probation and also because it's becoming public you might not want to tell to the whole world what are the gaps within your technical solution. >> Exactly. So you reference it but you don't necessarily need to put the gaps and the li you know the the vulnerabilities there. Sustainability is very important but for the ones that are building an an early layer 2 uh solutions uh it can be directly um transferred from those information so it will be easier and again the utility language is very important the rights that you offer to not go into financial rights dividends as I've already explained going to cusps and here we discuss about custody exchanges investment advisor uh I think we should summarize it and keep it short so we can move to the uh D5 chapter. But uh the most important aspect here is that when you go for a licensing to a casp, this will be like an authorization test like a penetration test for GDPR for example. Yeah. You just have to be sure that you own your services, that you properly take care of them all, that you know all of them so you know what type of license fits you that um you have the already uh financial resources prepared for uh for undergoing the entire process and also that you are um having a lot of measures yeah to prevent, protect and um keep your records and clients safe. And basically here there's another simple principle. If you would be providing services who are centralized in nature like crypto exchange, crypto to fiat, crypto to crypto custody, uh investment um investment advice to consumers. There are like nine typologies of uh uh crypto service pro uh provider services and they are in Mika. Whatever those are, you should make sure that whatever you're you know proposing as a service does not fall there. If it falls there, you need a license. A license is not an easy thing to obtain and uh you could apply depending on your specific context in one of the 27 countries of the European Union. The good thing is that once you apply and you get the license in one of these countries in the European Union, then you passport. That's why we have we have by bit in Austria and from Austria they managed to you know serve the whole European Union uh customer base. That's why we have in Germany Firelocks or you know who's doing custody and basically they can they can offer their custody services to a big market of 500 million uh people. So I think that that's one of the promises of the European Union in itself. It's a it's a big market more than 500 450 million people and once you license in one country you can serve the whole market. But I have a question like coming back to that means that exchanges will have a reduced offer in certain point on meaning that no token that doesn't have ma cannot be sold to the European market. >> Yes. Yes. So you you have projects >> in terms of token compared to what you have by the US or like global or the European I don't know I'm marketing >> I can but we can tell you it's like when whenever and it happened to us so most of the projects >> the point was that usually when check we used to have a lot of token because they were missing like everybody >> and now my understanding will be that we have super few I don't expect that everyone >> there are many I mean there are from last year up to this year I think there are more than 200 200 300 uh white applications in Europe. >> Uh somebody whispered me that we have to wrap it up. So let's go for the defy uh defy carved out and then >> but it's true. So if you want to list your token in Europe via buy bit, Binance, whomever, you need to present them the white paper and to tell them you submitted the white paper otherwise you're not accepted. >> Before they can delete even more unless >> exactly yeah until now it was a grandfathering period. If you were compliant with it, it it will expire this year in July. Afterwards, you'll need to be fully compliant with the Mika system. >> I'm sorry I kind of late, but that will be also in in regulation. Um, so we do security and generally I know that we have clients from Emirates, it's just an example. Yeah. >> Yes. >> And they like, oh, Emirates is so free for business. Do whatever you do, buy, etc. You don't need to show where money comes from it, etc. And then be like okay how you would like to pay for other services like crypto like fiat. No no you cannot pay with the fe sorry why like you you say that because in emirates you can actually do with crypto wherever you want but if it's paying for some services and you your entity is in Emirates you cannot use crypto at all. M >> so two regulation in Europe doesn't mean that tokens that not like end users choose I don't know like to sell or buy can be used still for I don't know to investments yeah like to buy some actions or etc. Yeah, if it's peer-to-peer, you can also work with any token you want. For example, tetar, if I want you to pay something, but in general shouldn't be, you know, so type of services. But if I want to pay you in tetar, I'm free to pay you in tetar. But if I'm a exchange, a regulated exchange in Europe and I want you to, you know, to exchange with tetar, you cannot because tetar does not have a license and does not have a white paper in the European Union. So it changes and survive. >> Yeah. And if I'm a regulated business in Europe, it's borderline if I accept tar but between two individuals is still freedom to you know to do to trade then you can do that. >> Can I also ask about taxes is very clear they have they trying to be licensed probably through Vienna as some uh but what about Dexis? It's some dexes I don't know still has company in Europe but uh it's a dex case >> is it a dex and that's and that's a good question and we will be you know wrapping up with the with the >> defy car >> with the defy car mika you have the floor you can tell us a bit about what we've seen in terms of what it happens a lot of projects they say they are decentralized but now we have clearer rules on really what's decentralized and what's not just to give you an example if you have a user interface under which you get into the DEX and you are paying via that you know UI interface you're not decentralized you're centralized this is why we have written that that fully decentralized is a very narrow answer until now a lot of people used to hide behind the flag of being defi but from this point on it's not possible anymore if you control even small key parts of the service then it means that at that moment Mika applies to you uh we have given several examples just for the sake of presenting. But there are way more. If you control the front end or if you have governance governance key, if you have control over the treasury or even if you control the protocol or you you take any kind of fee in uh this measure and in this regards that it means that Mika still applies. So for uh even minimum parts of the service as long as you control them at that point, Mika applies >> and you're not decentralized anymore as a concept. Can I also ask one question? Uh in the >> uh it's also about uh swaps like that side as well like UD researcher. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's the same and that was the you know the big uh the big debate are they really decentralized? Of course they are called but as a matter of fact both unis swap and you know one in and the others they have entities they collaborate to the uh uh with the authorities. Sometimes they work on reverse solidistation. Basically they are not selling you the products directly. You would go and use their deck service because you know that they they are a big name and they have liquidity and you want to go there. Reverse or stationation is something which in general applies when yeah two casps but uh it happens. >> Mhm. And uh one last bit regarding the applicability of simultaneous regulations, right? If you uh are in the game, you are still front facing the GDPR regulation or the gambling regulation or the uh respective country. So at each and every point you have to take in in consideration the compliance of the entire set of provisions that apply to your business. >> Yeah. And here yeah we use the you know the a topic which is super hot 2026 prediction markets a lot of new players are uh appearing in the prediction markets h but it's it's not an easy answer even if you're covered in you know some jurisdictions like the US it doesn't mean that under European law you're fully safe you need to do your specific type of compliance uh when you come to Europe as a prediction market provider Sorry for many questions. >> So let's say you I provide services for companies that licensed by Micah in Europe. Yes. And I'm provider. >> There is any uh requirements for the provider like it depends that you have to be registered. Sure. >> It depends on the type of provider. But if you're a let's say if you're a cyber security type of service providers, you need to comply with your own jurisdiction in terms of >> I saw any >> your stuff. Yeah. With your authority. But otherwise you're pre uh if you're you know working with a licensed u type of service provider as long as they have the license they can you know they can hire whomever whomever they want. invoices and example we registered in Estonia in Estonia like we pay taxes legally for cryp etc. And of course we accept like generating invoices for for companies mostly. Yeah. Uh that be might be not only stego points maybe tokens they >> and uh what about this cases if >> it's not I I I don't see it as a matter of licensing. It's only a matter of make sure that in Estonia you comply with the accountancy principles and rules of reporting related to crypto. >> Okay. Well, thank you very much.