CASP Recovery and Resolution Under MiCA Article 84

Why Article 84 matters beyond the compliance checklist

The MiCA framers built in a recovery-and-resolution obligation because they could see the question coming. The history of crypto-asset business failures — Mt. Gox in 2014, QuadrigaCX in 2019, FTX in 2022 — produced a pattern of customer-asset losses caused by inadequate segregation, weak governance, and the absence of an orderly wind-down framework. MiCA Article 84 is the EU’s answer to that pattern: build the recovery and resolution machinery into the regulatory architecture so the failure of a CASP does not become a customer-asset catastrophe.

The substantive depth of Article 84 is meaningful. Every authorised CASP must maintain a recovery plan, cooperate with the NCA on a resolution plan, and update both regularly. The supervisory expectations have firmed up through 2025 and into 2026 as ESMA and the EBA published implementing standards and supervisory guidance.

The recovery plan — owned by the CASP

The recovery plan is the CASP’s own document. It sets out what the CASP would do to restore financial soundness if its viability were threatened. The content requirements specified in the ESMA RTS include:

• Range of recovery options. Specific capital actions (rights issue, parent injection, subordinated debt issuance), liquidity actions (drawing committed credit lines, asset sales, customer-fund refund acceleration), and business actions (service-line discontinuation, expense reduction, M&A).
• Stress-scenario analysis. How the recovery options would perform under specified stress scenarios — extreme market volatility, major operational incident, loss of significant counterparty, AML-related supervisory action.
• Governance arrangements. Who decides to invoke recovery, how the decision is communicated to the board and the supervisor, what the operational mechanics are.
• Communication strategy. Customers, counterparties, the home NCA, host NCAs for cross-border CASPs, the press.
• Integration with broader risk management. The recovery plan is not a standalone document — it sits within the CASP’s overall risk-management framework and references the ICT incident-response procedures, the business-continuity plan, and the AML escalation procedures.

The home NCA reviews the recovery plan and either approves it or requires revisions. Approval is not a one-time event — annual review is the default, with interim updates triggered by material changes to the CASP’s business.

The resolution plan — owned by the NCA

The resolution plan is the NCA’s document. It sets out what the supervisor would do to wind the CASP down in an orderly manner if recovery fails. The content includes:

• Customer-asset segregation and transferability. The single most important question. The plan documents how customer crypto-assets are segregated, how they would be identified in a resolution scenario, and what mechanisms exist for transfer to an alternative authorised CASP.
• Communication with customers and counterparties. Notification procedures, timelines, contact channels.
• Wind-down sequencing. What activities cease first, what continues during the wind-down, how long the wind-down is expected to take.
• Interaction with the home NCA and host NCAs. For cross-border CASPs operating under passport, the resolution plan covers host-state operational specifics and the supervisory college’s role.
• Interaction with insolvency proceedings. The interface between MiCA’s resolution framework and national insolvency law in the home member state.

The CASP provides input — operational details, system documentation, customer-asset segregation specifications, vendor and counterparty information — but the NCA owns the document. The resolution plan is reviewed and updated by the NCA at least every two years, or following material changes to the CASP’s business.

What MiCA does not import

Article 84 is not BRRD. The Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive’s full toolkit — bail-in, bridge institution, asset-separation tool, write-down of liabilities — does not apply to standalone CASPs. The MiCA resolution toolkit is lighter:

• Customer-asset transfer to an alternative provider
• Orderly wind-down with proportionate priority of claims
• Coordination with national insolvency proceedings

Credit institutions under Article 17 issuing ARTs are a different situation. They remain credit institutions and continue to be subject to BRRD. The ART activity inherits the BRRD framework via the underlying banking licence. The bail-in toolkit applies to their liabilities; the resolution authority can use the full BRRD instrument set.

For standalone CASPs — the majority of authorised entities — the framework is Article 84 alone. The lighter scope reflects the smaller systemic footprint of typical CASPs versus credit institutions, and the customer-asset character of the principal stress in CASP failure.

Customer-asset transferability — the operational pivot

The single most important variable in CASP resolution planning is customer-asset transferability. Can customer crypto-assets be moved to an alternative authorised CASP in an orderly manner if the original CASP fails?

The variable touches multiple operational layers:

• Segregation. MiCA Article 75 requires customer crypto-assets to be segregated from the CASP’s own assets. The recovery and resolution plan documents how segregation is operationalised — separate wallets, separate cryptographic keys, separate accounting records.
• Identification. In a resolution scenario, the resolution authority needs to identify which assets belong to which customers. The plan documents the customer-asset ledger, the reconciliation cadence, and the procedures for producing a comprehensive customer-asset statement.
• Transferability. The plan documents what is needed to transfer customer assets to an alternative provider — alternative-provider readiness, technical interfaces, regulatory permissions, the operational steps.
• Customer communication. How customers would be notified of the transfer, what action they need to take, what the timeline is.

CASPs that built customer-asset operational stacks with segregation as a compliance checkbox often discover during recovery-and-resolution planning that the transferability question is harder than the segregation question. Segregation is an internal control; transferability is an operational capability that needs to function under stress.

The cross-border supervisory layer

For CASPs with significant cross-border operations through the EU passport, the supervisory college engages in recovery and resolution planning. Host NCAs participate because the resolution plan covers operational arrangements in their territories — customer-asset transfer to alternative providers in the host market, communication with host-state customers, interaction with host-state financial-stability authorities.

The college mechanism for recovery and resolution planning mirrors the broader college mechanism under MiCA Article 65 passport supervision. The home NCA chairs; host NCAs participate; ESMA facilitates information exchange for the largest cross-border CASPs.

For ART issuers designated significant under Article 43, the EBA chairs the resolution-planning college rather than the home NCA. The significant-ART designation produces a different supervisory engagement at the resolution-planning layer as well as the steady-state supervision layer.

The realistic timeline for building the planning

For a newly-authorised CASP, the recovery-and-resolution planning timeline:

• First draft recovery plan: 3-4 months from authorisation, working with the home NCA on scope and depth
• NCA review and revision cycle: 2-4 months for first-time approval
• First resolution plan (NCA-led): 6-12 months from authorisation, with CASP input
• Annual recovery-plan update cycle: 2-3 months per year
• Biennial resolution-plan update cycle: 3-6 months per cycle

The first cycle is the heaviest. Steady-state maintenance is manageable but not trivial — the recovery and resolution planning is a meaningful ongoing compliance function, not a one-time exercise.

The buyer’s view

For a CASP scoping the Article 84 lift, three priorities:

1. Treat recovery planning as substantive risk management, not a compliance exercise. Supervisors push back hard on paper-only recovery plans. The exercise of developing real recovery options is itself valuable for the CASP’s understanding of its own risk profile.
2. Customer-asset transferability is the resolution question that matters most. The operational capability to transfer customer crypto-assets to an alternative provider under stress is the principal subject of the resolution plan.
3. Plan for the cross-border supervisory layer if you operate under passport. The supervisory college engagement on recovery and resolution adds material complexity for cross-border CASPs.

Article 84 is one of the more substantive supervisory expectations under MiCA. The framework draws from BRRD but lighter, sits within the CASP’s broader risk-management architecture, and asks the CASP to think seriously about its own failure modes. For the supervisor, it is the principal mechanism for protecting customer crypto-assets when the CASP cannot protect itself.