The European Banking Authority has asked EU policymakers to bring crypto lending, including access to DeFi protocols, under the bloc's Markets in Crypto-Assets framework. The call, flagged by CoinMarketCap on September 25, 2026, lands while Brussels is already reviewing and expanding MiCA, and it targets a corner of the market the current rules left mostly untouched.
MiCA, which phased in through 2024 and 2025, covers stablecoin issuers, exchanges, custodians, and other crypto-asset service providers. Lending, borrowing, and direct access to decentralized protocols were not written into its core scope. The EBA's position is that this gap should close.
The specific ask
Two things sit inside the EBA's request. The first is crypto lending: platforms that let users deposit assets to earn yield or borrow against holdings. The second, and the more contested one, is "access to DeFi protocols," which points at the interfaces and intermediaries that route users into on-chain lending and borrowing venues.
Regulating a company that lends against Bitcoin is one thing. Regulating a smart contract that no single entity operates is another. The EBA framing appears to target the access layer, the front ends, aggregators, and service providers that connect European users to these protocols, rather than the underlying code itself. That is the same seam regulators worldwide keep circling: the human-run edges of a system built to run without permission.
MiCA under review
The timing matters. The EU is not writing MiCA from scratch; it is reviewing a live framework and deciding what the next expansion covers. The EBA, as one of the bloc's main financial supervisors, carries weight in that process. A recommendation from it is not law, but it shapes what lawmakers put on the table.
If lending and DeFi access are folded in, service providers operating in the European Union would likely face authorization requirements, capital and disclosure rules, and consumer-protection obligations similar to those already binding exchanges and stablecoin issuers. For firms currently running lending desks or DeFi front ends without a license, that would be a step change in compliance cost.
Lending's track record still haunts supervisors
Crypto lending has a track record that supervisors remember. The 2022 collapses of centralized lenders wiped out billions in customer deposits and left users with frozen accounts and no recourse. Those failures were centralized businesses, not DeFi protocols, but they hardened the view that lending against volatile collateral needs guardrails.
DeFi lending shifts the risk profile rather than removing it. Collateral sits in smart contracts, liquidations run automatically, and there is no help desk when a price feed breaks or a contract is exploited. Bringing the access points under MiCA would give European users a regulated counterparty to hold accountable, at the cost of the permissionless model that defines the space.
The counterparty question for everyday users
This debate is not abstract for anyone who parks stablecoins to earn yield or borrows against crypto to fund spending. Custody and counterparty risk are the core of it: when you lend on a protocol or through a platform, you are trusting either a company's solvency or a contract's code. Regulation aims to make the first of those safer and more transparent. It cannot rewrite the second.
For users who spend from their own wallets rather than lending out their assets, the direct exposure is smaller. Self-custody options keep funds under the user's keys instead of a lender's balance sheet, which sidesteps the deposit-freeze scenario entirely, though it carries its own responsibility for key management. The broader point is that MiCA's reach shapes which stablecoin and yield products European providers can legally offer, and that filters down to what ordinary users can access.
Markets took the news in stride. As of September 25, 2026, Bitcoin traded around $84,626, up 0.5% on the day, with Ether near $2,690 and the Fear & Greed Index reading 73, or "Greed." Regulatory-scope proposals tend to move slowly, and a call from a supervisor is the start of a process, not the end of one.
Overview
The EBA has asked for crypto lending and DeFi protocol access to be brought under MiCA as the EU reviews the framework. The proposal targets the access layer and service providers rather than smart contracts directly, and if adopted it would push on-chain lending and borrowing in Europe toward bank-style authorization, capital, and disclosure rules. It is a recommendation, not a law, but it signals where the EU's next expansion of crypto oversight is headed.
