Coinbase is telling retail customers in the European Economic Area that 14 stablecoins that do not comply with MiCA, including USDT, PYUSD and USD1, can no longer be bought, sold or converted. Anyone who wants to keep them must move them to a compatible external wallet by 30 October. Balances still on Coinbase on that day will be converted once, at the market price, into USDC or another supported asset. Deposits of these stablecoins after the deadline will not be credited.

What it means: Coinbase's move is the practical application of ESMA's opinion, which asked licensed crypto providers to stop services involving stablecoins without MiCA authorisation, with a final deadline for existing balances in January 2027. The regulation allows public offering only of e-money tokens issued by a licensed credit or e-money institution in the EU, and USDT does not meet that condition. For users in Greece, the key point is that conversion is automatic and at the price of the moment, so anyone who does nothing will end up with USDC instead of USDT, which for most practical purposes is equivalent in dollars. Two things need care: those who move funds to an external wallet take on safekeeping of the keys themselves, and those who send USDT to Coinbase after 30 October risk not getting it back. From a tax point of view, automatically converting one crypto asset into another may count as a transaction to be recorded, so it is worth keeping the transaction history. For businesses using stablecoins for payments, the development confirms that in the EU the practical choice is limited to MiCA-authorised tokens.

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