Poland is on track to become a serious outlier in the European altcoin landscape—and not in a good way. President Karol Nawrocki has vetoed the MiCA implementation bill for the second time, even as the EU-wide transition deadline of 1 July 2026 approaches. With no functioning licensing regime for crypto‑asset service providers (CASPs), local platforms are staring at a hard stop this summer, while foreign exchanges licensed elsewhere in the EU will be free to keep serving Polish users without interruption.

For the domestic industry, the message is clear: either move your license abroad or risk being shut out of your own home market.

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What Nawrocki’s second MiCA veto actually means

The veto concerns Poland’s national act intended to implement the EU’s Markets in Crypto‑Assets Regulation (MiCA). Although MiCA is directly applicable across the EU, each member state still needs a national framework to designate a competent authority and define procedures for granting CASP licenses.

Key points of the latest veto:

• President Nawrocki refused to sign Bill 2064, calling it “practically identical” to an earlier bill (1424) he already blocked in December.
• He argued that “a wrong law that is passed a hundred times remains a wrong law” and insisted Poland should “attract innovation, not push it away.”
• His office and legal commentators have criticized the bill for overregulation, website‑blocking powers, and supervisory fees that could disproportionately hurt smaller domestic firms while favoring large foreign players.

On paper, this sounds industry‑friendly: rejecting a heavy‑handed law that might strangle local startups. In practice, it creates a regulatory vacuum that may end up hurting Polish players even more.

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MiCA timelines: why July 1, 2026 is a hard cliff

Under MiCA, crypto‑asset service providers across the EU must obtain a CASP authorization from a designated national authority if they want to continue operating legally. There is a transitional regime:

• Existing Polish virtual asset service providers (VASPs) registered before 30 December 2024 can continue operating under old rules until 1 July 2026, or until they obtain—or are refused—CASP authorization, whichever comes first.
• New entrants, however, already cannot start business without a CASP license once MiCA is in force.​

The problem in Poland is straightforward:

• The president’s veto means no MiCA‑implementing act,
• Which means no designated authority and no national procedure to apply for a CASP license,
• Which means no one can be licensed before the July 1, 2026 deadline.

Legal analyses warn that if Poland fails to sort this out by then, domestic providers will lose their ability to operate under the transitional regime and still be unable to obtain CASP authorization, forcing them to offboard clients and suspend services.​

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Foreign exchanges win, local platforms lose

MiCA was designed as a passport regime: once a firm is licensed as a CASP in one EU member state, it can “passport” its services into all other EU countries without needing separate local licenses.

In Poland’s current situation, this creates an asymmetric playing field:

• Foreign exchanges with a MiCA license from jurisdictions like Lithuania, Estonia, Germany, or France will be able to continue offering services to Polish residents after July 2026, using standard passporting mechanisms.
• Polish VASPs, by contrast, will hit a dead end: unable to apply for a local CASP license, they will lose their grandfathered status once the transition period ends and effectively be forced to stop operations, at least within Poland.

In other words, instead of protecting local innovators from overregulation, the veto risks handing the Polish retail and institutional altcoin market to better‑positioned foreign players.

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Why Polish firms are moving licenses to Lithuania and Estonia

Unsurprisingly, many Polish crypto entrepreneurs are not waiting around to see if Warsaw resolves the impasse in time. They are moving their licensing strategies to more predictable EU jurisdictions, with Lithuania and Estonia at the top of the list.

Reasons these countries are attractive:

• Lithuania acted early, passing its own Law on Markets in Crypto‑Assets in mid‑2024 and designating the Bank of Lithuania as the CASP licensing authority. It has become one of the EU’s most active hubs for MiCA licensing, with dozens of applications already submitted.
• Estonia has also positioned itself as a mature, regulated environment for digital assets, building on its earlier VASP regime and aligning it with MiCA to attract serious, compliant firms.
• Both jurisdictions provide clear procedures, realistic timelines, and a functioning regulator, giving Polish companies a path to keep serving EU clients—including Poles—via passporting.

For many Polish exchanges and service providers, re‑domiciling their licensing efforts is now less about optimization and more about survival.

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President’s concerns vs. unintended consequences

To be fair, some of Nawrocki’s criticisms of the original bill echo industry fears:

• The Polish draft MiCA act was unusually long and complex compared to short, technical implementation acts in countries like Czechia or Slovakia.
• It included website‑blocking powers that raised civil liberties concerns, going beyond what many EU peers adopted, which mostly rely on public warning lists rather than domain blocking.
• Supervisory fees and compliance costs could indeed have tilted the field in favor of big foreign institutions over smaller domestic startups.​

However, without a replacement bill, the veto has created a dangerous middle ground:

• No overbearing law—but no workable law at all.
• No local CASP licenses—but full access for licensed foreign competitors.
• Official rhetoric about supporting innovation—while domestic firms quietly exit or re‑license abroad.

This is why many legal and industry commentators are now warning that Poland risks losing its domestic altcoin market infrastructure, even if trading volumes and user activity remain—but increasingly on foreign platforms.

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What could happen next for Poland’s altcoin sector

If no compromise law is passed soon, several outcomes look likely:

• Further migration of Polish projects to MiCA‑ready jurisdictions like Lithuania and Estonia, where they can secure CASP licenses and EU‑wide passporting rights.
• A shrinking of locally headquartered infrastructure—exchanges, brokers, custodians, and payment platforms—replaced by foreign platforms serving Poland from abroad.
• Regulatory risk for users, who may increasingly rely on entities without a clear Polish supervisory point of contact, even if they are regulated elsewhere in the EU.
• Potential political pressure from both EU institutions and domestic stakeholders as the July 2026 deadline nears and the economic cost of regulatory limbo becomes harder to ignore.

For now, the paradox is stark: in the name of protecting innovation and civil rights from a “flawed” overregulating bill, Poland’s leadership has left its altcoin sector in a vacuum that may end up exporting innovation, jobs, and tax revenue to neighboring countries that implemented MiCA more pragmatically.

Unless Warsaw can quickly produce a slimmer, more balanced MiCA act that satisfies both the president and parliament—and opens the CASP licensing pipeline in time—Poland risks watching its domestic altcoin market infrastructure rebuild itself across the border, under someone else’s flag.