AUSTRIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Oliver Völkel, Jara Erhard and Bryan Hollmann, CERHA HEMPEL
in scope both as a CASP under MiCA (eg, for cus- tody or transfer of EMTs) and as a payment institu- tion or e-money institution under PSD2/EMD2 where its activities qualify as payment services. In a 2025 “No-Action” Letter, the EBA advised that certain EMT-related services should trigger PSD2 authorisa- tion. National regulators, including the FMA, there- fore expect close co-ordination between CASP and payment-licensing where both regimes are clearly engaged; which in practice results in a dual-licensing requirement. 6.2.3 Backing Assets MiCA imposes strict requirements on the backing of EMTs and ARTs, in the following broad terms. • Reserve assets must be of high quality, low risk and sufficiently liquid to support full and timely redemption, with detailed rules on composition, custody and diversification. • Reserves are generally to be held segregated from the issuer’s own assets, often with regulated custodians, and subject to periodic independent audits and ongoing disclosure in the white paper and periodic reports. • Holders of EMTs and ARTs must have a legally enforceable right to redeem at par (for EMTs) or in line with the reference value (for ARTs) at any time against the issuer, with clear, accessible redemp- tion procedures. As with traditional e-money, MiCA and e-money rules significantly constrain the ability of issuers to pay interest on stablecoin holdings, in order to avoid EMTs functioning as deposit-like instruments outside the banking regime. Any yield-bearing structures linked to stablecoins are therefore closely scrutinised and may trigger additional regimes (eg, deposit-taking or Stablecoins that could pose systemic or broader financial-stability risks are subject to additional “significant-token” requirements under MiCA. MiCA introduces the concepts of significant ARTs and EMTs, designated based on criteria such as market capitali- sation, number and value of transactions, cross-bor- der activity and interconnectedness with the financial collective investment schemes). 6.2.4 Special Considerations
system. Issuers of such significant tokens face more stringent prudential, reserve, liquidity and governance obligations, which appear intended to bring their regu- latory treatment closer to that of systemically impor- tant payment schemes and other non-blockchain infrastructures with comparable risk profiles. 7. Tokenisation and Real-World Assets 7.1 Treatment Tokenised assets and real-world assets (RWA) crypto are generally regulated by looking first at the underly- ing asset or right and then at the token form. In broad terms, Austria (within the EU framework) follows a “same activity, same risk, same rules” approach. If a token represents a traditional financial instru- ment (eg, shares, bonds, fund units), it is treated as a security/financial instrument regardless of the use of blockchain, and the full EU financial-markets regime applies as if the instrument were issued or held in non-tokenised form (see 2.2 Crypto-Asset Regulatory Frameworks ). Where a tokenized real‑world asset does not qualify as a financial instrument under MiFID II, MiCA becomes the primary regulatory framework, provided the token falls within its broad definition of a “crypto‑asset” (see 2.2 Crypto-Asset Regulatory Frameworks ). However, general civil law (eg, property, contract, secured transactions law) and sector-specific regimes for the underlying asset (eg, real estate registration rules, consumer credit rules) still apply independently of the token layer.
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