Lightyear

The interim MiCA register of ESMA lists Lightyear Europe AS with an authorization of 17 November 2025 from the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority. It covers custody and administration of crypto assets for clients, execution of orders and reception and transmission of orders, in 30 countries of the European Economic Area. Lightyear names its activity license 4.1-1/147 for crypto services next to license 4.1-1/31 as an investment firm.

When the Estonian transition period ended on 1 July 2026, the Financial Intelligence Unit named Lightyear Europe AS as one of two firms authorized in Estonia under MiCA, the other being LHV Pank. Older virtual currency licenses from the Financial Intelligence Unit lost their validity on that day, as the MiCA transitional period foresaw.

Lightyear sends crypto orders to Kraken for execution and gives the reason as deep liquidity in euro pairs and prices close to the public market, also for larger orders. Lightyear keeps most of the coins of its customers in cold storage offline and a small part in hot wallets for daily operations.

As the custodian under its MiCA authorization, Lightyear Europe AS has to segregate the coins of customers from its own assets and reconcile them. These are the duties of crypto custody under MiCA, which apply to every licensed custodian in the EU.

Customers in Estonia can hold crypto inside their investeerimiskonto, the Estonian investment account that defers income tax until money leaves the account. Lightyear thus brings coins into a tax wrapper that Estonian investors already use for shares and funds.

In other EU countries crypto gains follow national tax rules, and German customers apply the rules on crypto tax in Germany. The crypto offer was not yet live in the United Kingdom and Hungary when Lightyear launched it in May 2026.

Lightyear launched with 12 coins in May 2026, including bitcoin, Solana, ether, Chainlink, XRP, Sui, Cardano, litecoin, Dogecoin, Bittensor, Uniswap and Hyperliquid. By October 2026 the crypto page listed 18 coins, all with euro and US dollar pairs. Crypto trades run around the clock on every day of the week, unlike shares and ETFs.

Lightyear charges 0.45 percent of the order value for every crypto purchase or sale and describes this fee as the final cost of the trade. The price shown in the app carries no extra spread, so the customer sees the full cost before pressing buy. Trading in euros or dollars avoids a currency conversion for most customers in the euro area.

Lightyear runs no external crypto wallet for its customers, and in May 2026 the company stated that transfers of coins in or out were not yet available. Customers can sell coins for euros or dollars inside the app but cannot send them to a personal wallet. Customers who want their bitcoin in a wallet of their own need a second provider for that step.

Bitcoin is one of the coins with the longest history in the Lightyear selection and trades against the euro and the US dollar. Customers buy fractions of a bitcoin from small amounts and see the position next to their shares, funds and savings in one overview. Lightyear also offers AI tools in the app that explain market moves and investor sentiment.

The MiCA license of Lightyear is held by Lightyear Europe AS and was issued by the Estonian Financial Supervision Authority as an authorization under Article 63. With this CASP license Lightyear can serve customers in all countries of the European Economic Area that the register lists. The MiCA regulation sets the rules on custody, disclosures and complaints that apply to this service.