Italian stock market regulator Consob and Banca d’Italia authorised Conio, RIV-Digital, Olliv Italia, and CheckSig to operate as Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP). The authorisation currently permits the provision of services in Italy, whilst any extension of operations to other EU Member States may take place in accordance with the notification procedures of MiCAR (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation –European Union Rules UE 2023/1114). The four Italian firms are now in the ESMA registry of crypto-players that currently recorded 230 firms. The countries that received the highest number of ESMA authorizations are Germany (56), The Netherlands (26) and France (21).
Conio, a fintech scaleup that Christian Miccoli founded in San Francisco in 2015, was the last Italian company to get authorisation. The companay attracted the investments of Poste Italiane in 2016 and of Banca Generali in 2020. Conio is a provider of blockchain technologise for the custody and tokenization of digital assets (press release).RIV-Digital is the Italian subsidiary of Luxembourg and Dubai holding RIV CapitalGroup that Roberto Rivera created (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Olliv Italia is part of the Chicago’s eponymous firm that Daniel Polotsky, Kris Dayrit, Alan Gurevich, and Ben Weiss founded in 2015. The company developed CoinFlip, the ATM operator for Bitcoins (Linkedin post). The company operates a network of 130 CoinFlip Bitcoin ATMs in Italy, located within partner retail outlets such as tobacconists, cafés and newsagents.
CheckSig (press release for the MiCar Licence) is a company that Ferdinando Ametrano created in 2019 as a spin-off of Digital Gold Institute, an European think tank for Bitcoin, crypto-assets and blockchain. The company provides advanced solutions for private and institutional investors, with a mission to make investing in crypto-assets simple and secure, offering services including buying and selling, custody, staking and tax compliance support.
On 30 June, Tuesday, anyone who does not hold a CASP licence will no longer be able to offer crypto services in Italy and across Europe.
