What a Crypto Brand Can and Cannot Say in the EU Under MiCA

Article 7 governs marketing communications relating to a public offer of a crypto-asset or its admission to trading. That is defined by the message, not the channel, so a clip, a thread, a landing page and a paid post are all in scope.

The breadth is what brands underestimate. A marketing communication is not only a Meta ad or a Google campaign. It reaches organic creator posts, influencer clips and the copy on your own site, as long as they promote the offer.

The consequence is that each communication stands on its own. A compliant landing page does not offset a non-compliant creator clip, because the requirements follow the message onto every surface it lands on. This page is about what those communications may say. Where you are allowed to run paid crypto ads at all is a separate question, mapped at where you can and can't run crypto ads.

Treat them as a gate. All four, or the communication does not ship.

Answer for a communication you are actually planning. The check below reports which of Article 7's requirements you have not claimed to meet, and which one stops the campaign outright rather than merely leaving a gap.

The prohibitions are the mirror image of the requirements. Each one below puts a communication outside Article 7.

One more thing sits behind all of it. The offeror is responsible for the content of the marketing communication, which means responsibility does not transfer to the agency or the creator by contract. A contract can bind a creator to carry the disclaimer and stay inside the white paper, and it should. What it cannot do is move the obligation off the offeror.

The regulation sets the wording. It is not a sentiment you can express in your own words. The communication must carry, clearly and prominently, the statement that it has not been reviewed or approved by any competent authority in any Member State of the European Union.

There is a second disclaimer in MiCA that is easy to confuse with this one, and confusing them is a real error. The white paper carries its own statement about not having been approved. This one is about the marketing communication itself. They are different documents with different wording, and quoting the white paper's line on an ad does not satisfy the ad's requirement.

One more detail decides whose name goes in it. The statement lives at Article 7(1), point (e), and where the communication is prepared by the person seeking admission to trading or the operator of the trading platform rather than the offeror, that party is named in the statement instead. So a communication put out by a platform does not simply reuse the offeror's version of the line; the responsible party in the wording has to match whoever actually prepared it.

Two operational points follow. Clearly and prominently means the disclaimer has to be where the audience actually sees it, so on a short-form clip that is on-screen rather than only in a caption. And because the message travels across surfaces, the disclaimer has to travel with it, which means specifying it in the brief and writing it into the contract for any paid creator.

Where a white paper is required, no marketing communication may be disseminated before that white paper is published. The pre-launch teaser, the "something is coming" thread and the early creator seeding are all caught if they run first.

The trap is structural rather than careless. Marketing teams plan hype before the product exists, and MiCA inverts that order: the white paper must be published first, and only then may marketing consistent with it go out. Build the calendar backwards from the white paper's publication date, not from the token generation event.

The regulation carves out one thing worth knowing. It states that the ability of the offeror, the person seeking admission to trading or the operator of a trading platform to conduct market soundings is not affected by the bar. That is a narrow, defined activity and not a licence to warm up an audience, so treat it as the exception it is.

Two procedural points cut the other way, in your favour. Competent authorities do not require prior approval of marketing communications before they are published, so there is no filing queue to wait in. But they must be notified to the competent authority on request, which means the communications need to be retrievable after the fact rather than improvised and forgotten.

The wider transition is closing. MiCA has applied in full since 30 December 2024, and the transitional period runs to 1 July 2026 at the outside, with several member states setting shorter national windows. Note the split if you are issuing a stablecoin: the rules for asset-referenced and e-money tokens applied earlier, from 30 June 2024 (EUR-Lex summary).

Article 7 is the regime for crypto-assets other than asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens. If you are marketing a stablecoin, a different article governs you, and the differences are not cosmetic.

For asset-referenced tokens, the marketing-communications regime sits at Article 29. It carries the same shape as Article 7 and then adds two things. Marketing communications must contain a clear and unambiguous statement that holders have a right of redemption against the issuer at any time, and the communications, along with any modifications to them, must be published on the issuer's website. The white paper an ART's marketing must stay consistent with is the one drawn up under Article 19.

For e-money tokens, Title IV sets an equivalent provision, and the redemption position is firmer still: holders must be able to redeem at any moment and at par value. This guide does not print an article number for the e-money token marketing provision, because the only number reachable from here comes from the Commission's 2020 proposal rather than the final regulation, and proposal numbering does not always survive into the adopted text. Read the provision in Title IV directly before relying on it.

The practical rule is short. Establish which of the three the asset is before you write a brief, because the disclaimer, the redemption statement and the publication obligations differ, and a communication built to the wrong article fails even when it is well made.

MiCA decides what you may say. The ad platforms decide where you may run it. The creator contract is where you make both stick. A campaign works only when all three line up, and teams routinely solve one and assume the others.

The content layer is Article 7: the disclaimer, white-paper consistency, the timing bar. The platform layer is separate and has its own certification and country lists, mapped at where you can and can't run crypto ads. The contract layer is how you bind a paid creator to carry the disclaimer, stay inside the white paper and run nothing before publication, which is covered at the KOL contract terms that hold.

Two more pages sit alongside these. Whether a specific undisclosed paid post is legally exposed is handled at the legal risk of an undisclosed paid post, and whether the creator is worth paying in the first place is how to vet a crypto KOL. Align the layers in advance and MiCA becomes a set-up step rather than something you discover in an enforcement letter.

· Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 (MiCA), Article 7 — marketing communications — the regulation on EUR-Lex. Marketing communications relating to a public offer of a crypto-asset, or its admission to trading, must clearly state that a crypto-asset white paper has been published, clearly indicate the offeror's contact information, and include the statement that the marketing communication has not been reviewed or approved by any competent authority in any Member State of the European Union. The information must be consistent with the white paper where one is required, and be fair, clear and not misleading. No marketing communications may be disseminated prior to publication of the white paper where one is required, though the ability to conduct market soundings is not affected. Competent authorities do not require prior approval of marketing communications before publication, and communications must be notified to them on request. The statement sits at Article 7(1), point (e); where the communication is prepared by the person seeking admission to trading or the operator of the trading platform, that party is named in it in place of the offeror.

· MiCA, Article 29 — marketing communications for asset-referenced tokens — the regulation on EUR-Lex: the equivalent regime for ARTs, which also requires a clear and unambiguous statement that holders have a right of redemption against the issuer at any time, and requires the marketing communications and any modifications to them to be published on the issuer's website. The ART white paper is drawn up under Article 19.

· MiCA, Title IV — e-money tokens: issuers must redeem at any moment and at par value, and Title IV carries its own marketing-communications provision. This guide does not print an article number for it, because the only number reachable from here comes from the Commission's 2020 proposal rather than the adopted regulation.

· MiCA application and transition — EUR-Lex summary: full application from 30 December 2024, with the asset-referenced and e-money token titles applying earlier from 30 June 2024, and a transitional period running to 1 July 2026 at the outside with shorter national windows in several member states.

· On method. Every requirement above was checked against the regulation's own text as published on EUR-Lex. Where EUR-Lex could not be opened directly from our environment, the check was made against that same text as indexed, not against a secondary summary of it. Where a number could only be traced to the Commission's proposal rather than the adopted regulation, it is not printed.