Sources & methodology

Where every dataset comes from

How the daily sync works

1. Every night at 05:00 UTC an automated job reads ESMA's MiCA page, resolves the current CSV links and downloads them.
2. The CASP register is only replaced when its own "last update" content is newer than what we hold — so a re-published but unchanged file never creates fake movement. The date of the check itself is recorded either way and shown as "last checked".
3. When the register did change, the old and new versions are compared entity-by-entity. Added, removed and changed companies go into the public changes feed (and its RSS), trigger the newsletter and send watchlist alerts to accounts following an affected company.
4. Data files are committed to version control, so every historical state stays auditable.

What we change about the raw data

The registers are exports of manual filings, so they contain inconsistencies. We clean presentation, never substance:

• Names: collapsed whitespace and Cyrillic look-alike characters (А, В, Е, О …) mapped to their Latin equivalents, so search finds entries that would otherwise be invisible.
• Services: matched against the ten MiCA Title V service descriptions by their wording, not by the letter prefixes in the file — those are missing or wrong on some rows.
• Companies vs. entries: the register holds one row per authorisation, so a company can appear several times. We group by LEI where present (320 companies across 323 entries).
• Missing dates: shown as "not published" and sorted last, never filled with a guess.
• Derived fields are always labelled as such: token names and tickers parsed from white-paper URLs, the fiat peg of a stablecoin inferred from its ticker, and exchange-to-register matching by entity name. Where a derivation fails, the field stays empty instead of being approximated.

Limits you should know

• The register is the authority, not us. For any legally relevant decision, check the source: ESMA and the national authority. We link the original entry on every page.
• Warnings are historical records. I-SCAN alerts are submitted by IOSCO members voluntarily, are not a complete list of all warnings worldwide, and reach back years. An entry does not mean a company acts unlawfully today — it may have been authorised since. Dates are shown when the source publishes one.
• "Not in the register" is not an accusation. On the platform comparison it means no matching EU entity was found by name — many global brands operate in the EU through differently named subsidiaries.
• National lists beyond ESMA: the directory of all 30 EU/EEA authorities links each regulator's own warning list for the cases our aggregated sources do not cover.
• Not legal advice. This is a research tool, not a compliance certificate.