The MiCA Market Abuse Regime: Insider Dealing, Manipulation, and Disclosure Obligations for Crypto

Every crypto firm has heard of MiCA's licensing rules — the CASP authorisation, the capital classes, the ESMA technical standards. Far fewer have read Title VI, the part of the regulation that has nothing to do with getting a licence and everything to do with how you behave once you hold one.

Title VI is the MiCA market abuse regime. It applies to anyone trading or operating in crypto-assets admitted to trading — not just the issuer, not just the platform, but every participant. It imports the logic of the Market Abuse Regulation into crypto, prohibits insider dealing, obliges issuers to disclose inside information, and forces firms to file STORs — suspicious transaction and order reports.

This guide sets out the regime itself: who is caught, the three prohibited behaviours, the issuer disclosure duty, the STOR obligation, and what enforcement looks like. It is a companion to our surveillance vendor guide — that piece covers the tooling; this one covers the law the tooling exists to satisfy.

MiCA is long, and most firms stop reading after the bits that get them authorised. Title VI, which runs from Article 86 to Article 92, sits near the back and is easy to skip. That is a mistake, because it is the part most likely to generate enforcement against you personally rather than against your licence.

The architecture is deliberate. The EU already had a mature market-abuse framework for traditional instruments in the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR, Regulation (EU) 596/2014).²^[1] Rather than reinvent it, the legislator lifted MAR's structure and dropped it into Title VI, adapting the definitions for crypto-assets.

The legal source is the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114), which fully applied from 30 December 2024.¹^[2] Title VI applied on the same date — there was no transitional grace period for the market-abuse rules.

The scope test in Article 86 turns on one phrase: crypto-assets admitted to trading. Title VI applies to acts carried out in relation to crypto-assets that are admitted to trading, or for which a request for admission has been made, on a trading platform operated by an authorised CASP.

That admission trigger matters. A purely peer-to-peer token with no listing is outside Title VI. The moment a token is listed on a MiCA-authorised platform — or someone files a request to list it — the market-abuse regime switches on for that asset everywhere, including off-venue and on other platforms.

Crucially, the regime is conduct-based, not entity-based. It binds any person — natural or legal — who deals, attempts to deal, recommends or induces dealing, or operates in the affected crypto-asset. You do not need to be the issuer or the platform to commit insider dealing under Article 89.

• The issuer of the crypto-asset and its management and staff.

• The trading platform operator — the CASP running the venue.

• Intermediaries — brokers, market-makers, and CASPs executing client orders.

• Any trader, retail or professional, holding or acting on inside information.

This breadth is why Title VI is easy to underestimate. It is not a platform-only rulebook. If you run a Class 3 exchange, you are caught as an operator and as a filer of STORs; if your treasury desk trades listed tokens, you are caught as a market participant.

We call the core of Title VI the MiCA Market-Abuse Triangle: three prohibited behaviours that together define what counts as abuse, wrapped by two operational duties that make the prohibitions enforceable.

The three prohibitions are:

• Insider dealing — trading on inside information (Article 89).

• Unlawful disclosure of inside information — leaking it outside the normal course of duties (Article 89).

• Market manipulation — distorting price or supply, or spreading misleading signals (Article 91).

The two operational duties that surround them are:

• Public disclosure of inside information — the issuer's obligation to announce promptly (Article 88).

• STOR filing — the duty on those arranging or executing transactions to report suspicion (Article 92).

Insider dealing under Article 89 is the act of a person who possesses inside information using it to acquire or dispose of crypto-assets to which that information relates, whether directly or indirectly, for their own account or for a third party.

The pivotal concept is inside information: information of a precise nature, not made public, relating to one or more issuers or crypto-assets, which if made public would be likely to have a significant effect on the price. That mirrors the MAR definition almost verbatim.

The most crypto-specific insider risk is the listing event. The decision to admit a token to trading is itself price-sensitive: a listing on a major venue frequently moves the price sharply. Anyone who knows a listing is coming — exchange staff, listing-committee members, the issuer's advisers — holds inside information.

Trading the token ahead of the announcement, or tipping a friend who does, is textbook insider dealing. ESMA has repeatedly flagged listing front-running as a primary supervisory focus, and exchanges are expected to maintain insider lists covering everyone with access to listing decisions.

The prohibition also catches attempted insider dealing, cancelling or amending an order placed before the person possessed the information, and recommending or inducing another to deal. There is no de minimis size threshold.

The second limb of Article 89 is unlawful disclosure: where a person who possesses inside information discloses it to any other person, except where the disclosure is made in the normal exercise of employment, profession or duties.

This is the tipping offence. The discloser commits the breach even if they never trade themselves and even if the recipient never acts. The simple act of leaking price-sensitive information — a forthcoming listing, a protocol exploit, a delisting decision — is the violation.

The normal-course exception is narrow. Sharing inside information with a lawyer drafting the listing agreement is lawful; sharing the same fact in a Telegram group or with a trading counterparty is not. Where lawful disclosure is made, the recipient inherits the inside-information status and the trading prohibition with it.

Market manipulation under Article 91 is the broadest of the three prohibitions. It covers two families of conduct: transaction-based manipulation and information-based manipulation.

Transaction-based manipulation includes entering transactions or orders that give, or are likely to give, false or misleading signals as to the supply, demand or price of a crypto-asset, or that secure the price at an abnormal or artificial level.

Article 91 lists indicative techniques that map directly onto well-known crypto abuses:

• Wash trading — buying and selling the same asset with no change in beneficial ownership to inflate apparent volume.

• Spoofing and layering — placing orders with no intent to execute, to move price, then cancelling.

• Pump-and-dump — accumulating a thin token, hyping it, and selling into the induced demand.

• Momentum ignition — a burst of orders designed to trigger others' algorithms and start a price move.

• Marking the close — trading near a reference snapshot to set a benchmark or index price.

Information-based manipulation covers disseminating false or misleading information — through media, social channels or any other means — that gives false signals or secures an artificial price, including where the disseminator profits from the resulting move. Coordinated influencer campaigns fall squarely within this limb.

The technical detail of how venues are expected to detect these patterns sits in ESMA's MiCA market-abuse standards.³^[3] Our companion piece on choosing a surveillance vendor — Eventus, Trillium, Solidus Labs and others — walks through the tooling that flags wash trades and spoofing in practice.

Article 88 places a positive duty on issuers and on persons seeking admission to trading: they must inform the public as soon as possible of inside information that concerns them and that directly affects their crypto-asset.⁴^[4]

The disclosure must be made in a manner enabling fast access and complete, correct and timely assessment by the public, and it must be posted on the issuer's website for at least five years. This is the mechanism that removes the information asymmetry insider dealing exploits.

Article 88 permits an issuer to delay disclosure of inside information on its own responsibility, but only where all three conditions are met: immediate disclosure would prejudice the issuer's legitimate interests, delay is not likely to mislead the public, and the issuer can ensure confidentiality.

If confidentiality is lost during a delay — a leak, a rumour specific enough to suggest the information has escaped — the issuer must disclose immediately. Where a delay is used, the issuer must be able to document the conditions and, when required, notify the relevant NCA.

Article 92 is the obligation most firms underestimate. Any person professionally arranging or executing transactions in crypto-assets must establish and maintain effective arrangements, systems and procedures to detect and report suspicious orders and transactions.⁵^[5]

When such a person has reasonable suspicion that an order or transaction could constitute insider dealing, market manipulation, or an attempt at either, they must notify the competent authority without delay. That notification is the STOR — the suspicious transaction and order report.⁶^[6]

The duty falls on CASPs operating trading platforms, on CASPs executing client orders, and on any other person whose business arranges or executes crypto-asset transactions. The reporting standard is suspicion, not proof — you do not need to be certain abuse occurred, only to hold a reasonable basis to suspect it.

• Trigger: reasonable suspicion of insider dealing, manipulation, or an attempt.

• Timing: without delay once suspicion is formed — not batched, not deferred to a monthly cycle.

• Form: the ESMA-specified STOR template, sent to the relevant NCA.

• Tipping-off: the person filing must not disclose the STOR to anyone, especially the subject.

Because Title VI was modelled on MAR, the two regimes share structure and language. But the instruments, venues and some thresholds differ. The table below maps the parallels and the divergences.

For day-to-day training and surveillance design, it helps to reduce the Triangle to a single reference: what each behaviour is, a concrete crypto example, the evidence a supervisor looks for, and the exposure.

A workable Title VI programme has four pillars. None is optional for a firm operating a trading platform, and the first three apply to any firm trading listed tokens at scale.

Maintain an insider list of everyone with access to inside information — listing decisions, treasury actions, protocol changes. Record who had access, to what, and when. The list is the control that makes insider-dealing investigations tractable.

Deploy automated market surveillance calibrated to crypto-specific abuse patterns — wash trading, spoofing, ramping. This is where vendors such as Eventus, Trillium and Solidus Labs sit; the build-versus-buy decision and alert calibration are covered in our surveillance guide.

Build a STOR pipeline: alert triage, an investigation workflow, a documented suspicion threshold, the ESMA template, and a tested route to the NCA. Record closed alerts as well as filed reports — supervisors want to see the reasoning on what you decided not to file.

Train staff on what inside information is and the tipping prohibition, and adopt an Article 88 disclosure policy governing when and how price-sensitive news is announced, including the delay-decision log. For platform operators, this layer plugs into the broader exchange playbook.

MiCA sets a floor of administrative penalties that NCAs must have available for market-abuse breaches: public censure, disgorgement of profits, and substantial fines calibrated to turnover and to the gains made or losses avoided.

The headline fining powers are large. For legal persons, MiCA requires maximum administrative fines of at least €15 million or 15% of annual turnover for the most serious breaches, with lower but still significant ceilings for other Title VI infringements and meaningful caps for natural persons.

Above the administrative layer sits a criminal overlay. MiCA leaves criminal sanctions to Member State law — the same architecture as MAR, where serious insider dealing and manipulation can be prosecuted as crimes. Enforcement priorities are signalled through ESMA's MAR guidance, which carries over to the crypto regime.⁷^[7]

Early supervisory attention has concentrated on listing front-running, wash trading to fake volume, and weak or absent STOR pipelines. What a supervisory visit looks like in practice is mapped in our inspection anatomy.

Yes. MiCA Title VI (Articles 86–92) is a complete market-abuse regime for crypto-assets admitted to trading. It is modelled on the EU Market Abuse Regulation and prohibits insider dealing, unlawful disclosure of inside information, and market manipulation, while imposing issuer disclosure and STOR-filing duties.

A STOR is a suspicious transaction and order report. Under Article 92, any person professionally arranging or executing crypto-asset transactions must report to the NCA, without delay, any order or transaction they reasonably suspect could be insider dealing or market manipulation. The standard is suspicion, not proof, and filing it must not be disclosed to the subject.

Yes. Article 89 prohibits trading on inside information relating to crypto-assets admitted to trading — including the common case of trading a token before its listing is announced. It also bans tipping others and attempting to deal. Breaches carry administrative penalties and, depending on Member State law, criminal liability.

Wash trading is buying and selling the same crypto-asset with no genuine change in beneficial ownership, to create a false impression of volume or liquidity. It is a form of market manipulation prohibited by Article 91, because it sends false or misleading signals about supply and demand. Surveillance systems flag it through ownership-matched trade patterns.

Any person professionally arranging or executing transactions in crypto-assets — principally CASPs operating trading platforms and CASPs executing client orders. The duty is both to detect (maintain surveillance arrangements) and to report suspicion to the relevant NCA without delay.

• Market Surveillance for MiCA Class 3 Operators: the vendor and tooling side of Title VI — how Eventus, Trillium and Solidus Labs detect the abuses this regime prohibits.

• Running a Crypto Exchange Under MiCA: the operational playbook for Class 3 platforms, including how market-abuse controls fit the wider stack.

• MiCA Compliance Guide for CASPs: the full authorisation walkthrough that sits upstream of every Title VI obligation.

• Anatomy of a MiCA Class 3 Supervisory Inspection: what an NCA actually asks for when it tests your STOR pipeline and surveillance controls.

MiCA licensing told the market who could operate. Title VI tells everyone how to behave once tokens are trading — and it is where the next wave of crypto enforcement will land. The firms that read past the licensing chapters, build the STOR pipeline and the insider list before a supervisor asks for them, and treat market integrity as an operating discipline rather than a filing exercise, are the ones that will still be trading when the first Title VI enforcement actions make headlines.