Investors following the European crypto market learned last week that Hungary’s parliament voted on 28 July 2026 to repeal its bespoke national crypto validator rules, a framework that had driven several firms out of the market and left Hungary as an outlier under EU law. The timing is striking: CoinCash, operating under the legal entity Tiwala Solutions, had received its MiCA licence from the National Bank of Hungary (MNB) on 20 July, just eight days before parliament acted.
MiCA (the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is the bloc-wide framework that authorises crypto firms to passport their services across all EU member states. Hungary had built a separate domestic layer on top of it, a practice regulators call “gold-plating.”
Why Hungary’s Crypto Validator Rules Failed
Hungary’s MiCA Implementation Act was adopted on 20 April 2024 and entered into force on 30 June 2024. Alongside it, parliament introduced an obligation for every crypto-asset conversion to be certified by a licensed third-party validator before the transaction could be considered legally valid.
The Hungary crypto validator rules created a dual-track supervisory structure. MiCA-related licensing was overseen by the MNB, while the validation obligation was supervised by a separate body, SARA, according to Wolf Theiss. Validators were required to check the origin of crypto assets, wallet ownership, and customer information before issuing a compliance declaration. Any conversion completed without that declaration was rendered legally invalid.
The validation certificate regime took practical effect on 27 December 2025. Criminal penalties of up to two years’ imprisonment applied not only to providers offering unauthorised exchange services but also to users on the other side of the transaction, meaning ordinary customers faced legal exposure too.
Firms had until 1 July 2025 to comply with the broader national requirements, compared with MiCA’s own 18-month transition period. Revolut, MoonPay, Strike and Kriptomat each cited the legislation when suspending or withdrawing Hungarian services. CashCoin relocated to the Netherlands and said it would return by relying on MiCA passporting.
According to Schoenherr, the reasoning behind the repeal act explicitly acknowledged that the validation requirement was unique to Hungary and went further than, and clashed with, MiCA. The amending legislation deleted the validation duty, the related definitions and licensing regime, the rule invalidating unauthorised conversions, and two related Criminal Code offences. It was promulgated in the Hungarian Official Gazette on 31 July 2026.
Hungary’s Finance Minister Kármán András stated that the government chose to eliminate the validator requirement after the previous framework disrupted the domestic crypto market and led several firms to withdraw or suspend their services, according to crypto.news.
What the Repeal Means for European Crypto Firms
CoinCash suspended operations for seven months while the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) worked through multiple rounds of review before granting the licence after a 16-month process. ‘We chose to meet one of Europe’s toughest regimes head-on rather than move offshore, and that choice is what this licence represents,’ said Attila Mogyorósi, co-founder and chief executive of CoinCash.
CoinCash’s authorisation remains valid regardless of the legislative changes. The firm has said it will gradually restore services and expand into additional MiCA-regulated products beyond cryptocurrency trading.
For other European crypto businesses, the repeal removes a separate domestic rulebook that previously made Hungary inaccessible without dual compliance. Firms holding MiCA licences elsewhere in the EU can now serve Hungarian clients through passporting without navigating the Hungary crypto validator rules that had blocked or complicated market entry.
Finance Magnates, which first reported the parliamentary vote, noted it could not independently verify the result. The promulgation in the Official Gazette on 31 July 2026 provides the formal legislative record.
The episode offers a clear illustration of what happens when a member state layers domestic requirements onto an EU-harmonised regime: firms leave, consumers lose access, and the state eventually reverses course. The question now is how quickly the firms that withdrew will re-enter, and whether CoinCash, the only locally licensed CASP in Hungary, can convert its regulatory head-start into a durable market position before they do.
