Art. 92 Prevention and detection of market abuse | MiCA regulation | MiCA

This article sits within the market abuse framework of the regulation and places a direct obligation on anyone who professionally arranges or executes transactions in crypto-assets to have systems in place to prevent and detect market abuse.

It also establishes a reporting chain: suspicious activity must be reported to the relevant national competent authority, who must then pass that information to the competent authorities of the trading platforms involved.

ESMA is tasked with developing the technical standards and guidelines that will underpin how this all works in practice, including for cross-border situations.

Important points:

If you professionally arrange or execute crypto-asset transactions, implement effective arrangements, systems and procedures to detect and prevent market abuse, and report any reasonable suspicion without delay to the relevant national competent authority.
Competent authorities receiving suspicious transaction reports are required to transmit that information to the competent authorities of the trading platforms concerned.
ESMA is required to develop regulatory technical standards specifying the required arrangements and reporting templates, and to issue supervisory guidelines by 30 June 2025 to ensure consistency across competent authorities.

1. Any person professionally arranging or executing transactions in crypto-assets shall have in place effective arrangements, systems and procedures to prevent and detect market abuse. That person shall be subject to the rules of notification of the Member State where it is registered or has its head office or, in the case of a branch, the Member State where the branch is situated, and shall without delay report to the competent authority of that Member State any reasonable suspicion regarding an order or transaction, including any cancellation or modification thereof, and other aspects of the functioning of the distributed ledger technology such as the consensus mechanism, where there might exist circumstances indicating that market abuse has been committed, is being committed or is likely to be committed.
2. The competent authorities receiving a report of suspicious orders or transactions shall transmit such information immediately to the competent authorities of the trading platforms concerned.
▼C1ModificationCorrectedParagraph 2 corrected by a corrigendum to Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. Published in the Official Journal 2 May 2024.▲
1. ESMA shall develop draft regulatory technical standards to further specify:
  appropriate arrangements, systems and procedures for persons to comply with paragraph 1;
  the template to be used by persons to comply with paragraph 1;
  for cross-border market abuse situations, coordination procedures between the relevant competent authorities for the detection and sanctioning of market abuse.
2. ESMA shall submit the draft regulatory technical standards referred to in the first subparagraph to the Commission by 30 December 2024.
3. Power is delegated to the Commission to supplement this Regulation by adopting the regulatory technical standards referred to in the first subparagraph of this paragraph in accordance with Articles 10 to 14 of Regulation (EU) No 1095/2010.
1. In order to ensure consistency of supervisory practices under this Article, ESMA shall by 30 June 2025 issue guidelines in accordance with Article 16 of Regulation (EU) No 1095/2010 on supervisory practices among the competent authorities to prevent and detect market abuse, if not already covered by the regulatory technical standards referred to in paragraph 2.

Article 92 Prevention and detection of market abuse

Relevant recitals