Art. 4 Record-keeping of documents setting out the crypto-asset service provider’s and the client’s rights and obligations | RTS on record keeping | MiCA

This article establishes the retention period for contractual documents held by crypto-asset service providers.

It sets a default five-year retention window from the end of a service agreement, covering documents that define the rights and obligations of both the provider and its clients.

It also introduces a mechanism by which a competent authority can extend that period, pushing retention up to seven years from the termination date.

Important points:

Retain all contractual documents setting out your rights and obligations, and those of your clients, for five years from the termination of the service agreement.
Competent authorities are empowered to extend this retention period to up to seven years, provided they make such a request before the original five-year period expires.
The extension is triggered solely by a competent authority request, not automatically.

Crypto-asset service providers should be free to determine the manner in which they keep records of relevant data relating to all orders and transactions in crypto-assets. However, consistent and comparable records on services, activities, orders and transactions are essential for competent authorities to fulfil their supervisory tasks and to take enforcement measures. In particular, competent authorities should be able to perform the same analysis on all record datasets, regardless of which crypto-asset service provider produced the record. Crypto-asset service providers should therefore provide consistent details of the records on services, activities, orders and transactions by using uniform standards where a competent authority requests such information pursuant to Article 94 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114. For the same reasons, it is necessary to specify that the records should be maintained in a medium allowing effective supervision by competent authorities.

Article 4 Record-keeping of documents setting out the crypto-asset service provider’s and the client’s rights and obligations

Relevant recitals