MiCA Decoded is a 12-article weekly series for Bitcoin.com News, co-authored by LegalBison’s Co-Founding and Managing Directors: Aaron Glauberman, Viktor Juskin and Sabir Alijev. LegalBison advises crypto and FinTech companies on MiCA licensing, CASP and VASP applications, and regulatory structuring across Europe and beyond.

Under MiCA, a white paper is a mandatory legal disclosure instrument. Its closest analogy in traditional finance is a securities prospectus, not a marketing document. The regulation prescribes who must prepare one, in what format, containing what identifiers, subject to what automated validation, and with liability attached to a specific named person.

Getting any of those elements wrong means the document…