Ireland gave crypto firms less room to adjust than most member states, allowing a 12-month grandfathering window against the 18 months the regulation permits, according to ESMA's list. That closed at the end of December 2025, so the new obligations land on firms already holding full authorization. MiCA came fully into force across the bloc on July 1, and Brussels is preparing to reopen the rulebook in 2027 to cover non-EU stablecoin issuers.
Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris said criminal organizations are exploiting new technologies, crypto-assets and complex international financial networks to conceal profits, and that the launch sends the message that "Ireland will not be a safe place to launder criminal proceeds." The strategy runs to 2030.
Thursday's document builds on a 30-point action plan the government published in June alongside its National Risk Assessment, which named crypto-asset misuse among Ireland's evolving financial-crime threats and promised "enhanced safeguards around crypto-assets and digital finance."
A crypto standard for gambling operators
The most concrete domestic crypto measure was set out in that June plan, which tasked the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland with establishing an industry standard for accepting crypto-related activities as a source of funds, with due diligence to verify the money is legitimate. It is slated for the second quarter of 2027.
Ireland's measures arrive inside a wider EU timetable that tightens further. The bloc's Anti-Money Laundering Regulation bars crypto-asset service providers from providing or holding anonymous crypto-asset accounts, or accounts allowing transactions to be anonymized or further obscured, including through anonymity-enhancing coins. That prohibition stops short of self-hosted wallets, exempting providers of hardware, software and self-hosted wallets that hold no access to or control over them. The rules apply from July 2027, policed by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority in Frankfurt.
Outside the bloc, the UK has been reworking its own regime, with HM Treasury publishing draft reforms in September 2025 that would lower the change-in-control notification threshold for crypto firms from 25% to 10%.
The travel rule Ireland is finishing transposing comes from the Paris-based body whose recommendations grade national frameworks, and which has been pressing members harder on crypto. In a July report, the FATF said that DeFi platforms with identifiable controllers already fall within its rules and should be supervised like other financial firms, and found nearly 93% of surveyed jurisdictions had yet to apply the standards to any qualifying arrangement.
