Some crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) providing custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients (as defined in Article 3(1)(17) of MiCA) have sister companies that may provide certain services to the CASP’s clients, for instance, liquidity or offer lending services. These sister companies may be using the CASP as their custodian and the CASP will hold their crypto-assets within the same wallet(s) to custody other clients' crypto-assets.

Under MiCA, is a CASP providing custody and administration of crypto-assets on behalf of clients allowed to hold clients’ crypto-assets within the same wallets as crypto-assets belonging to entities of the same group?

Does the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) allows crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) to use clients’ crypto-assets for pre-funding client orders?

Does the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) permit the staking of clients’ crypto-assets by crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) for their own account?

According to Article 4(5) of MiCA, crypto-asset transfer services are exempt from requiring CASP authorization if they are linked to public offerings that qualify as exempt under Article 4(3) (with exceptions). However, the wording leaves room for interpretation as to whether it is mandatory for issuers to either be authorized or subcontract with a CASP for transfer services in the case of non-exempt public offerings. To provide greater legal certainty for the primary market, it would be helpful to clarify the following:

Can the issuer itself conduct a public offering of a crypto-asset other than asset-referenced tokens or e-money tokens, transferring the tokens directly from the issuance smart contract to a personal wallet, without being required to obtain CASP authorization or subcontract custody and transfer services under an authorized CASP, even if the offering does not fall under the exemptions of Article 4(3) as referenced in Article 4(5)?

There is a practice in the crypto-asset industry when dealing with client orders which involves the following scenario:
i) a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) providing the service of execution of orders (CASP-broker) receives client orders;
ii) this CASP-broker systematically executes the orders received on behalf of the clients with another entity of the group as counterparty (the “group entity B”) instead of executing such orders on the group’s trading platform for crypto-assets;
iii) group entity B then immediately places an offsetting order to hedge its exposure on the group’s trading platform for crypto-assets.
In this scenario, the price offered to the client by group entity B (through the CASP-broker) is in excess of the top of book price achievable on the order book of the trading platform for crypto-assets to reflect a "guaranteed price" offered to the customer for a limited period, for example 30 - 60 seconds. Group entity B then enters an order on the group’s trading platform on the same side as the customer order would have been had it been executed directly on the group’s trading platform.
However, the price is not really guaranteed: if during the execution of group entity B’s order on the group’s trading platform, the price moves in favour of the client order, group entity B trades at that more favourable price but fills the client’s order at the agreed “guaranteed price”. But, if during the execution of group entity B’s order, the price moves against the client order, the client’s order will be filled by group entity B only if the price movement doesn't exceed the spread applied by group entity B when quoting the “guaranteed price”. Otherwise the order of the client will be cancelled.
In such scenarios, the client pays:
(i) to the CASP-broker: a fully disclosed commission for the “execution of their order”, and
(ii) to group entity B: a spread which is priced in to the “guaranteed price” quoted by group entity B.
Is this scenario compliant with MiCA?