Crédit Agricole officially launched a euro-backed stablecoin called the EURO eXchange Token (EURXT) today, pegging the digital asset 1:1 to the fiat euro. The asset servicing arm of the bank, CACEIS, deployed the stablecoin directly on the Ethereum blockchain using the ERC-20 standard.
The July 1, 2026 deadline for the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation arrived this morning. Crypto-asset service providers operating without full MiCA authorization must immediately cease serving EU clients. Traditional financial institutions are now stepping into the vacuum left by departing offshore exchanges.
Institutional Token Economics
Europe’s third-largest bank executed the launch with exactly 20.02 million tokens in circulation at the start of trading. This represents €20 million entirely backed by dedicated cash reserves held directly on the CACEIS Bank balance sheet. Retail investors cannot access the asset. The token requires a minimum investment of €10,000 and is exclusively limited to institutional and corporate clients.
EURXT qualifies fully as a MiCA-compliant Electronic Money Token (EMT). By keeping the cash reserves on its own balance sheet, CACEIS removes the counterparty risks typically associated with third-party stablecoin issuers holding reserves in fragmented offshore accounts.
How MiCA Compliance Reshapes EU Institutional Crypto
The EURXT launch is not a theoretical blockchain test. The token was successfully used today to settle a subscription to the Amundi Money Market Fund. This transaction marks the first time a tokenized, Luxembourg-domiciled UCITS money market fund was settled using a euro stablecoin at the European level.
The broader implications point directly to a shift in how corporate treasury departments interact with digital asset yields. As offshore platforms are forced out of the Eurozone by the MiCA deadline, regulated domestic banks are providing the infrastructure for institutional capital to remain on-chain. CACEIS effectively bridges legacy asset management with Ethereum’s settlement layers, allowing corporate clients to subscribe to traditional money market funds using native blockchain rails.