Bybit EU co-CEO calls Tether legit as EU's USDT cutoff nears

The co-CEO of Bybit’s European arm says its users want the exchange to keep offering Tether’s USDT, weeks before an EU deadline that requires licensed exchanges to wind down services in stablecoins without MiCA authorisation. Georg Harer told CoinDesk’s Nick Day on a Web Summit stage in Lisbon on Tuesday that users are keen that Bybit “keep on supporting USDT”.Web Summit Lisbon 2026, Stage 8 livestream (Day One). Tether, he said, “seems to be a legit company overall”.

Bybit EU is licensed under MiCA, the EU’s crypto rulebook, in Austria and based in Vienna.Tokenization Is the New Plumbing of Finance: Bybit EU’s Georg Harer at unDavos Summit | Bybit Press. Harer said USDT is not regulated in the EU, and that the regulator has told every crypto service provider to stop all operations with it by 8 January, custody included.

What ESMA set

The European Securities and Markets Authority said on 8 October that “Crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) authorised under MiCA should cease providing services related to non-MiCA-compliant stablecoins to clients in the European Union”.ESMA sets out supervisory expectations on services related to unauthorised stablecoins. That covers custody as well as trading, exchange and transfers. Its opinion tells national regulators to require any remaining exposures to be cleared no later than three months after publication, which falls on 8 January.ESMA, Opinion on the provision of crypto asset services in relation to non-MiCA-compliant asset-referenced tokens…. Until then, regulators may allow only time-limited wind-down services: liquidation, conversion, withdrawal, transfer or safekeeping of existing holdings, with no new purchases or trading.

ESMA does not name any token. Crystal Intelligence, a blockchain analytics firm that sells stablecoin data, wrote that USDT is not authorized under MiCA.Q3 2026 Stablecoin Flows: Who Cut USDT and Where It Went.

What Harer expects

Harer said the friction comes from the way Tether organises its funds, which does not align with MiCA. A revision of MiCA is under discussion, with how stablecoins safeguard funds a key topic, and there may be a regulated USDT in a couple of years, he said. Earlier pushback from the regulator “didn’t really harm tether to be honest,” he said.

He said Bybit has seen no effect on customers yet. New retail customers do not buy USDT, he said, and the demand comes mostly from sophisticated traders, because “undeniably USDT provides globally the biggest liquidity”. He did not say what Bybit EU will offer after the deadline, only that Bybit would still have to see.

The balances

Bybit has already cut back. Crystal counted a $1.66 billion fall in Bybit’s USDT in the third quarter, the largest cut by any exchange or lender in its table. Bybit added $315 million of Ripple’s RLUSD and $64 million of USDe over the same period. Crystal’s figures cover Bybit’s wallets across the whole exchange, not only its EU arm.

USDT itself has shrunk since ESMA published. Its supply stood at $184.35 billion on 8 October and $175.93 billion on 11 November.The S-Curve, Stablecoin supply falls $15bn in 30 days, most since June 2022, 11 November 2026. It accounts for 55% of a $15 billion fall in dollar stablecoin supply over 30 days, as we reported on Wednesday.

Agents and self-custody

Harer said Bybit has opened a trading API for AI agents and published a sample Claude skill on GitHub, so an agent can already trade crypto, stablecoins included, and make withdrawals.

Asked about exchange hacks, he advised anyone really worried to hold most of their assets themselves: “take your money off the exchange use the exchange to exchange it,” he said.