Study on MiCA Whitepaper Data Formats

MiCA introduces rules to enhance transparency and comparability of white papers and ensure that investors in crypto assets are informed about their characteristics and risks.

Articles 6(11), 19(10) and 51(10) require that, when drawing up a crypto asset white paper, issuers of crypto-assets, offerors, persons seeking admission to trading and operators of a trading platform admitting to trading a crypto-asset ensure that the white paper is available in a machine-readable format. ESMA has mandated iXBRL as the technical format for the standardised white paper templates, ensuring both human and machine readability of crypto-asset white papers.

The use of XBRL requires the development of a taxonomy. The elements of the taxonomy for the white papers should be exclusively the fields included in the standardised templates that are defined in the ESMA technical standards. The taxonomy for the use of XBRL is accessed in the form of XBRL files ('XBRL taxonomy files'), which provide a structured representation of the fields to be reported.

ESMA is developing the taxonomy and will make it available to the public as soon as possible following the adoption of the draft technical standards that are published in the second Final Report. To facilitate compliance with the format requirements, ESMA intends to publish on its website an editable template to support issuers/offeror and CASPs by mid-2025.

To enable persons drawing up the whitepapers to adapt to the format requirements, including the adaptation to the XBRL taxonomy files, the ESMA technical standard allows for 12 months lead time following its date of entry into force. In the meantime, persons drawing up the white papers should publish the relevant white papers including the disclosure items envisaged in Annexes I, II and III of MiCA on their websites in separate dedicated sections titled "white papers" .