Reed Smith launches automated MiCA compliance tool as EU grandfathering window closes
Law firm’s Aquarius platform automates token classification and white papers as crypto firms lose transitional cover under MiCA.
Reed Smith LLP has launched an automated compliance platform called Aquarius to help crypto-asset issuers meet the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, going live on 13 July 2026, less than a fortnight after the bloc’s transitional “grandfathering” arrangements for digital asset firms expired on 1 July. The timing places the global law firm at the centre of a compliance scramble now facing crypto companies across the EU’s 27 member states.
Firms that had been operating under temporary national exemptions while MiCA’s full licensing regime phased in must now demonstrate complete compliance, covering everything from consumer protection standards to operational and disclosure obligations for digital asset service providers. Reed Smith says Aquarius is designed to compress that burden into a single automated workflow.
What the platform automates
Aquarius begins with token categorisation, determining which regulatory bucket a given crypto-asset falls into under MiCA — a classification that dictates the disclosure and licensing rules that follow. The platform then generates the white papers that MiCA mandates as a legal disclosure requirement, alongside automated due diligence and environmental, social and governance (ESG) compliance checks.
The tool also produces legal entity identifiers, the 20-character alphanumeric codes regulators use to track participants across financial markets. Reed Smith has said it intends to extend Aquarius beyond the EU to support compliance regimes in the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Singapore, positioning the platform as a template for jurisdictions still finalising their own crypto-asset frameworks.
A new legal-tech division
Aquarius sits within Reed Smith Legal Solutions, a division the firm formally launched on 9 July, just four days before the platform itself went live. Lee Zoeller chairs the new unit, with Tariq Rasheed named as lead lawyer on Aquarius and Panos Katsambas also playing a central role in the project, which the team has framed around ensuring legal robustness rather than pure automation.
Reed Smith, which operates more than 30 offices across North America, Europe and Asia, runs a dedicated digital asset practice under its “On Chain” initiative and has advised on a number of prominent industry transactions. The firm frames Aquarius as an extension of that practice, aimed at combining automated workflows with legal expertise for companies entering or expanding within the European crypto market.
Why it matters for European crypto firms
The launch underscores how MiCA’s full entry into force is reshaping the commercial landscape for legal and compliance services, not just for exchanges and issuers themselves. With grandfathering provisions now closed, firms that delayed licensing applications face heightened supervisory scrutiny, and demand for automated classification and disclosure tools is likely to grow as national regulators across the bloc begin enforcing the regime in earnest.
For UK and other non-EU crypto businesses eyeing the European market, Reed Smith’s stated plans to extend Aquarius into UK, UAE, Hong Kong and Singapore compliance regimes suggest that MiCA’s disclosure architecture — token classification, white papers and ESG checks — could increasingly serve as a reference model for crypto-asset regulation well beyond the EU’s borders.
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