Hungary Scraps Its Separate National Crypto-Conversion Validation Regime

What happened: Under the current rules, converting a crypto-asset into money or another crypto-asset generally requires a separate licensed "validating service provider" to first check the origin of the asset, the ownership of the wallet, and the identity of the parties, and only then issue a compliance statement allowing the conversion to go ahead. Converting crypto-assets without this validation currently counts as an "unauthorised crypto transaction", makes the transfer legally invalid, and obliges the conversion provider to refuse the transaction if the check fails. The new act deletes all of this from the crypto-assets market act: the validation duty, the definitions built around it, the licensing regime for validating providers, and the rule invalidating unauthorised conversions. It also removes the two Criminal Code offences that criminalised bypassing validation. The amending act was promulgated in the Hungarian Official Gazette on 31 July 2026 and takes effect eight days after that publication.

Why it matters: The validation requirement, unique to Hungary (as stated in the reasoning behind the new rules), went further than, and clashed with, the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which already sets harmonised rules for crypto-asset service providers across the EU. In practice, converting crypto into cash or another token in Hungary will no longer require an additional local certificate, and non-compliance will no longer be a criminal offence in itself. This is a genuine simplification: one layer of Hungarian-specific paperwork, cost and criminal exposure disappears, and the rules for crypto-asset services in Hungary move closer to the standard EU (MiCA) baseline that applies across the rest of the bloc.

Who is affected: Crypto-asset exchanges, wallet providers, and other crypto-asset service businesses operating in or into Hungary that until now had to route conversions through a licensed validation check or build the compliance-statement requirement into their transaction and onboarding processes.