EURS, 2018–2026: The Euro Stablecoin That Did Not Make It Through MiCA

STASIS has destroyed 118.22 million EURS, its founder has marked the project “RIP,” and its website has gone offline. The apparent end of one of crypto’s oldest euro stablecoins closes an important chapter in the development of on-chain euros — but approximately 5.91 million EURS remains outstanding, with no public guidance for holders.

This is independent eurostablecoins.xyz analysis, source-linked throughout. It is not legal or investment advice. Where a fact comes from STASIS or a commercial partner it is labelled as a company or partner disclosure rather than independently verified market data, and where the public record is silent this article says so rather than guessing.

An end without an announcement

EURS did not end with a formal announcement.

At 22:08 UTC on 19 June 2026, the address Etherscan labels as the STASIS EURS Treasury transferred 118,218,784.36 EURS to the Ethereum zero address, permanently removing those tokens from supply. The destruction is visible in the on-chain burn transaction.

STASIS founder and CEO Gregory Klumov later shared the transaction with a brief epitaph:

“22.06.2018–19.06.2026 RIP.”

The post appeared on his public X account. By 21 June, the STASIS website was unavailable: checks from locations across North America, Europe and Asia consistently returned an HTTP 503 Service Unavailable response from stasis.net, and the site had not returned to normal operation when this article was published.

There was no press release explaining the decision. No published redemption deadline. No guidance for users holding the remaining tokens. No formal confirmation of what would happen to EURS on other networks.

The available evidence points to the end of EURS. It does not establish that STASIS as a legal company has been dissolved, entered liquidation, or become insolvent, nor does it mean that every EURS has been redeemed or destroyed. Approximately 5.91 million EURS remains on Ethereum, and the per-chain supply we still track is on the EURS data page.

A euro stablecoin before there was a euro stablecoin market

STASIS launched EURS in June 2018, when the stablecoin market was still small, experimental and overwhelmingly denominated in US dollars.

Tether was already operating, but the infrastructure that would later turn stablecoins into one of crypto’s largest product categories barely existed. Decentralised finance had not yet become a meaningful market, stablecoin regulation was fragmented, and the European Union had no dedicated framework for crypto-assets. Against that background, EURS was one of the first serious attempts to bring the euro onto a public blockchain.

The original Ethereum token was designed to represent one euro, backed by corresponding reserve assets. STASIS promoted daily account statements, regular reserve verification and external audits at a time when transparency standards for fiat-backed stablecoins were still being established. Its ambition extended beyond creating a trading instrument; STASIS presented EURS as infrastructure connecting conventional financial assets with public blockchains.

The original launch announcement described a €100 million pre-launch order book and projected significant institutional demand — a company disclosure rather than audited market data. Those expectations proved optimistic. EURS never reached the scale of the leading dollar stablecoins, and the broader euro stablecoin market remained comparatively small.

But EURS survived. It operated through the 2018 bear market, the rise of decentralised finance, the 2021 crypto boom, several industry collapses and the eventual introduction of comprehensive European stablecoin regulation. Few euro-denominated tokens from that period lasted as long.

The role EURS played

EURS became one of the most recognisable euro stablecoins of the pre-MiCA era. For European traders it provided an on-chain euro-denominated asset when most crypto markets required exposure to the US dollar; for exchanges and liquidity providers it offered a euro settlement instrument that could move outside banking hours; for developers it was one of the few established euro assets available for integrations.

STASIS expanded EURS beyond Ethereum. By 2024 the company said the token supported seven blockchain networks, including Polygon, Algorand, the XRP Ledger and XDC. When Ripple announced support for bringing the token to the XRP Ledger, it described EURS as the leading euro stablecoin and one of the ten largest stablecoins globally — a partner disclosure that reflects the position EURS had built rather than an independent ranking.

STASIS later claimed that more than €6 billion had been transferred using EURS and that the token was accessible in 175 countries. These were company and partner disclosures rather than independently audited market statistics, but they reflect what EURS had become: not merely an abandoned token from crypto’s early years, but an asset with exchange listings, custody integrations, DeFi markets and a functioning institutional narrative.

More importantly, EURS helped sustain the idea that the euro could have a place in on-chain finance. For most of its existence, stablecoin growth remained almost entirely concentrated in dollar-denominated assets. EURS did not reverse that imbalance, but it gave the emerging euro stablecoin market continuity before larger regulated issuers entered the sector. The full set of euro tokens tracked today is in the euro stablecoin directory.

Regulated, but not as electronic money

The regulatory position of EURS was more complicated than STASIS’s public descriptions often suggested.

STSS (Malta) Limited was identified as the issuer of EURS. In June 2023, the EURS white paper was registered under Malta’s Virtual Financial Assets framework, according to an examination of the MFSA register cited by risk analysts at LlamaRisk. That registration placed EURS within Malta’s pre-MiCA crypto-asset regime: it required an issuer operating from Malta to register a white paper and comply with the applicable VFA rules.

It did not make STSS Malta an electronic-money institution.

This distinction matters because STASIS and several of its commercial partners frequently described EURS as “regulated,” “authorised” or “fully compliant.” Those descriptions were not necessarily false in the narrow context of the Maltese VFA framework, but they could imply a stronger regulatory status than the issuer actually held. Registering a crypto-asset white paper was not equivalent to obtaining an EMI authorisation: it did not create the same prudential supervision, safeguarding framework or statutory electronic-money redemption rights. Before MiCA, that distinction could be obscured by Europe’s fragmented treatment of stablecoins. After MiCA, it could not.

MiCA changed the requirements

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation brought stablecoins referencing official currencies into the electronic-money framework. MiCA’s provisions for e-money tokens became applicable on 30 June 2024. Under Article 48, an issuer offering a euro stablecoin to the public in the EU or seeking its admission to trading must generally be authorised as either a credit institution or an electronic-money institution, and must notify and publish a compliant crypto-asset white paper. A previous VFA registration was not enough. For a plain-language walk-through of those categories, see our companion explainer on the MiCA stablecoin rules.

For EURS to continue under the new framework, STASIS therefore needed an authorised EMI or bank to become the issuer. That could have been achieved by obtaining an EMI authorisation, acquiring a licensed institution or transferring issuance to an existing regulated issuer. STASIS indicated that it intended to pursue the first route.

In a 2023 response to questions about the structure and risks of EURS, the company said its issuer board would submit what it called an “Electronic Money Token License” application to the Malta Financial Services Authority. MiCA does not technically provide a standalone EMT licence: the relevant underlying authorisation is an EMI or banking licence, followed by the required notification for the token.

Issuance stopped, but authorisation never followed

By May 2024, STASIS stated publicly that the necessary application had been submitted and that regulators had been notified of its intentions. The claim appeared in a response from the STASIS team on the Aave governance forum:

“All relevant regulatory bodies have been duly notified of our intentions, and the necessary application for an EMT license has been submitted.”

The statement is evidence that STASIS at least represented publicly that it had begun the regulatory process; it rules out the simple conclusion that the company never tried to adapt to MiCA. It does not establish what kind of application was submitted, whether the MFSA accepted it as complete or how far it progressed. Pending financial-services applications are generally confidential, and neither STASIS nor the MFSA published the application or its procedural status.

When MiCA’s stablecoin rules became applicable, STASIS did not emerge as an authorised electronic-money issuer. A September 2024 industry compliance review reported that new EURS issuance had been suspended from 1 July 2024 pending regulatory approval — the day after MiCA’s requirements for e-money tokens took effect. STASIS continued to describe MiCA compliance as an expected future outcome, but it did not subsequently identify an authorised institution, licence number or regulator decision.

A review by eurostablecoins.xyz of the ESMA interim MiCA register found no identifiable authorised EMT issuer entry for STASIS, STSS Limited, STSS (Malta) Limited, STASIS EURO or EURS. No MiCA-compliant EURS white paper, named EMI issuer or authorisation announcement could be identified in the public record.

That does not prove that the MFSA formally rejected the application. The application may have been refused, withdrawn, abandoned, left incomplete or remained unresolved; STASIS may also have decided that completing the licensing process was no longer commercially worthwhile. The precise reason is not publicly known. The outcome is clearer: STASIS entered the MiCA transition saying that it intended to become authorised, but EURS never appeared as a MiCA-compliant e-money token issued by an identifiable EU bank or EMI. EURS survived eight years of crypto market cycles; it did not complete the transition from Malta’s early VFA framework to regulated electronic money under MiCA.

The burn removed more than 95% of Ethereum supply

The final treasury transaction was enormous in nominal terms. Immediately before the burn, the EURS Ethereum contract had a total supply of 124,125,940 tokens. The transfer to the zero address destroyed 118,218,784.36 EURS, removing approximately 95.24% of that supply.

But STASIS did not burn all outstanding EURS. The destroyed tokens came from the wallet identified by Etherscan as the STASIS EURS Treasury and appear to have been issuer-controlled inventory rather than tokens held by external users. Following the transaction, the Ethereum contract continued to report 5,907,155.64 EURS in total supply across approximately 5,112 holder addresses.

The distinction is fundamental. Sending treasury tokens to the zero address reduces the contract’s supply. It does not demonstrate that €118.22 million was redeemed by customers, that the same amount of reserve assets was released, or why such a large quantity of uncirculated inventory remained minted. The burn proves that the treasury-held tokens were destroyed; it does not independently prove when they were minted, whether they circulated, or how any matching reserve assets were treated. Additional EURS representations may also remain on other networks; the Ethereum figure should not automatically be treated as the complete outstanding liability across every chain previously supported by STASIS, and those representations may require separate reconciliation. Claims that the entire EURS supply was burned are therefore incorrect.

The website goes offline

The disappearance of the STASIS website adds weight to the conclusion that EURS is being shut down. On 21 June, stasis.net returned an HTTP 503 Service Unavailable response across every tested region in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and it still returned 503 when this article was published. No wind-down notice was accessible; neither were current reserve reports, redemption instructions or contact details for holders seeking repayment.

A website outage would not ordinarily prove that a financial product had ceased operating. Infrastructure fails, and websites can be restored. In this case, the outage followed a burn of more than 95% of the Ethereum supply and a public “RIP” message from the founder. Taken together, these are clear signals that EURS has reached the end of its operating life. What is absent is an orderly public process explaining that end.

The remaining holders need an answer

A stablecoin does not cease to create obligations merely because its issuer stops minting it or burns its treasury inventory. Approximately 5.91 million EURS remains on Ethereum; those tokens are held outside the STASIS treasury and continue to exist on-chain. Several basic questions remain unanswered: whether direct redemption is still available; which legal entity remains responsible for redeeming the tokens; whether sufficient safeguarded assets are still held against the remaining supply; what the status is of EURS represented on networks other than Ethereum; whether exchanges and DeFi protocols will continue supporting the token; and whether there is a deadline by which holders must submit redemption requests.

STASIS built the EURS proposition around reserve backing, transparency and redeemability. Its wind-down should therefore include a final reserve reconciliation and clear instructions for every remaining holder. A burn transaction and a social-media post are not an adequate substitute.

The lack of communication is especially notable in light of the regulatory transition STASIS had attempted to complete. Modern European stablecoin rules are designed not only to regulate issuance but also to establish clear holder rights and orderly redemption arrangements. Whatever the reason for the end of EURS, its remaining holders should not be left to infer their position from blockchain transactions and a four-word post.

What EURS leaves behind

EURS never became the euro equivalent of USDT or USDC. It did something more modest, but still important: it demonstrated that a euro-backed token could remain operational across several crypto market cycles, expand to multiple networks and find uses across exchanges, custody platforms and decentralised finance.

It existed before Europe had agreed what a stablecoin legally was. It helped establish reserve disclosure, external verification and redemption as central parts of the euro stablecoin proposition, and it provided an early euro-denominated settlement asset during years when almost all on-chain liquidity was moving into dollars. Its eventual failure to secure a place under MiCA does not erase that contribution.

It does, however, illustrate the dividing line between the first generation of euro stablecoins and the market now emerging. Before MiCA, a project could assemble a corporate structure, register a crypto white paper, publish reserve statements and describe itself broadly as regulated. After MiCA, the issuer must be an authorised financial institution: the legal identity behind the token, the holder’s redemption claim and the regulator responsible for supervision can no longer remain ambiguous. For users, the practical lesson is to separate a Maltese VFA white-paper registration, an EMI authorisation and a MiCA-compliant EMT — three different things that were often described with the same word. For issuers, EURS is a reminder that the way a token ends matters: an orderly wind-down with a reserve reconciliation and holder instructions is now part of what a credible euro stablecoin owes the people who hold it.

EURS was built for the earlier market. STASIS said it would make the transition to the new one, apparently applied to do so and suspended issuance while waiting. The authorisation never became visible. On 19 June 2026, most of the Ethereum supply was destroyed, the founder marked the project “RIP,” and the website went dark. Eight years after helping establish the euro stablecoin category, EURS appears to have reached the end of the road. Its place in the market’s history is secure. Its final obligations are not yet resolved.

Status at publication

This article is independent eurostablecoins.xyz analysis, not issuer communication, and not legal or investment advice. Figures are drawn from the linked on-chain transaction and contract pages and from the public regulatory record; statements attributed to STASIS or its partners are company or partner disclosures. Live EURS data is on the EURS data page, the wider market is in the directory, the wind-down set is documented on inactive euro stablecoins, and the short news entry on this event is in euro stablecoin news. Published 8 Jul 2026.