The rule.
Article 99 sits in Title V of MiCA (authorisation and operating conditions for CASPs). It governs marketing communications by crypto-asset service providers and links them directly to the underlying disclosure document.
“Any marketing communications relating to the provision of crypto-asset services by a crypto-asset service provider shall be in line with all of the following requirements:
(a) the marketing communications are clearly identifiable as such;
(b) the information in the marketing communications is fair, clear and not misleading;
(c) the information in the marketing communications is consistent with the information provided to clients pursuant to this Regulation, in particular Articles 66, 67 and 102.”
The whitepaper-parity rule appears in three places: Article 7 (offers of crypto-assets other than ART/EMT), Article 29 (ART issuers), and Article 53 (EMT issuers). Article 99 closes the loop for CASPs. Combined, they create a single principle: the document you filed must match what your marketing says.
What it requires.
Three operational obligations.
Whitepaper as source of truth. Every claim about the asset — tokenomics, yield mechanism, redemption rights, risk profile, custody arrangement, jurisdiction, token utility — has to be backed by something in the whitepaper. If the whitepaper doesn’t say it, the marketing communication can’t say it.
No upgrade in marketing. Marketing teams often soften, simplify, or upgrade whitepaper language to make it more conversion-friendly. “Variable yield, target 4–6%” in the whitepaper becomes “Earn up to 6% APY” on the landing page. That gap fails Article 99 and Article 88 simultaneously.
Updates must be synchronised. If the whitepaper is amended, the marketing has to be updated to match. Stale marketing pages from before a whitepaper amendment are non-compliant from the date of the amendment.
Common violations.
Whitepaper: “Variable yield, historical range 3.8%–5.4%, no guarantee.”
Landing page: “Earn up to 6% APY.”
The “up to” framing exceeds the documented historical range. Not consistent with the whitepaper. Compound violation of Article 88 (misleading) and Article 99 (parity).
Whitepaper: “Redemption requests are processed within 5 business days subject to liquidity.”
Landing page: “Withdraw anytime.”
“Withdraw anytime” implies instant, unconditional liquidity. The whitepaper documents a 5-day window with a liquidity condition. The landing page misrepresents the redemption right.
Whitepaper: “Investors may lose all of their capital.”
Marketing email: “A safer way to earn on stablecoins.”
The marketing email reframes the risk profile. “Safer” implies a baseline comparison that the whitepaper does not support. Violates Article 99 parity and Article 88 misleading.
How to comply.
Before any marketing campaign goes live, run a claim extraction: list every quantified or qualified statement on the page, then map each one to a sentence in the whitepaper. If you can’t map it, you can’t ship it.
Treat the whitepaper as the canonical wording, not the starting wording. Marketing copy that needs to be more punchy than the whitepaper has to be paraphrased in a way that preserves the substantive content. Cut, don’t upgrade.
When the whitepaper is amended, trigger a marketing-asset review the same day. Treat the marketing site as a downstream consumer of the whitepaper, not as an independent source. Tooling: a single source of truth document that both legal and marketing reference.
Internal style guide should ban the verbs that typically signal an upgrade: “guarantee,” “always,” “instantly,” “anytime,” “safer,” “safest.” If a copywriter wants to use one, route to legal.
Related rules.
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Article 88 and Article 99 fail together. The upgrade gap is usually both misleading and inconsistent.
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The risk treatment in marketing must also match the risk section of the whitepaper, with prominence.
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KOL content is also a “marketing communication” subject to Article 99 parity.