Compliance costs have become a moat, European crypto startups are shifting from protagonists to subcontractors, this script looks familiar.

Ledger CTO Charles Guillemet stated that the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), while aiming to unify the regulatory framework, is pricing out small and medium-sized crypto startups due to high costs of capital, auditing, insurance, and compliance, thereby creating barriers to competition for large institutions and traditional financial firms. He pointed out that as banks accelerate their deployment of crypto custody and asset tokenization, European native crypto companies are increasingly becoming providers of traditional financial infrastructure.