MiCA didn't just regulate Europe's crypto market. It shrank it. "I believe firmly that 80% of the exchanges in Europe will not survive MiCA." Erald Ghoos (@okx ) took the stage to explain where that prediction comes from. Smaller competitors had been approaching OKX for over a year, ready to "throw in the towel". The burden goes beyond MiCA, the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation. It also covers DORA, the EU's rules on digital and cyber resilience, GDPR, the EU's data protection law, and the consumer protection safeguards built around all three. For firms without the technology to comply, it's a heavy build. His forecast: a wave of consolidation as the transition period closed. That period ended on 1 July 2026. Only around 244 firms had been authorised across Europe by then, and an estimated 75–80% of pre-MiCA platforms are leaving or have left the European market. Fewer players. Higher standards. A market built for institutions. This is the conversation that shows how regulation is reshaping Europe's crypto market, and it is the conversation that Signal Week 2027 will take further, 5–7 July at the Palais des Congrès and Château de Versailles. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Link in the comments.

Is agentic payments the next wild west? Bybit’s CEO isn’t convinced. “AI is only the means to the end.” Asked by Brian McGleenon whether agentic payments, where AI agents make transactions on a user’s behalf, are the industry’s next frontier, Ben Zhao (@Bybit_Official ) took a more grounded view. AI doesn’t rebuild the rails, he argued: it runs on existing financial infrastructure as a tool, much like Excel when it first arrived. Bybit has already launched AI sub-accounts, separate accounts where a client’s AI agent can operate and even trade within set permissions. Clients are connecting their AI tools to Bybit’s API (the interface that lets software pull data from the exchange) to fetch price data and run analysis. What hasn’t followed yet is the trading. The agents are plugged in. The trades are still waiting. This is the conversation that separates the hype around agentic payments from what is actually happening, and it is the conversation that Signal Week 2027 will take further, 5–7 July at the Palais des Congrès and Château de Versailles. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Link in the comments.

Stablecoin volumes are now rivalling Mastercard’s. Should Mastercard be worried? “I would say that’s an unfair comparison.” Asked by @gazza_jenks (@TheBlockCo ) whether stablecoin transaction volumes, at times exceeding Mastercard’s own, are a concern, Christian Rau (@Mastercard ) pushed back on the comparison itself. Mastercard’s volumes reflect real-world economic activity: people and businesses paying for goods and services. Stablecoin volumes, he argued, are still driven to a large degree by crypto trading and financial transactions. Big numbers, but not the same kind of activity. Volume is one thing. Real-world payments are another. This is the conversation that tests how far stablecoins have really come as a way to pay, and it is the conversation that Signal Week 2027 will take further, 5–7 July at the Palais des Congrès and Château de Versailles. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Link in the comments.

Perpetual futures on Tesla. Traded from a self-custody crypto wallet. That’s where Yoni Assia saw TradFi and DeFi start to merge. “That’s the beginning of that convergence of DeFi and TradFi.” @yoniassia (@eToro ) took the stage to describe his own aha moment: trading perpetual futures, contracts that track an asset’s price with no expiry date, on Tesla and other regulated stocks, straight from a non-custodial wallet, one where the user holds their own keys. The next step is already in discussion: working with large decentralised lenders like Morpho to let tokenised stocks from eToro be used as collateral, so investors can borrow against them in decentralised finance (DeFi), financial services that run on blockchains without traditional intermediaries. Regulated stocks. On-chain collateral. One market. This is the conversation that shows how quickly TradFi and DeFi are converging, and it is the conversation that Signal Week 2027 will take further, 5–7 July at the Palais des Congrès and Château de Versailles. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Link in the comments.

You can’t legislate markets into one. You have to rebuild the rails they run on. “To integrate markets, you have to move them onto shared ledgers, onto distributed ledgers.” Peter Kerstens (European Commission) took the stage to explain why laws alone have not created one integrated European market. Today’s infrastructure is a set of separate institutions, “scotch taped together”, that spend their time reconciling accounts with each other. His answer: move markets onto distributed ledgers, a single shared record of transactions that every participant works from, and integration follows. The prize: a massive wave of investors and liquidity coming on-chain. The Commission is already pointing that way. Its proposed Market Integration and Supervision Package would scale up the DLT Pilot Regime, the EU’s framework for trading and settling securities on blockchain, raising its cap to €100 billion per market infrastructure. Shared ledgers. One market. This is the conversation that shows how Europe plans to integrate its markets, and it is the conversation that Signal Week 2027 will take further, 5–7 July at the Palais des Congrès and Château de Versailles. Watch the full conversation on YouTube. Link in the comments.

Signal Week has a new home: the Palais des Congrès. From the Louvre to the Palais. The room got bigger. So did the stage. → 32,000 m² of space, a 3,723-seat Grand Amphithéâtre and 100+ conference and meeting rooms → 10,000+ attendees from 100+ countries and 300+ speakers → 70%+ C-suite or investment decision-makers → $55T+ in assets under management, 250+ banks and financial institutions, 70 regulators and government officials The institutions shaping global markets, from @BlackRock , @GoldmanSachs and @MorganStanley to @DeutscheBank , @bancosantander and the @LSEplc . Alongside them, the leaders building the digital asset economy: @ethereumfndn , @binance , @tether , @coinbase and more. Now featuring Fintech Meetup, bringing 700+ financial institutions into the room. The VIP Dinner stays where it belongs, at the Château de Versailles. 5–7 July 2027. See you at the Palais.