Thats a historic move!!

The longer I work in this industry the more I believe the next phase of Bitcoin & Crypto will be built less on hype - and much more on trust, infrastructure and - yes - "clarity" 😇

We’ve had our CASP license for just one month - and already five crypto companies have approached us asking whether we would acquire their stack through an asset or share deal because they will not be MiCA compliant by July 1 and are now looking for some form of exit. Some developments don’t really come as a surprise. This one didn’t. MiCA did not “kill” the European crypto industry. What it did was force the market to distinguish between narrative, real technology and sustainable financial infrastructure. Web3 used to work almost like a utility. You picked a provider, plugged into an API and moved on. It did not really matter where the company was based. Now it does. Regulation has become local. Supervision is continuous. And the integrations that actually matter with banks, payment providers and merchants go far beyond a simple API connection. What changed with MiCA is what the market now requires. Today, local presence matters in a way it never did before. From the few crypto companies left in Europe, even fewer are able to support the full lifecycle properly: euros into crypto, execution, custody, compliance, reporting, governance, payments infrastructure and integrations that actually hold up under scrutiny. The uncomfortable reality is that the barrier to remain in this industry is becoming extremely high. Compliance, licensing, governance, cybersecurity, reporting and operational oversight now require enormous amounts of capital and resources. This increasingly means that only heavily capitalized players can survive long enough to scale. And yet the industry still avoids confronting the core issue: if there is no market, there is no industry. Tokenization alone does not create value. Without liquidity, interoperability, distribution, market structure and real secondary market access, many tokenized assets are still just more expensive databases wrapped in blockchain infrastructure. The technology already exists. That is no longer the problem. MiCA’s original goal was a very good one: protecting customers from rug pulls and insolvent platforms. Investor protection is necessary. Regulatory maturity is necessary. But does protecting customers really require shutting down hundreds of European crypto companies? Does banning USDT really serve the interests of users? In my humble opinion, the current implementation of MiCA does not sufficiently serve the needs of European customers, founders or innovation. Europe is entering a new phase: fewer players, but more specialized, supervised and integrated into the traditional financial system. That shift was probably inevitable. The real question is whether Europe will still leave enough room for innovation once the dust settles.

@DAAA_at Working Group Legal Update Great session today with strong legal and industry input. Oliver Volkel (from Cerha Hempel) shared his view on the CFTC Opinion Paper on prediction markets and its possible impact on the EU. Key takeaway was simple: a token wrapper does not change the underlying legal nature; you cant avoid financial instrument classification just by tokenizing it. Another important point: prediction markets should stay independent from any financial nexus. If not, they risk being treated as a security offering. 👉Here's the link to the CFTC publication: cftc.gov/csl/26-08/download We also heard from Oliver Schmitt (@Vi3nnaCongress). He shared an update on the upcoming Vienna Declaration. It will include a regulatory, legal and tax track within an academic framework. Definitely one to watch. 🇦🇹 DAAA continues to play an important role as Austria’s industry body for digital assets. The working groups are open to anyone being member at the DAAA. 👉 Reach out for membership opportunities Good to see contributions this time from @BlackMantaCap Cerha Hempel @EY_Law @bank_erste oenb, Raiffeisen Bank International @uni_li @21bitcoinApp @blockpit_io and @validvent