MiCA now applies across the EU, and the argument about it has moved on from whether firms can comply to what compliance costs. For a small digital-asset company, that answer decides whether Europe is a market worth entering at all.
The Fintech Times put written questions to Edwin Mata, chief executive and co-founder of the tokenisation platform Brickken and a lawyer by background, on where MiCA has left European competitiveness, what execution looks like for a firm over the next 12 months, and whether tokenisation or AI-driven infrastructure has the clearer near-term path.
1. With MiCA now fully in effect across the EU, where do you see the industry’s attention shifting first, from compliance to competitiveness?
MiCA has delivered regulatory certainty, but it has also weakened competitiveness.
The cost of entering the European market is now extremely high for any new company offering products or services within MiCA’s scope. Licensing, governance, capital requirements, local substance, compliance personnel, cybersecurity, reporting and ongoing supervision create a fixed cost base that many early-stage firms cannot absorb.
The result is a more compliant market, but also a more concentrated one. Large financial institutions, established crypto firms and legacy service providers are better positioned to meet these requirements, while smaller innovators face a much higher barrier to entry.
The industry’s attention will therefore shift from compliance to competitiveness, but the key question is whether real competition still exists. Europe has created a clear regulatory framework, yet clarity alone does not guarantee innovation. If the cost of participation is too high, regulation can protect the market while simultaneously limiting the number of companies capable of shaping it.
2. You frame the next phase as defined by innovation and execution as much as regulation. What does execution look like in practice for a European digital-asset firm over the next 12 months?
Execution begins with deciding where the business can survive. For smaller firms, the next 12 months may not be spent competing in Europe, but determining whether Europe remains commercially viable. A company must sell products and generate revenue to survive. If it cannot offer regulated services while completing a lengthy and expensive authorisation process, it may exhaust its capital before reaching the market.
Although MiCA establishes a formal assessment period once an application is complete, preparing the application, establishing the required substance and satisfying supervisory expectations can consume a significant part of a young company’s runway. Existing financial institutions also enter from a stronger position because certain already-regulated entities can provide equivalent crypto-asset services through a notification process rather than obtaining an entirely new CASP authorisation.
This creates two different markets. Large firms will continue accumulating licences, while already-authorised players will use compliance as a competitive moat. Smaller firms will increasingly establish themselves in jurisdictions where the initial regulatory burden, cost and time to market are more proportionate to their stage.
The United States could become a major competitor for this activity. If it combines greater regulatory clarity with lower compliance costs and faster market access, founders and capital may shift accordingly.
Execution is therefore not only about product delivery. It is about jurisdictional strategy, capital efficiency and speed to revenue. Ultimately, firms will compare where they can operate, innovate and generate returns. It becomes an ROI decision.
3. Can regulatory certainty in Europe become a genuine competitive advantage, or is there a risk that harmonisation sets a compliance ceiling that slows innovation?
Regulatory certainty can be a genuine competitive advantage, but its value is not equal across the market.
For regulated institutions, asset owners, banks and professional investors, a clear framework reduces legal uncertainty, simplifies internal approvals and makes it easier to assess counterparties. In those segments, compliance can accelerate adoption because regulatory status is part of the purchasing decision.
Retail customers behave differently. Most do not read regulatory frameworks or evaluate the technical differences between licences. They are not specialists in the subject. Their decisions are generally driven by product access, price, usability, liquidity and confidence in the brand.
The risk is that Europe creates a market that is highly compliant but increasingly concentrated. Harmonisation becomes problematic when it establishes such a high operating threshold that only large institutions and well-funded incumbents can participate. In that environment, compliance becomes a competitive moat for existing players rather than a foundation for broader innovation.
Regulatory certainty therefore creates value, particularly for institutional markets, but it must remain proportionate. Otherwise, Europe may improve protection and consistency while reducing the number of firms capable of introducing new products, business models and technologies.
4. The US is accelerating its own digital-asset agenda. How should European firms respond, and where do you think Europe still leads?
Europe should respond by reassessing MiCA in practice, listening more closely to market participants and removing politics from the regulatory process.
The United States is accelerating because it is treating digital assets as an area of economic competition. Europe has focused primarily on risk containment. That approach has produced legal structure, but it has also created high costs, long approval timelines and limited incentives for new firms to build in the region.
Europe still leads in regulatory architecture, but today it is leading more clearly in red tape than in innovation. A comprehensive framework has limited value if companies cannot launch products, attract capital or reach the market at a competitive speed.
The response should not be deregulation. It should be proportionate regulation, faster authorisation, clearer supervisory coordination and greater engagement with the companies actually building the market.
5. As a lawyer by background, which parts of MiCA do you think firms are still underestimating on the operational side?
Firms still underestimate the cost of translating MiCA into daily operations. Compliance must be embedded across product design, onboarding, custody, reporting and management decisions. The challenge is not understanding the regulation, but maintaining the people, systems and controls required to apply it consistently.
6. Tokenisation and AI-driven financial infrastructure are often named as the next chapter. Which of the two has the clearer near-term path in Europe, and why?
Tokenisation has the clearer near-term path, but agentic capital markets represent the larger structural shift.
Tokenisation converts financial instruments into programmable infrastructure. Agentic capital markets go further by allowing AI systems to participate in how those instruments are structured, issued, analysed, distributed, serviced and transferred, within defined legal and regulatory parameters.
Blockchain provides the shared execution and settlement layer. AI provides the intelligence layer. Together, they can create markets where investor discovery, compliance, allocation, reporting, corporate actions and liquidity management become increasingly automated and interconnected.
Europe has the legal sophistication, financial institutions and regulated market infrastructure to lead this transition. The question is whether it moves quickly enough. Tokenisation is already changing how assets operate. Agentic capital markets will change how capital itself is coordinated.
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