Paymonade, opgericht door een Singaporees, voldoet aan de nieuwe Europese cryptoregelgeving, terwijl ongeveer 90% van de Europese cryptobedrijven daar niet in slaagt.

MiCA is less a crypto-adoption story than a distribution-shift story: compliance has become a fixed-cost moat, so the economic rent should migrate from long-tail venues to a small set of licensed fiat rails, custodians, and exchanges with bank-grade controls. That favors firms that can monetize KYC/AML, settlement, and treasury services across the EEA, because every additional market no longer requires a separate go-to-market stack. In practice, the winners are likely to see better take rates and lower churn, not explosive top-line growth.

The second-order loser set is broader than the article suggests. Smaller EU exchanges, payment processors with crypto exposure, and non-passportable stablecoin ecosystems will face higher customer-acquisition costs and more balance-sheet trapped liquidity as counterparties demand regulated counterparties. Over the next 1-3 months, this should widen the valuation gap between compliant infrastructure and the rest of crypto beta; over 6-18 months, it may force consolidation or push activity into self-custody and offshore routes, which would cap the revenue upside.

The contrarian view is that the market may overread the licensing count as a near-term earnings catalyst. A license is necessary, but not sufficient, to win volume; the real test is whether conversion rates, spread capture, and bank integrations improve after the initial compliance migration. If volumes do not re-accelerate by Q3/Q4 2026, the current narrative will fade into a one-time regulatory event rather than a durable growth inflection.