Post-MiCA Crypto Investment Landscape

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Join us for the "Post-MiCA Crypto Investment Landscape" panel, an engaging discussion that delves into the implications of the EU's MiCA regulation on the crypto investment ecosystem. This panel features industry leaders who will unpack how compliance structures, investor confidence, and innovation opportunities are transforming the digital asset market. Whether you're navigating regulatory shifts or scouting for investment potentials, this session promises to provide you with insights that can shape the trajectory of your digital finance endeavors.

Meet our esteemed speakers:

- **Sonny Wolfson**  
  Co-Founder, JPool  
  As a true advocate for decentralization, Sonny has spent over six years in the blockchain arena, particularly focusing on the Solana blockchain. His diverse expertise in IT development, business consulting, and marketing enables him to foster robust blockchain communities and innovation. 

- **Laura K. Inamedinova**  
  Chief Ecosystem Officer, Gate.io  
  An award-winning entrepreneur and keynote speaker, Laura has been a prominent voice in the Web3 space since 2016. At Gate.io, she drives global expansion efforts while overseeing investments and partnerships that advance the ecosystem.

- **Juan Ignacio Ibañez**  
  Chief of Staff, Exponential Science  
  As General Secretary at the MiCA Crypto Alliance, Juan's work centers on blockchain policy and sustainability. He is also a respected researcher at UCL’s Centre for Blockchain Technologies.

- **Alexander Ray**  
  CEO & Co-founder, Albus Protocol  
  With over 20 years of experience in tech and financial infrastructure, Alexander brings invaluable insights from both traditional finance and decentralized finance, shedding light on regulatory risk and financial models for today's digital economy.

Don't miss this opportunity to engage with leading experts and peers in the field of digital finance. 

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Transcript

(00:01) [Music] good morning everyone uh welcome here to the first panel of the day kudos to those who woke up early came here I know the traffic was terrible and everyone needed an extra hour of sleep after the last night's party but we're here with a dream panel of amazing gentlemen all looking so sharp today kudos to you guys and we're going to be tackling questions about what's going to happen in investment landscape post mic so let me introduce myself I'm Laura Cornela Inova I am chief EOS system officer at GAO one of the leading exchanges in
(00:44) crypto space and today I'm going to be your host but let's maybe start by allowing these fin gentlemen to introduce themselves so we can know why the hell we should listen who's going to start hey I'm Sonny wolson I'm one of the founders of jpol one of the top liquid staking pools on salana we've been around for some four and a half years and yeah we pretty deep in defi hello everyone my name is H vanz I'm the chief of staff of exponential science and also general secretary at the MAA crypto Alliance so that's the
(01:20) most relevant um initiative today where research and education institution and the alliance is an initiative to bring exchanges casps uh L once they choose in complying with MAA not with the licensing part that everybody knows how to do apparently but with the Mika white papers and sustainability indicators which are some uh requirements not everybody has heard about hey hey I'm Alex re I'm co-founder of jpo co-founder of halus protocol julid St and Kus protocol is digital identity and on chain kyc provider and I
(01:55) hope to H today some insights from that amazing p people and share my knowledge about that landscape and how it will change there um hello my name is dimma borin um so answering your question uh why people should listen to me uh because sometimes I'm making jokes so don't miss them yeah my name is dimma I'm C and co-founder of hacking the cyber security company uh which we also do uh Dora compli we help Dora compliance to our customers which is part essential part of makeup thanks one of the best auditing company
(02:37) in the industry so forgot to say how much commission are you getting for now nothing but I but I hope different one so Constantine kogan I'm a partner in tdbc and CEO TDX so as a trade out group uh we have uh uh several business lines one is an incubator we have Venture Market making uh prop trading and uh building the a part wealth management so happy to talk about this and partner with anyone who's uh into defi awesome any chance another microphone is working no okay we'll have to share too so let's start things with
(03:15) something easy for those who haven't had coffee so they could W uh wake up so I mean I'm All Pro regulations we need to have more uh sustainable ways how business are grown to be able to protect consumers as well but could this overregulation brought by MAA hold back some of the innovation in AU because it's still it's expensive to get lawyers it's time consuming and sometimes Founders want to prioritize Innovation rather than being needy all the need degree details when it comes to compliance so what can Regulators do to
(03:48) get that balance right in the upcoming crypto race why don't I start with one all right um yes it can hinder innovation I think there will be an agreement here uh probably everybody has heard that Regulators should uh do at least two things one harmonize across jurisdictions um as much as possible and there's a sort of agreement that this would be would would be helpful the other um and one of the the main problems probably with MAA implementation has to do with proportionality um especially for the small businesses they are finding it
(04:28) hard to afford these lawyers and all of these fees and all of these requirements this is not as much a problem for companies you know like Circle um so uh that is a a problem there there is a best uh efforts clause in some makea requirements but that's not enough the one thing I would like to add to that would be something maybe we can call it firmness um so basically we have lessons learned from the United States in the United States it's not just that there had been a um lack of Regulation lack of clarity um animosity against crypto is
(05:07) that you really didn't know what the supervisory authorities were going to come up with so now we do have a clear regulation in Minka but how clear it is it really depends on how clear the the supervisor authorities are from now on and um my concern is that there starts to be a um this gray area where people ask well are they really going going to enforce this uh no I don't know let's wait and see let's wait for the next statement and so on and that can create um some arbitrariness so I feel like just Clarity and standing by the lines
(05:42) that you draw would be very helpful and I have a follow-up question too Constantine as you work for a venture capital firm how do you guys look into the starbs right now that are being built out of you are you cautious when you're investing are you helping your portfolio companies in any way to be compliant and will this hinder uh how VCS are looking into European companies yeah it's a good question actually we had a long debate after instead of party we went home back to Chalet like and with with our party everyone wasn't
(06:13) partying having serious discussion no no seriously we haven't recorded even a video proof uh so with our partners with the Austrian fun mamb so we had a discussion they are big investors in ver chain ecosystem and the conversation was with how for example the validator like the future vals without a smart contract how can they even say like okay well this is compliant with Mo or not right which is not an easy topic is actually they spend tens of thousands of Euro to consult with top lawyers in Austria and then the next level question is okay
(06:45) well that's let's imagine an Austrian lawyer issues you a legal opinion right and you're safe in Austria will that be compliant with other EU countries right so so there a lot of challenges like you know just for a startup like you know it's very costly we of course encourage everyone to be like very careful and compliant but at the end of the day you have to understand that this is very Innovative you cannot expect Regulators to know everything you have to educate them like as well right you have to provide legal opinions in the US one
(07:14) thing I should say we uh there's a lot of task forces and like people can criticize like a lot of things that happening but like living there and I'm talking to a lot of legislators myself the uh they like the Bitcoin community and the particular chains like ethereum Solana they have very very like big cooperations with top law firms and they go to Washington DC they sit around the table and they actually talk directly to SEC cftc like IRS and others and they provide them like clear guidance they spend tens of thousands of hours so I
(07:48) think that will happen in Europe eventually sooner or later and once that happened Europe will get the momentum because otherwise what will happen that that the same thing that happen from in in New York us people stopped like opening companies they went to Dubai they went to other places where it's super easy to open and it's clear and let's go to First Sony and then Alex as you the ones who are representing the projects of the industry how do you guys prepare for MAA did you have huge lawyer fees and do you
(08:21) feel comfortable secure to operate your business in the region uh well we do have uh access to grade lers uh fortunately and we are preparing we've been talking to them for about 2 years yeah uh by now um it is um as Han said Clarity is really important and there is a lack of clarity at the moment I have to say like for example you know the fully decentralized closure uh close uh nobody really understands what that means for now is a dow really decentralized what does it have to be what what the structure the legal
(09:01) structure supposed to be so you can call it fully decentralized and you you know that you're safe you know in terms of ma um pretty much it but uh for our own purposes um we are preparing and the alus protocol the second project that Alex is in charge with was actually the the concept was born out of the expectation that we had for MAA and uh it utiliz is uh what we see as a perfect golden midle Between You Know The Regulators getting what they want and the users getting the privacy and protection of their personal data that
(09:42) they can expect through the utilization of Z knowledge proofs yeah and yeah actually the Sony they almost answer the question and it's it's a little bit uncertain what I'm allowed to say or not about how did we prepared for the MAA uh and uh if they uh are safe uh but it's complicated it's complicated because you need as all of the know uh the you need to prepare the your protocols to be compliant and it's difficult to do it in Europe for multiple reasons uh because if you run certain defi protocols uh even uh under the MAA they
(10:31) cannot be licensed in Europe that's why uh some of the protocols not uh I'm talking not about ours but in general uh are forced to move to some unregulated jurisdictions for visious reasons if you issue in token then you um need always to decide where do you want to issue it how it will be structured will it be Dow which jurisdiction uh do you need to our legal raer or not and so on and so forth but from our side we are prepared we uh uh we are prepared for Mica and I quite confident we are sure from all of the
(11:14) legal uh questions which can came to our uh projects you know there are some questions we're not supposed to answer without the presence of our our so is now the next question is going to be to dimma and then to Constantine probably even more insights so up to date less than 5% virtual asset service providers are mic compliant leaving thousands of projects seeking alternative jurisdictions and you I know you invest in a lot of project yourself as an ancient investor and you help through hacking a lot of this project
(11:52) with auditing so what do you think how do uh these projects who fail to first of all maybe have the resources to hire the right legal team or lack of understanding and meet this uh regular guidelines will impact uh Capital flowing into European projects and maybe you already stting to see project deciding to incorporate uh their companies elsewhere maybe Dubai among other countries okay so many questions um first of all um 5% um first of all right now majority of the companies uh the main advice that they are receiving from
(12:36) their legal uh from the lawyers is uh how to structure the documents in the way that you should not be make a complaint so that's the main Trend and um second is that to be honest we we we made a research on how much will it cost for um custodial like vasp whatever to get ready uh with all the how much so it's a not more than 50k so for exchange of course is way more bigger amount but it's not that expensive that it can stop like you know uh innovation in my personal opinion I think um like I'm Pro regulation for sure I don't think um
(13:24) that uh regulation stop Innovations a lot um but I think um um like the main um the main points why the m is to uh make scammers like life difficult not the guys who is like trying to innovate and build something that have the value um for example you know like if uh if you don't do it yeah you know just like you have some president coins that that pump and dumb people you know so but isn't that fun um uh I I really didn't like what what was that and I think it will have a very big uh it will hit the crypto industry hard uh very soon uh so um so I
(14:19) think it's a good thing that mik is doing but the the reality is that the infrastructure is not ready the they are from one point in a rush um but from another as you're saying the uh enforcement will probably like we're like probably one year and a half from the first fine from first big fine so um and it's time for Europe you know like to especially for European commission is to invest in the infrastructure because uh Regulators they don't know like we we we've been selected for European commission sand books regulatory sand books for to EXP
(14:59) explain to Regulators what is the uh D implications of the mikum and we like we presented to Asma in and like 18 other representatives of the local regulators and they like the general uh our like uh we we're supposed to explain them about cyber security but we stucked on explaining what is decentralization so it's really they they they really don't know it don't understand it and they have no idea how to monitor they're creating regulations for things they don't understand it's not it's not like maika is uh is on the
(15:37) European commission level and U it's not like the regulation that uh someone has to follow so every single Parliament has to adopt ma within their legislation and they have to uh uh and they have certain uh you know space to um to slightly even change it so right now you know like uh uh it's just the time for local authorities to start you know like drafting the laws so I have a quick follow-up question are there any educational material workshops for local Regulators to fully understand what they need toce that's what they do with the
(16:20) sandbox that's what why they are holding it they spending a lot of money on uh legal firm bird and bird who is uh organizing this um uh this educational workshops for the for The Regulators so um but yeah it's I think it should be approached slightly differently but yeah they a part of the regulation they don't even have tools you know there is no tools how to monitor like uh all the things that M requires just wanted to add on a few things so first of are there people here from from Switzerland I'm just curious
(16:59) seems like that we all have international crowd okay so I I want to remind someone because you probably don't know this like that the first actually Foundation like the first real da big one ethereum was developed by a Swiss uh Law Firm right so the the DLT laws in Switzerland are actually very very clear if you if you ask your legal or like officer compliance officer to go through them like it's it's it's Crystal Clear what's happening right now coming back to mik I think one of the two major question just to put it in perspective
(17:27) of structured conversation like who in defi who holds the custody that's the biggest question right who holds the custody of assets because if it's a smart contract and you as a comp as a developer like as an issuer right of a token you're not holding the custody then the question is like okay who who's liable like if somebody like breaks in like you know if there's a hack and the money are lost right who are you going to as a regulator so that's the biggest concern of the regulator and we have to respect it because you know as dimma
(17:55) mentioned their job is to protect the the retail crowd right you know from being you know scammed the second point which is very important to uh to take into account that like like there's no there's no perfect world in this like you know regulations it it will never be the case in the United States we had like three major Regulators for example who are all like fighting with each other like what is the definition of digital asset right one is thinking is property another is thinking is like commodity and the third is a security
(18:26) right so there's already a mismatch of expectations what is the initial approach to this like left let alone uh with with the regulations and what would happen if you saw the Unis swap case it's actually I I highly recommend you to read the Unis swap case why SEC actually started to go after them right even though was crystal clear that they are decentralized they did everything possible paid all the best lawyers in every single jurisdiction like they they can and they still went after them so there not a guarantee that if you make a
(18:57) compli that let's say German will not go after you like what is important that you as a company as a foundation for example right that you will be prepared to have a legal opinion that will protect you to the first level and then that the custody of assets are not hold into like in a smart contract that you control as a developer I think those are the first levels and then there are much more in cyber security and other things I want to continue on that and ask a question for ju so micro regulation right now focuses as conon said mostly
(19:30) on vaps and they're excluding decentralized services like Landing borro protocols automated market makers or token based dios so can this regulatory gap spark a fresh investment into defi platforms and how do you think you would handle the fire regulations in the future will unisab be regulated in the end I would um recommend not uh not really regulating it I would um just take advantage of the regulatory Gap and leave it as it is uh what I think is going to happen is that The Regulators uh the supervisory authorities like this
(20:08) is our experience also speaking with Regulators in the UK they come to us we're a science organization so the the relationship with us is a bit less uh rival so they come with questions like they they say you are academics we know that lots of organizations passing us decentralized are not decentralized but we can't explain how this works so it's just like our hunch and honestly their hunch is correct it's just that you need to separate the we wheat from the chaff so they I think they are going to be going after
(20:40) decentralization um facades and like like you say Sonny uh we need Clarity on what decentralization means but also like Constantine says they don't really know yet that's why you also need to speak with them and educate their regulator um I would hope to leave the aspects of MAA that are um the aspects of the crypto industry that are not yet regulated by mome I would not regulate them yet um maybe just some clarity on some of these guidelines I would not also regulate nfts uh they're out that's good enough we need to wait
(21:18) and see how how this regulation turns out how it's implemented how it's harmonized and U and then we can see and also one more thing about like basps or casps not being compliant yet being in 5% well that's true but I also want like the picture is not so Grim they're not compliant yet because they don't have to be compliant in a way because there's a grandfathering period so this number is going to go up um I'm not sure 50,000 is the total cost of compliance I that's that's too optimistic uh for me but I I think how much it
(21:52) is it really depends on what you're trying to achieve right are you a custodian are you trying to uh get a license where are you trying to get it and big you are how risky it is yeah how so what are the easiest countries to get license I'm not going to answer that one yeah actually the uh funny thing about Switzerland and regulations uh the Switzerland has really clear regulations since years and they decided not to align with regulations to mic that means and the easiest way I it depends what they want to achieve about
(22:31) Switzerland orstein why why is that why is Switzerland is not aligning the regulations to mik and what are the differences after Alex Conant didn't I want to get your take on this course they have the really clear and working regulation since years they know how to deal with them reg Regulators SS Regulators understand what they are doing they are really good educated and they don't want to align to the new regulatory framework which was uh just uh signed and uh forced to be um um to and forc to be uh used by other
(23:16) countries maybe lonstein is a good choose as well lonstein it's same cost as in Switzerland more or less I know that uh we have some they have an association Lin and that's a good choice as well because then in between two regulations it's special kind of special that means if you want to be aligned to the mic regulations and swiss regulations then the lonstein maybe is the best choose to boot strap your regulatory framework yes so consentin then Sony and then Dima okay have a que can we talk like real like cuz I just want to make it fun I
(23:56) mean I know it's recorded but like like yeah yeah 90% of the companies that are applying like there most of them are are registered in like Cayman BVI sells and Dubai okay there is a reason for that why because The Regulators allowing first of all taxes let's be clear like if we're talking about like you know you EU let's remember just for a second why brexit happened it didn't happen because of the nationality because of the taxes and because of the money laundering because of the ofac regulations Etc so you have to be very clear where this
(24:25) leading the same reason why Switzerland don't want to be because they're they understand there there should be some exemptions why jalar has their own like incredible regulations by the way I emplore anyone who's doing in gambling business like you know just kurasa and J are one of the best like licenses you can have so there is a reason why specific business lines are protected by those jurisdictions and they will be protected number two the cost okay okay of course so far the cheapest actually is Estonia Lithuania right and they
(24:54) actually are also robust they're very clear and they allow you to be uh compliant with other countries Czech Republic is also I would uh I would say another alternative Poland as well uh Poland no no Poland is very very strict it's not anymore no like that's it's it's becoming more and more like regulated and more complex uh out of euu is Georgia actually very I I was very surprised I did a lot of research on Georgia recently they have incredible like system and licenses that are2 to $5,000 which is very affordable for a
(25:27) startup right if you're talking about lonstein unfortunately it's tens of thousands of dollars right this is number one then you have to also employ a compliant officer which is typically six digits a good compliant off compliance officer and they always have to update it right because if you stop updating it you can you can you know people can say well you're no longer like allowed to have this license that is also a question that nobody talks about depends on obviously depends what type which country we're not going to go
(25:57) into specifics but I'm just saying that that there's also like the question of always be up to dat right so it is costly and that is why it's not practical it's going to take time to you know to adopt it Sony and then dimma um yeah I actually just wanted to follow up a little B on what Hanan said you know about the regulatory Gap um you know like um there is the presumption of innocence in criminal law but for example in Germany we got an actual uh presumption of guilt in terms of taxes so if the financ thinks they owe you owe
(26:35) them something you didn't pay your taxes in full you need to prove you did and that is like official that is the law and I have a hunch I I'd love to be wrong about this I have a hunch that every time like the European Regulators will DB something and they will because as I said they're not quite clear on quite a lot of terms there uh they will will just say that you are not compliant and wait for you to prove that you are basically put I want to um um like highlight my four reasons why uh will there be a joke
(27:17) involved um yes there will be I will start with with a joke not joke so so why what is happening and what is m so what are the reasons so first reason is to um give job to lawyers so that crypto companies can share money with the lawyers and uh they have uh they have some good revenues in the future um second is yeah then no jokes huh yes of course actually yeah I was in a one round table with the Mika um uh author like the the the the papa of Mika and he he was saying the same things does he own a law firm for his kids no
(28:00) no no he actually he actually a little bit frustrated I don't know maybe yeah yes so yeah but but that's a dedication of a husband all right so but second um is to second third and fourth is to fight with scammers frers and hackers so uh scammers um uh scammers I would say the uh they um they really are scared of the US case of the terraluna and they are really going after the um stable coins so MAA is a lot about stable coins issues and uh very strict requirements for them um uh because in general the the the CP to the tokens they classified
(28:54) stable coins Equity based and all the others so there is very very big focus on that and I think it's good uh second is to fight with frauders and frosters in their opinion are exchangers who um who do bad custodial practices and who doesn't U make proper financial Audits and but does not and touching and touching a lot of user deposits and I think this is amazing you know like this is this is what is really needed in our industry uh and third uh hackers yeah for sure like putting a lot of pressure on um uh projects to start spending finally on
(29:36) cyber security is also good for us of course but just a few throwing in a few numbers here like 2024 the total like um um to uh the total number of hack accidents is around 3 billion like previously it was 6 billion but like let's say 2024 the total spent on cyber security in 2024 is according to our calculation is half of the billion so you know like if if they at least like double this number the this the first number like the would be way L way less so yep okay we have last five minutes so each one of you my fellow panelists will
(30:21) get one minute for the answer so 2025 is it bearish bullish and why who's the bravest to start I can start yes so 27 one minute each uh we're entering the new cool cycle it's going to be AI agent uh cycle uh it's way easier to like pump. fun was the uh was the demo so that people understand how you know like to launch uh quickly tokens and now there is going to be instrument there are already instruments where you can uh in Solo launch a project the with the a tools that can help you to build this projects to run
(31:06) the social media help with the all the marketing with the developments uh with everything so we're going to see hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of AI agent launches uh and the hype is already smell it thank you Constantine bullish bears and why one minute uh incredibly bullish I'll explain very simple so number one treasur uh strategic treasury Reserve in the United States will be accepted I'm fully sure now about it like all the right people in the right places so that will lead of uh 14 states that will
(31:40) actually mimic the same so I'm talking about let's say Texas as a state will do the same they will have strategic reserve for their state then about uh 35 countries will follow up because United States is still like an example like of number one economy in the world and then also publicly traded company are using it for uh treasure Reserve we saw an incredible example of micro strategy four-year history if you haven't learned about it like I I implore you to see what happened with their stock and how they're like taking loans to buy more
(32:10) Bitcoin and we see across the world China India like a lot of Europe Japanese like stock publicly traded companies who are buying treasur reserve and essentially what they're creating almost like an ETF product so that means hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be poured as a new liquidity into the market and uh we know uh historically when it goes to bitcoin uh the altcoins are following up so I think I'm incredibly bullish about that thank you Alex bearish bullish and why one minute um yeah um I agree to the two
(32:41) guys that means if we combine the uh huge usage of the AI agenes we will did will create thousands or billions of transactions on chain and the uh adoption from the institutional players both of the things uh will follow to the bullish Market at least for 25 but hope for next four years ju um bullish as well but uh not just although I agree with Constantine but not just because of price and liquidity I think there's also going to be a different building thesis uh this year I feel like for a while um crypto uh blockchain companies that that
(33:24) word that we stopped using actually have been like um a bit and unwilling to build things that could end up being Securities and so on so actually we ended up having meme coins or nfds or uh Native coins I think now we're going to see a bit more of a um other kind of industrial Enterprise building as well so that's going to be very exciting I also agree with Sonny that a few things are going to come bite Us in the back um like what what happened with with the Trump token I think it it it might come back to us so it's not going to be a
(33:57) straightway up uh and the final thing for I think it's going to be bullish is I actually have um some optimism with the European Regulators on getting it right um and giving some clarity at the implementation level after a few months Sony um bullish as well and um actually mostly because of the mass adoption that is coming and we see it right now and some projects that I may not be quite fond of like you know hamster combat or the certain president ISU a talking but it does bring the people the new people that never touched crypto before they
(34:36) are crossing over this big barrier like I will have my first crypto wallet I will invest some money I will do something about it and when they're in they may be disappointed by the token by the game by the drops whatever whatever they expected but they are in and some of them will stay and some of them will do something about it and I think the crypto Community will actually grow much more this year than it did in the previous years well I love that everyone is bullish everyone is exciting I think 2025 is going to be an incredible year
(35:11) for crypto for everyone who is just joining who's been there for quite some time and with this I think my dear panelists are entitled to the very nice round of applause thank you everyone [Music]