Europe, Crypto and Power: From Prudence to Performance

I had the chance to sit down with Laurent Grassin on Boursorama to talk digital assets, the European Union—and how the US and China are sprinting while Europe still ties its shoelaces. This piece expa

Jul 23, 2025

1. The Adoption Gap Is Real—But It’s Not About Interest

Yes, the headline number is stark: roughly 28% of Americans have exposure to crypto versus ~9–10% in Europe (with France and the UK around 12%, Germany ~8%, Italy ~5%). But framing this as a cultural or intellectual lag is lazy. Europe doesn’t lack curiosity. It lacks infrastructure.

Three structural advantages the US leveraged early:

Integration into long-term savings: Crypto exposure through ETFs and even 401(k) plans made it a normal allocation choice, not a fringe bet.
Capital formation & listed champions: Coinbase (and others) went public, legitimising the sector and giving retail a trusted on-ramp.
A single deep market: One rulebook (more or less), one language, one pool of 300M consumers.

Meanwhile in Europe:

Regulatory fragmentation until MiCA: 27 interpretations, 27 tax codes.
Banking hesitation: documented reluctance to touch crypto custody or distribution.
No scaled, listed European crypto champions (yet).

The shift has begun. Since 2023, retail banks and fintechs—Sparkassen, BBVA, Revolut, now BoursoBank—are opening the taps. MiCA gives everyone the same map, finally. And the demographic base is widening: the 35–54 cohort is catching up, with a more strategic, wealth-preservation mindset.

The question isn’t “Should Europe move?” It’s “Can we build a smooth, sovereign, regulated access path at the speed of demand?”

2. Two Models of Power: The US Industrialises, Europe Codifies

This is the core asymmetry of today’s financial geopolitics:

Europe regulated first (MiCA), then hoped the market would follow. It’s consistent with our legal culture—prevention, transparency, investor protection. But it arrived before the ecosystem matured, without unified fiscal levers or a real capital markets union. Result: a beautiful rulebook without a production line.
The US let private initiative rip—sometimes painfully (FTX)—but out of that chaos came giants. Coinbase, Circle, Kraken, Chainalysis, Anchorage… all scaled under existing rules (SEC/CFTC) rather than under a bespoke “Crypto Act”. The Bitcoin ETF approval in January 2024 was a masterstroke of absorption: a native crypto asset wrapped in a familiar, regulated envelope. BlackRock’s fund alone is now north of $70bn in AUM. That’s not a product; that’s institutionalisation.
The current US administration has a tech-sovereignty doctrine: AI + crypto as strategic levers. Washington isn’t shouting “Web3 leadership” from the rooftops; it’s just doing it—via markets, not memos.

Europe remains brilliant on compliance, hesitant on capital, and silent on industrial strategy. Regulation is necessary. It is not sufficient.

“MiCA is an Airbus-sized regulation. But without an industrial engine behind it, it’s taxiing in circles.”

3. MiCA: Strategic Asset or Administrative Layer?

Before MiCA, Europe was a regulatory patchwork. MiCA solves that—on paper. It gives:

A single passport for crypto service providers.
A common vocabulary for tokens, custody, disclosures.

But it also sits on top of MiFID, not beside it. For many firms, that’s double work, double ambiguity:

Which framework applies when a token looks like a security?
How do you reconcile two sets of reporting and prudential rules?

MiCA can become an advantage if—and only if—execution is homogeneous, predictable, and fast. Europe’s problem isn’t writing laws; it’s aligning their application.

“Regulation doesn’t create adoption. Clarity does.”

4. Stablecoins & Tokenisation: Monetary Power, Not Just Tech Toys

Stablecoins are no longer a side quest. They’re monetary instruments with geopolitical consequences.

The USD Advantage

USD stablecoins (USDT, USDC…) do three things brilliantly:

Export the dollar onto blockchains, borderlessly.
Accelerate cross-border settlement in USD without touching the legacy rails.
Finance US debt: reserves are parked in T-Bills. It’s soft power, tokenised.

Europe’s Constraint

No unified sovereign bond market to collateralise a credible euro stablecoin. Bunds, OATs, BTPs—there’s no single, deep, fungible asset base.
MiCA’s EMT/ART regimes are strict, but there’s no fiscal carrot. Result: few serious euro issuers.
The digital euro remains a top-down project with little developer or merchant pull.

And the China Factor

China doesn’t appear in the adoption gap story—but it dominates the infrastructure story. The e-CNY (digital yuan) is already live in real commerce, plugged into super-apps like WeChat. Over 90% of Chinese citizens are fintech-native. A Vietnamese supplier can get paid instantly in digital yuan by a Chinese manufacturer. No bank. No dollar. No friction.

Europe is squeezed between a tokenised dollar zone and a platform-driven yuan zone, with neither the speed of the former nor the integration of the latter.

“A stablecoin is a T-Bill with a UI. Without a unified euro debt market, there’s no fuel in the tank.”

5. From Prudence to Power: Eight Levers Europe Can Pull Now

Europe has the raw material: legal talent, technical talent, respected regulators, a robust banking system, institutional transparency. What’s missing is a systems view—connecting capital, regulation, and innovation.

Here’s a practical agenda:

Complete the Capital Markets Union
Implement the Letta/Draghi recommendations. One market for funding, not 27 silos.
Create a European Tech Company Statute
A single legal/fiscal framework for high-growth startups to scale in the EU, not in Zurich, London or Dubai.
Launch a Pan-European Sovereign VC Fund
€10bn+ anchored by the EIB to back true champions, not prototypes.
Align MiCA & MiFID Under One Roof
End the double compliance trap. One supervisor, one taxonomy for tokenised finance.
Offer a Tokenised Savings Plan (PEA Web3)
Let Europeans invest—tax efficiently—in tokenised assets and regulated crypto ETPs.
Incentivise Euro Stablecoins
Reduce capital gains tax on gains realised in euro stablecoins to seed network effects.
Standardise Euro Debt as Collateral
Issue “red/green” Eurobonds that can back euro stablecoins and DeFi collateral safely.
Build Talent & Sandboxes
ESMA-led DeFi/tokenisation sandbox + train 100,000 Solidity/Move developers by 2030.

“Europe doesn’t need more rules. It needs levers.”

6. The Closing Argument

Europe can still lead the programmable finance era—but not by being the best student of yesterday. It must move from compliance-first to architecture-first, from prudence to power. The crypto conversation is no longer about a niche asset class; it’s about the rails, liquidity, and credibility of tomorrow’s capital markets.

We have MiCA. Great. Now we need: markets, money, and muscle.

Let’s stop asking if Europe should join the race. Let’s build the track.