As of now (up to July 26, 2026), the EU MiCA has moved from paper rules to practical implementation. According to public information and various statements, the phase of license competition has basically ended, and the real test for crypto institutions is long-term, continuous compliance operations. The local regulatory framework in the UK has concurrently taken shape, bringing financial centers like London under a stricter unified standard. The high costs of audits, risk control, and reporting are beginning to erode the already limited profit margins of small and medium-sized exchanges. The industry widely anticipates that what lies ahead is no longer simply "who can obtain a license," but rather "who can sustain the ongoing investments behind the license." Under such pressure, mergers, acquisitions, and even active exits are increasingly being considered by many operating teams as real options. On the surface, this appears to be a regulatory-driven industry consolidation window, but the impulsive act of "picking up a bargain" is not safe—Binance founder Zhao Changpeng recently publicly reminded that acquiring centralized exchanges often entails higher security and compliance risks. Once a hack occurs post-acquisition, it is difficult to determine whether the vulnerabilities come from backdoors left by the previous team or issues introduced by the new architecture. At this juncture, where regulatory intensification and security concerns intertwine, the European crypto industry faces not only a battle over licenses and capital but also a structural contradiction that is hard to reconcile between the pressures of mergers and acquisitions and hidden technological risks.

After MiCA Implementation: From License Rush to Continuous Compliance Fight

Before MiCA entered the execution phase, the main line for European exchanges was "first obtain a license." Everyone was busy coordinating with regulatory agencies on application materials, structural reorganizations, and physical relocations, to ensure they were not excluded from the unified regulatory system. Now that the competition for licensing has basically concluded, the regulatory focus has shifted from "who is qualified to operate" to "can you maintain the rules in the long term?" Anti-money laundering procedures, customer asset segregation, and technological security management have come to the forefront as hard indicators of daily review rather than mere paper commitments during the application phase. What used to be completed with a one-time compliance sprint has now been broken down into continuous monitoring, regular reporting, and on-site inspections; holding a license is no longer the endpoint but the starting point of high-intensity operations.

This shift has directly changed the business models of European exchanges and related institutions. High-standard compliance means that operational thresholds are no longer just about "can a platform be set up," but "can every on-chain and off-chain action leave an explicable compliance trail": Complex anti-money laundering processes have compressed the gray area, customer asset segregation requirements have restructured cash flows and risk control logic, and technological security management has transformed the previously "good enough" code and wallet systems into infrastructures that require continuous auditing. For institutions with limited scale, compliance teams, internal control systems, and security investments have squeezed the already thin profit margins. The crude growth model has been forced to withdraw, replaced by a shift towards more refined and asset-heavy compliance operations. Against this backdrop, the UK government and regulatory agencies are advancing their country's crypto regulatory framework, bringing major financial centers like London under high-standard regulation, rapidly shrinking the "regulatory havens" within Europe. Compliance pressure has evolved from the impact of a single piece of legislation into a systematic high-pressure environment covering major financial hubs.

The Survival Dilemma of Small and Medium Exchanges: Acquire or Exit Actively

After the license competition phase has ended and MiCA has entered the "continuous compliance" era, the real pressure has begun to fall on the balance sheets. Asset custody systems require long-term maintenance, risk control models must be continuously iterated, and behind user protection clauses are the perennial expenses of legal advisors, audit teams, and complaint handling mechanisms. Industry opinions suggest that these fixed costs of compliance systems are more lethal for small and medium-sized exchanges and related service providers, whose scale is limited and profit margins are already not generous; the regulatory framework no longer allows "light asset, light compliance" business models to exist in the long term.

In such structural pressure, the paths available to them are not many: either accept acquisition or merge into a larger institution to become a regional entry point and technical node; or actively downsize their business, keeping only a limited compliance burden, and if more radical, exit the European market directly. Historical experience in traditional finance repeatedly indicates that every upgrade in regulation is often followed by a decrease in the number of institutions and an increase in mergers and acquisitions. Today, the European crypto industry is also broadly expected to move toward a similar trajectory of concentration. However, so far, there has been no verified list of specific mergers and acquisition amounts involving small and medium-sized European exchanges made public; the market can only infer changes from the intensity of regulation and cost curves. Small and medium institutions are repeatedly weighing between "selling themselves to survive" and "gritting their teeth to persevere," striving to avoid being swept out in the next round of reshuffling under the dual pressures of compliance and cost.

Zhao Changpeng's Warning: Whose Responsibility is a Hack After Acquisition?

Behind the consensus that "increased regulation will inevitably drive mergers and acquisitions," Zhao Changpeng recently threw a cold splash of water—according to a single source, he publicly stated that acquiring centralized exchanges comes with higher security and compliance risks. If a hack occurs after acquisition, it is hard to determine whether it is due to backdoors left by the previous team or new issues. For potential acquirers, this is not just an abstract reminder, but a highly difficult accountability option to answer: once a vulnerability appears, regulatory agencies, users, and the media will only focus on the new owner, and few are willing to patiently distinguish who wrote the problematic line of code.

The reality is that behind centralized exchanges lies a highly complex matching engine, wallet management system, and backend permission system. Historical code, configurations, and permission chains resemble an "old building" that has been repeatedly built upon over a long time, and acquirers can hardly rebuild from the ground up in a short period. Past security incidents in the industry have pointed to issues such as uncontrolled permission management, inadequate hot wallet protection, or old system vulnerabilities. The boundaries of operational and security responsibilities between old and new teams are often unclear, increasing legal risks and amplifying reputational costs. Even though on-chain public ledgers provide auditable historical records for relevant addresses and contracts, assisting in identifying abnormal transfers and suspicious patterns during due diligence, they cannot replace a comprehensive review of internal systems and permissions. In the face of regulatory pressure forcing small and medium-sized exchanges to consider "selling themselves," the reality that hacker responsibilities are difficult to clarify makes large institutions hesitant and observant in the face of acquisitions, creating a cautious mindset of "wanting to buy but not daring to buy," even knowing that the window of opportunity has opened.

A New Battlefield for M&A Due Diligence: Code, Permissions, and On-chain Traces

As the competition for licenses fades and the costs of continuous compliance emerge, potential buyers who remain stuck in the “traditional acquisition routine” at the level of financial statements and compliance documents are almost walking blind into minefields. For a centralized exchange to be acquired, what genuinely determines the future risk exposure of the acquirer is not merely whether it holds a license or how much money it makes, but the technology stack that has undergone years of iteration: whether there are buried backdoors in the historical code, whether the permission system is out of control due to constant "temporary additions," and whether the management process of the core wallet can withstand retroactive reviews. The industry has reached a consensus that code audits, penetration testing, and centralized management of key permission accounts are shifting from "added bonuses" to essential conditions for M&A due diligence. Professional auditing firms and the acquirer’s internal security teams will jointly get involved, reviewing everything from version control records to operational permissions, and these conclusions will directly affect the acquisition price, contract clauses, and even whether negotiations continue.

At the same time, on-chain public ledgers are becoming another battlefield that cannot be ignored. Even if the internal systems still retain a large number of "black box" segments, the historical transfers of related wallets, contract deployments, and unusual fund movements will leave indelible traces on-chain. Some exchanges have proactively disclosed custody addresses and launched on-chain asset proofs, providing a clearer starting point for external reviews; potential acquirers can track those public addresses to trace the rhythm and patterns of large transfers, confirming whether there is frequent asset maneuvering between unknown addresses. In a reality where information is not completely transparent, large institutions often rely on third-party security audits to cross-verify limited internal data with publicly available on-chain records, using penetration testing and code audits to identify vulnerabilities at the system level, and then employing on-chain traces to examine if there have been suspicious funding paths that were deliberately concealed in the past. Amidst the escalating regulatory pressure and the unclear delineation of hacker responsibilities, whoever can truly understand the code, permissions, and on-chain traces before an acquisition is qualified to take the initiative in this reshuffle of the European crypto industry, rather than passively picking up risks afterward.

The Great Reshuffle in Europe is Not Over: Who Can Navigate the Dual Pressures of Regulation and Security?

From the completion of MiCA legislation to its current implementation and ongoing execution phase, the European crypto landscape is no longer dictated by short-term emotional highs and lows, but rather a long-term institutional reconstruction. Compliance costs are no longer just expense items in financial statements but are thresholds that determine who can remain at the table. Small and medium exchanges and service providers must either seek avenues for mergers and acquisitions out of necessity or choose to exit proactively under coercive regulation; for large institutions, acquisitions are no longer merely an easy "buying growth" story, but, as Zhao Changpeng warned, entail long-term risks of being unable to clearly delineate responsibilities between old system backdoors and new attacks. What is worth continuously observing in the future is the rhythm and scale of the specific law enforcement of MiCA and the UK framework, which exchanges manage to complete self-rescue through consolidation, which ones passively exit during regulatory checks, and how the safety standards for code, permissions, and on-chain historical records evolve in M&A due diligence. Moreover, which participants are willing to fully expose relevant addresses and asset paths under on-chain transparency, using auditable public traces to win the qualification to survive in this grand reshuffle of the European crypto landscape.

Join our community to discuss and become stronger together!
Exclusive Hyperliquid benefits for AiCoin: https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/AICOIN88
Exclusive Aster benefits for AiCoin: https://www.asterdex.com/zh-CN/referral/9C50e2
On-chain Telegram community: https://t.me/AiCoinWhaleData
On-chain community: https://www.aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=N6OVMor5g
AiCoin on-chain Twitter: https://x.com/aicoinwhaledata

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。