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MiCA rules may leave fewer but stronger crypto firms in Europe, SwissBorg says

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MiCA rules may leave fewer but stronger crypto firms in Europe, SwissBorg says

The European Union’s recently-adopted Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulations is beginning to reshape the region’s digital-asset industry, creating new opportunities and barriers for firms seeking to operate across the bloc, a Swiss-based crypto wealth platform said.

Swissborg, which boasts one million registered users and $1.3 billion in assets under management (AUM), is among the companies betting that the shift will strengthen Europe’s role in regulated digital-asset markets after securing its MiCA license.

“The economics of crypto brokerage can be challenging during softer market cycles, and some global platforms may reassess where they allocate capital and operational resources,” SwissBorg Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Baumann told CoinDesk.

Over time, that could lead to “a market composed of fewer but more resilient players. MiCA raises the regulatory and operational standards required to serve European clients, which may reduce the number of lightly structured players,” he said, referring to Gemini’s recent EU exit.

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Baumann also said that when global exchanges reduce their presence in the EU, “it opens space up for other European players to strengthen their positioning.”

SwissBorg suffered an exploit it said affected fewer than 1% of its users in September 2025. It reported 192,600 SOL ($41.5 million) was stolen from an external wallet used exclusively for its SOL Earn strategy. The exploit stemmed from a partner’s compromised application programming interface (API) and not a hack of the SwissBorg platform, they claimed.

The evolution of yield and staking

Baumann said he expects yield and staking products to evolve toward clearer disclosures, stronger risk management and more standardized structures.

“The framework around stablecoins is more detailed and will shape how certain yield models are designed and distributed,” said Baumann, whose mid-level exchange currently has roughly $800 million in total value locked (TVL), according to Defilama data.

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Baumann also said regulatory clarity could gradually support greater institutional participation, adding that for now the European digital-asset market remains largely retail-driven

“Traditional financial institutions can play all three roles,” Baumann said. “They have strong distribution capabilities and regulatory expertise, which naturally makes them competitors in some areas, but there are also opportunities for partnerships.”

EU regulators seek clear stablecoin rules

Baumann also pointed to ongoing policy debates around stablecoins and yield products. While much of that discussion is currently centered in the United States, European regulators are focusing primarily on defining clear rules around issuance, reserves and distribution.

“As the market matures, yield solutions are likely to evolve toward more transparent and better structured models that balance innovation with financial stability,” he said.

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SwissBorg sought authorization in France, which is widely viewed as one of Europe’s stricter regulatory jurisdictions. The approval validates the company’s internal controls, risk management systems and safeguards for user assets, according to the firm.

The company plans to migrate its European operations from its current Estonian entity to the newly authorized French crypto-asset service provider (CASP) entity in the coming months once operational readiness is confirmed, initially targeting major crypto markets including Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

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Crypto World

DeFi User Loses $50M in Crypto Swap Gone Wrong

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DeFi User Loses $50M in Crypto Swap Gone Wrong

A crypto user has lost millions during a crypto swap on the decentralized finance protocol Aave, with a Maximal Extractable Value, or MEV, bot also front-running the transaction to make almost $10 million.

A recently funded wallet from Binance containing $50.4 million USDt (USDT) executed a swap via decentralized exchange aggregator CoW Protocol and the SushiSwap DEX on Thursday, aiming to convert the full amount into the Aave (AAVE) token.

However, the wallet only received 327 AAVE tokens valued at approximately $36,000, according to Etherscan.

The result was an almost total loss as the user paid around $154,000 per AAVE, compared to its market price of around $114.

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Adding to the loss was a MEV bot that did a “sandwich attack” on the user. MEV bots scan pending blockchain transactions, and in this case, targeted the large incoming AAVE order to inflate the price of the token ahead of the order to profit.

The bot front-ran the transaction by flash-borrowing $29 million wrapped Ether (ETH) tokens from Morpho to drive up the price of AAVE ahead of the user’s transaction with a purchase on Bancor. It then sold the inflated tokens on SushiSwap for a $9.9 million profit.

A blockchain transaction showing aEthUSDT swapped to aEthAAVE on March 12. Source: Etherscan

User ignored slippage warnings: Aave

Automated market makers, such as SushiSwap, use an automated pricing formula that adjusts slippage, the intended and actual price of a trade, depending on the size of the trading pool and impending trades.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov posted to X that the protocol interface warned the user about the “extraordinary slippage” due to the “unusually large size of the single order.”

“The user confirmed the warning on their mobile device and proceeded with the swap, accepting the high slippage, which ultimately resulted in receiving only 324 AAVE in return,” he said.

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Related: Vitalik Buterin proposes solutions for Ethereum’s MEV problem

CoW DAO said on X that “despite clear warnings that showed the user they would lose nearly all of the value of their transaction, and despite needing to explicitly opt into the trade after seeing the warning, the user chose to proceed with their swap.”

“No DEX, DEX aggregator, public liquidity pool, or private liquidity pool (or combination thereof) would have been able to fill this trade at anywhere near a reasonable price.”

CoW DAO said that trades like this “show that DeFi UX still isn’t where it needs to be to protect all users,” adding that it would refund any protocol fees associated with the transaction. 

Aave’s Kulechov said it sympathized with the user and would attempt to contact them to return $600,000 in fees it collected from the transaction.

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“The key takeaway is that while DeFi should remain open and permissionless, allowing users to perform transactions freely, there are additional guardrails the industry can build to better protect users.”

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