Europe | Crypto

Criminal teams behind wrench attacks usually consist of three to five people, often posing as delivery drivers or luring victims into ambushes, said CertiK. Estimated losses from global crypto wrench attacks reached $101 million in the first four months of 2026, with most attacks occurring in Europe, according to Web3 security company CertiK. With just 34 documented crypto wrench attacks, the losses have nearly doubled those of 2025, which came in at $52.2 million. Europe accounted for 82% of incidents, according to CertiK. The frequency of wrench attacks has increased since 2025. They involve physical force to gain access to a victim’s crypto holdings and have taken the form of home invasions, kidnappings and other extortion attempts. CertiK said there have been 34 attacks since the start of the year. Read more

OKX Card data shows most crypto spending in Europe is on groceries and dining, signaling growing everyday use over luxury purchases. OKX Card users in Europe spent mostly on groceries, restaurants and other routine purchases in the product’s first month, according to transaction data shared Wednesday. In the first month of use across the European Economic Area (EEA), grocery stores and supermarkets accounted for 26% of all OKX Card transactions, while restaurants and fast food together made up 18%, ahead of travel and online marketplaces, according to the data. The analysis covers settled purchase transactions made with the OKX Card in the EEA between Jan. 28 and Feb. 26, across the top 20 merchant types by transaction count, volume or unique users, the company said. Read more

The Bank of Italy’s deputy governor floated the evaluation of tokenized SEPA payments, as the ECB experiments with tokenized digital payment frameworks to avoid stablecoin competition. European financial institutions should assess whether the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) can be extended into tokenized payments, Bank of Italy Deputy Governor Chiara Scotti said, as policymakers look for ways to keep euro-denominated settlement central to digital finance. Scotti called a tokenized extension of SEPA an “important area for reflection” during a Monday speech at the Digital Assets and Monetary Policy Transmission workshop in Rome, saying Europe’s existing payments framework offers scale, shared standards and interoperability. Her comments come as the Eurosystem prepares a pilot for Pontes, a distributed ledger technology settlement initiative designed to link market DLT platforms with TARGET Services and settle transactions in central bank money. The pilot is expected by the third quarter of 2026. Read more

Brighty data shows Spain leading EURC retail usage, offering an early look at how euro stablecoins are being used under MiCA. Spain appears to be the strongest retail market for Circle’s euro-pegged stablecoin EURC on crypto banking platform Brighty, according to company data. Spain led EURC usage by a wide margin in 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, accounting for about 36% of transactions and 25% of volume, according to Brighty data seen by Cointelegraph. “For Spanish users, EURC functions essentially as a standard euro on a card with no exchange rate friction when transacting against USDC,” Brighty co-founder Nick Denisenko said. Read more

Bitcoin traded below $78,000 on Monday as EU markets opened for the week. BTC price hit $77,819, down 0.28% over 24 hours, with a market capitalization near $1.56 trillion and 24-hour volume of around $32.1 billion. Total crypto liquidations stood near $295 million over the previous 24 hours on CoinGlass. Bitcoin had been pressing the […] The post Bitcoin flash crashes below $78,000 at Europe market open with nearly $295 million in crypto liquidations appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Banking Circle's stablecoin settlement launch follows its CASP approval, entering a crowded market with SocGen, Sygnum and a 12-bank euro stablecoin consortium. Luxembourg-based Banking Circle has launched stablecoin settlement services after receiving a Crypto Asset Service Provider (CASP) license from Luxembourg's financial regulator on April 15, expanding into regulated fiat-to-stablecoin and stablecoin-to-fiat settlement for institutional clients. The rollout includes support for Circle's USDC, Paxos' USDG and Banking Circle's own euro stablecoin EURI, expanding the bank's digital asset settlement capabilities beyond its initial EURI launch in August 2024. In a Monday announcement, the bank said it serves more than 750 payment companies, financial institutions and marketplaces that move and convert over 1.5 trillion euros (roughly $1.7 trillion) annually across its infrastructure. Chief digital asset officer Kirit Bhatia said in the release that stablecoins are "a natural extension" of the bank's infrastr...

In an interview, Ben Zhou said the crypto exchange is at least two years away from breaking even in Europe.

Smaller crypto companies across Europe face mounting compliance costs as MiCA moves from framework to enforcement, raising fears of market consolidation. The European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) transition period is entering its final stretch, forcing smaller crypto firms across the EU to either secure authorization quickly or prepare to shut down regulated services. The transitional period ends across the bloc on July 1, after which any crypto asset service provider operating without a MiCA license must stop serving EU clients. Early movers like United Kingdom-based exchange CoinJar, which said it secured MiCA authorization in Ireland in 2025, call the regime a necessary maturation that rewards compliance-first players, but founders in markets like Poland warn thousands of virtual asset service providers (VASPs) could fall off a regulatory cliff as deadlines hit. Companies face a hard stop of July 1 for the longest 18-month grandfathering window, with some national regimes already clos...

Executives at Paris Blockchain Week said European firms interested in Bitcoin treasury strategies are working around shallower capital markets and tighter constraints than in the US. European companies exploring Bitcoin treasury strategies are unlikely to replicate the playbook pioneered by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, according to industry executives, who pointed to structural differences between US and European capital markets. Speaking at Paris Blockchain Week 2026, Thomas Vogel, a partner in the Paris and Frankfurt offices of Latham & Watkins, said the constraints on issuing financial instruments in Europe differ significantly from those in the US, making a direct replication of the model difficult. “If you issue convertibles in the US, the constraints are not the same as when you issue them out of a French balance sheet or a balance sheet in Europe,” Vogel said, pointing to differences in market depth, regulation and investor behavior. Read more

The exchange said the new product is available across the European Economic Area through its Malta-based MiFID business, with up to 10x leverage and multi-asset collateral. OKX said Wednesday it is rolling out a Europe-specific crypto derivatives product called X-Perps, extending its regulated offering across the European Economic Area (EEA) through its Malta-based MiFID business. The company said the new derivatives product is available to retail and institutional traders across all 30 EEA countries. OKX said the platform is purpose-built in compliance with the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), a European Union regulatory framework governing financial instruments such as securities and derivatives. Read more

Stablecoin adoption in Europe is shifting from strategy to execution, with demand increasingly driven by real-world needs. Banks and corporates across Europe are moving beyond exploration and are now actively selecting infrastructure partners to support stablecoin adoption, according to Lamine Brahimi, co-founder and managing partner at crypto custody technology provider Taurus. Brahimi told Cointelegraph that 18 months ago, most conversations were still educational, focused on understanding stablecoins and their risks. Today, firms with board-level approval are preparing to go live. He said the introduction of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) has accelerated that transition by replacing fragmented national rules with a single bloc-wide regulatory regime. “In the past 12 months alone some of Europe's most stringent financial institutions are all arriving at the same conclusion, digital assets, including stablecoins, belong inside the existing banking stack, not beside it,” he said. Read mor...

Brokerage clients in the European Economic Area can now trade 11 cryptocurrencies alongside traditional assets within a single account. Interactive Brokers has launched crypto trading for retail investors in the European Economic Area (EEA), allowing eligible clients to buy and sell 11 digital assets, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, alongside traditional assets on its platform. According to Tuesday’s announcement, the EEA Operation will be offered through the company’s Ireland-based entity, an authorized crypto-asset service provider in the region. Clients will see spot crypto trading integrated into existing brokerage accounts with commissions starting at 0.12%–0.18% and 24/7 market access. Tradable assets include Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Solana (SOL), XRP (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Dogecoin (DOGE), among others. Zerohash provides the underlying trading and custody infrastructure. Read more

H100 signed a letter of intent to acquire two Bitcoin treasury companies and their BTC holdings, which could make it the second-largest Bitcoin treasury company in Europe. Sweden-listed health-tech and Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company H100 Group has entered into a letter of intent (LOI) with the shareholders of privately-held Norwegian Bitcoin companies Moonshot and Never Say Die to acquire all shares of the target companies in exchange for newly issued H100 stock. The proposed transaction would be completed with newly issued H100 shares and no cash consideration, a structure intended to preserve the sellers’ Bitcoin exposure while moving the assets into a larger listed vehicle, according to a Monday press release. A definitive agreement is expected by April 22, with closing targeted after H100’s annual general meeting. H100’s public materials currently show inconsistent AGM dates: its investor-relations calendar lists April 21, while a March 12 company notice referred to an AGM on May 21. Read more

The European Central Bank has launched Appia to guide Europe’s tokenized financial ecosystem anchored in central bank money, with early Pontes pilots planned for 2026. The European Central Bank (ECB) on Wednesday published its Appia roadmap, setting out a long-term plan for building tokenized wholesale financial markets in Europe anchored in central bank money. The roadmap is built around two linked initiatives. Pontes is the Eurosystem’s distributed ledger technology settlement solution, while Appia is the broader strategic framework for developing a future tokenized financial ecosystem. The ECB said Pontes is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2026. “With Appia, we are building a road from today’s financial system to tomorrow’s tokenized markets, firmly grounded in central bank money,” ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone said. Read more

The European Central Bank warns in a new working paper that as stablecoin adoption grows, deposits may leave banks, affecting lending and monetary policy transmission. The European Central Bank said increasing stablecoin use may pull money out of bank deposits and weaken the way monetary policy flows through to lending, according to a new ECB working paper. Growing adoption of stablecoins, which are digital assets often pegged to currencies such as the US dollar or euro, is expected to draw funds away from traditional bank deposits, the ECB said in its latest working paper series, “Stablecoins and Monetary Policy Transmission,” released Tuesday. “Our analysis shows that rising interest in stablecoins is linked to a measurable decline in retail bank deposits and a reduction in lending to firms,” ECB staff said, adding that stablecoins can reduce the amount of credit banks provide to the real economy. Read more

Five straight weeks of net redemptions from crypto investment products are enough to raise the alarm, as they point to a choice that keeps getting made, with the same logic, on the same cadence, by the same kinds of committees. CoinShares' Feb. 23 weekly report showed digital asset investment products saw $288 million in outflows […] The post Europe buys the dip as US funds keep bleeding – who is buying Bitcoin right now? appeared first on CryptoSlate.

21Shares debuts the Strategy Yield ETP on Euronext Amsterdam on Thursday, giving Europe regulated access to Strategy’s preferred stock, which is heavily backed by Bitcoin. Crypto exchange-traded product (ETP) provider 21Shares has launched an investment product giving European investors access to a preferred stock issued by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the world’s largest public holder of Bitcoin. The asset manager will list its 21Shares Strategy Yield ETP under the ticker “STRC NA” on Euronext Amsterdam on Thursday, the company said Wednesday. The ETP is available to institutional and retail investors, offering a dividend backed by Strategy’s Bitcoin (BTC) treasury, which currently holds 717,722 BTC, valued at around $47 billion. With dividends set at a variable 11.25% annualized rate, the ETP represents one of the earliest structured, BTC-backed corporate securities available to European investors. Read more

Two regulators converged on the same market from opposite directions in February 2026. The European Securities and Markets Authority warned that derivatives marketed as “perpetual futures” or “perpetual contracts” tied to Bitcoin and Ethereum likely fall within the scope of contracts-for-difference regulations, regardless of what firms call them. Days earlier, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission […] The post Crypto traders are chasing 10x leverage in the US while Europe tightens the screws behind the scenes appeared first on CryptoSlate.

ECB president Christine Lagarde is a crypto skeptic, but her likely successors are no more enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies. European Central Bank (ECB) president Christine Lagarde is stepping down sometime before the French presidential election next year. Under her leadership, the ECB has consulted on the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation that defined the crypto landscape in the European Union. The preeminent European bank also began work on the digital euro — the next iteration of the Eurozone’s currency. But there is still work to be done on crypto policy in Europe. MiCA does not, in its current form, regulate decentralized finance (DeFi), and policymakers at the ECB are still deliberating over the digital euro’s final details. Read more

The Dutch electronic money issuer will act as a BIN sponsor for fintech partners, linking regulated dollar- and euro-denominated tokens to mainstream card rails. Dutch payments company Quantoz Payments has become a principal member of Visa, enabling it to issue virtual debit cards backed by its regulated e-money tokens and sponsor third-party fintechs seeking to offer stablecoin-linked payment products across Europe. Under the agreement, Quantoz will be able to issue Visa-branded virtual cards tied to balances held in its USDQ, EURQ and EURD e-money tokens, allowing users to spend those funds online, in stores and through mobile wallets. The company will also act as a BIN sponsor, enabling fintech partners to embed card issuance directly into their platforms. Read more