Europe's banks are buying their way into crypto, and licensing costs will do the rest

Cecabank plugs €400 billion of custody into crypto

Cecabank is unknown to the general public, but you cannot avoid it in Spanish banking. The firm provides securities custody and back-end infrastructure for more than a hundred financial institutions, operates in over seventy markets, and holds roughly €400 billion in assets under custody.

Since 11 June 2026, a crypto custody service runs on that same rail. Cecabank obtained a MiCA authorisation from the CNMV in 2025 covering custody, transfer and the reception and transmission of orders, is registered with the Banco de España and with ESMA, and has started passporting into Ireland, Portugal and Luxembourg. Its first client is Renta 4 Banco. The technical layer comes from Bit2Me, which handles more than $280 million (approximately €245 million) in daily spot volume.

‘We are transferring our experience and our standards to the world of digital assets,' said Aurora Cuadros, corporate director of securities services at Cecabank. Gabriel Ayala of Bit2Me described the result as ‘institutional-grade crypto infrastructure, integrated into traditional banking workflows'.

Cecabank is not alone. BBVA is working on direct bitcoin and ether trading and custody for Spanish clients, and Cecabank has opened a Luxembourg office and taken a board seat at the Luxembourg Bankers' Association.

Fewer than one in five European banks takes part

The numbers temper the enthusiasm. According to Simon Schneider, chief executive of Sygnum Europe, fewer than twenty percent of European banks currently offer crypto services. ‘We see a clear tendency towards regulated institutions,' he said — but that tendency starts from a low base.

For comparison: in the United States, around sixty percent of the twenty-five largest banks have launched or announced bitcoin-related products after regulators there jointly cleared national bank custody in July 2025. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo alone manage more than $7.3 trillion (approximately €6.4 trillion) between them.

Europe is behind, then, but the gap is closing faster than a year ago, precisely because MiCA now makes clear what is and is not allowed.

Switzerland shows where this is heading

Anyone wanting to know where Europe ends up should look at Switzerland. Its DLT legislation has provided a clear legal framework for digital assets, and the result is that roughly three quarters of major Swiss banks now do something with digital assets: custody, trading, or both.

The pattern is always the same. While the legal framework is unclear, almost no bank participates, because the risk of a fine or reputational damage outweighs the revenue. Once the framework exists, things move quickly, because doing nothing has become the risk.

MiCA has laid that framework across the entire European Economic Area. What took Switzerland five years could go faster in the EU, because a single authorisation opens twenty-seven markets at once.

Licensing costs are driving an M&A wave

There is a flip side. A MiCA authorisation is not a form but a business model: segregated custody of client assets, capital requirements, compliance staff, reporting obligations, annual audits. For a startup with a few thousand customers, that cost base no longer adds up.

Lawyers handling these files see it leading to consolidation. Steven Lightstone, a partner at Morgan Lewis, notes in conversation with CoinDesk that supervisors themselves are not aiming for less competition: the British regulator ‘is trying to help competition, and it really is trying to help newcomers', he said, while adding that it ‘does have very high standards, particularly where consumers are involved'.

The result is that banks and large regulated players sit on the buy side. They already have the compliance departments, the capital buffers and the licensing files, and can spread those costs across a far bigger balance sheet. A small crypto platform with a good app and ten thousand customers is cheaper for them to buy than to build.

The fact that the market is already concentrated does not help: an estimated 55 percent of all user funds and around 24 percent of global spot volume sit with a single venue, Binance.

Kraken no longer wants to be an exchange but a bank

The opposite move exists too. Kraken has an application pending with Lithuania's central bank for a specialised banking licence, the same type of permission Revolut obtained there in 2018. The Bank of Lithuania will not comment, citing the confidentiality of licensing procedures; Kraken has declined to comment.

Such a licence would let Kraken offer current accounts, consumer lending and stock trading across the entire European Economic Area. No other crypto exchange holds that status in Europe.

Chief executive Arjun Sethi sketched out a ten-year licensing strategy at Money20/20 Europe, in which the company intends to collect permissions either by acquiring an existing business or by starting from scratch. Kraken already gained access to Federal Reserve payment infrastructure through Kraken Financial in March 2026 and secured a VARA authorisation in the United Arab Emirates in May. A US listing is on the agenda.

What it means for you

The practical consequences are already here. If your bank starts offering crypto soon, the odds are that custody sits with a firm like Cecabank and execution with a technology partner: one app, three authorisations, three liable parties. Ask who actually holds your coins.

At the same time, expect smaller platforms to disappear or be acquired. That need not be bad news — an acquisition by a regulated party beats an abrupt shutdown — but it does mean terms, fees and available assets can change without you asking for it.

What you can do now: check whether your provider holds a MiCA authorisation itself or operates under someone else's, and make sure you keep independent access to your funds. A hardware wallet remains the answer to the scenario where your platform changes hands.

Sources: CoinDesk, crypto.news, Cryptopolitan, CNMV, Bank of Lithuania. Last checked: 27 July 2026.