No Industry in the World Has Ever Succeeded Without Government Support: Evgeny Skigin

In 2014, Evgeny Skigin started building crypto payment infrastructure because he believed in the technology. He chose Liechtenstein as Bitclear’s base because he believed the regulatory framework would matter. The compliance infrastructure a firm builds before the rules require it, he has argued, determines which businesses survive when the rules eventually arrive.

Over a decade later, the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation has been fully applicable across member states since December 2024. Besides, the United States signed its first stablecoin legislation in July 2025. The cycle Skigin anticipated has arrived. The pattern, he argues, was entirely predictable: no industry in the world has ever succeeded without government support.

That claim tends to surprise people in crypto circles, where the libertarian instinct runs strong. Industries that achieved real scale, such as aviation, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and financial services, all required a regulatory framework. Only then did institutional capital enter at scale. Each produced its most durable companies after the rules were clarified, not before. 

“When legislation and the economy are pushing in a certain direction, as a young entrepreneur, you have to look at the future — not what’s there now, but what the future is going to be,” Evgeny Skigin has said. His position is that crypto will follow the same arc.

Building Compliant Infrastructure Before MiCA Existed

Before MiCA, crypto operators in Europe faced a fragmented map of national Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) regimes. Each EU member state imposed its own licensing requirements and AML/CFT standards. Each one interpreted what “crypto exchange” or “crypto payment service” meant legally. A company licensed in one country had no automatic right to operate across borders.

Bitclear’s path through that environment was deliberately chosen. “We started in Denmark, later moved to Malta, hoping for a more favorable legal framework — but it proved even more complex,” Skigin said in a 2025 interview. “Eventually, we relocated to Liechtenstein, which has some of the most advanced crypto regulations”. 

Bitclear obtained licenses from the Financial Market Authority covering both crypto trading and payment operations. The process required companies to demonstrate strong technical controls, AML procedures, and operational governance. Many crypto operators at the time were not prepared to meet those standards.

Skigin also began working with expert groups advising legislative committees across Europe. That helped policymakers understand what blockchain technology enables and where statutory protections are necessary. The goal was clear: to help lawmakers write rules that would stand up technically. The framework reflected how the technology actually works rather than simplifying or watering it down.

 “By 2018,” he said, “it was clear to me that serious players would only enter the space once there was a well-defined regulatory framework. Without regulation, the market would turn to speculation — and collapse.”

The practical lesson from operating in pre-MiCA Europe is clear. Firms that built compliance infrastructure before the rules required it are now in the best position under MiCA. Compliance built under pressure, at the last moment, tends to be shallow. Compliance built over time and tested against real regulatory scrutiny tends to hold.

MiCA’s Practical Changes for Operators

MiCA entered into force in June 2023 and became fully applicable across EU member states on 30 December 2024. The regulation replaces the patchwork of national VASP regimes with a single Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) authorization that carries EU-wide passporting rights.

“The MiCA legislation has passed, and you can now get a license for a crypto business in the EU,” Skigin says. For companies that built in jurisdictions like Liechtenstein before MiCA existed, the regulation functions as a market organizer. It creates a level playing field, with every operator now facing the same transparency requirements, disclosure standards, and authorization processes. Level playing fields reward companies with genuine operational history, because demonstrating a compliance track record is part of what regulators evaluate.

The specific changes that matter most in practice: MiCA introduces mandatory white-paper disclosures for crypto-asset issuances, providing investors with standardized information before they commit capital. Before MiCA, disclosure quality was entirely at the issuer’s discretion. The regulation also establishes supervised authorization for stablecoin issuance: asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens now require EU regulatory approval before they can be offered to the public.

The passporting mechanism is the most commercially significant provision for operators with cross-border ambitions. A CASP authorization obtained in one member state now grants the right to provide services across all 27 EU member states. That was not possible under the national VASP regimes. It means the EU has created, for the first time, a unified crypto services market of 450 million people.

There is a transitional period running until 1 July 2026, during which operators providing services under pre-MiCA national laws can continue to operate while seeking CASP authorization. Firms that haven’t begun the authorization process are already behind.

The US Regulatory Moment

The United States has moved more slowly, but the direction is now clear.

On 18 July 2025, President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, the country’s first comprehensive legislation specifically governing stablecoins. The bill requires issuers to hold 1:1 reserves in US currency or equivalent liquid assets, comply with Bank Secrecy Act requirements for AML and CFT, and undergo regular audits. Only banks, credit unions, bank subsidiaries, or federally approved nonbank institutions may issue stablecoins under the framework.

The timing reflects where the market has moved. Stablecoin transaction volumes surpassed those of Visa and Mastercard combined in 2024, a year in which usage grew 28% globally. When transaction rails are processing that kind of volume, the question of who is accountable for the reserves backing those transactions stops being theoretical. “Stablecoins will certainly become a major part of transactions, especially cross-border payment rails,” Skigin says. “But more than anything, the crypto industry is heading for its best time yet.”

The CLARITY Act passed the US House of Representatives in July 2025. It is now awaiting Senate action. This act takes the next step by delineating the roles of the CFTC and SEC in regulating digital assets. It also defines their roles in introducing registration and compliance rules for digital commodity exchanges, brokers, and dealers. 

Together, these two pieces of legislation represent the first coherent attempt to build the US’s regulatory architecture for crypto. Both regulators and operators should welcome this clarity. Skigin argues: the market segment that loses under clear regulation is the segment that was running on opacity.

Why Stablecoins are the Central Piece

Skigin is direct on Bitcoin’s limitations as a payment currency. Bitcoin is, from a technological standpoint, the most effective tool for storing and transferring value. The blockchain mechanism solves a real problem — enabling verifiable, trustless transfer of value without a central intermediary. But as a transaction currency, its price volatility makes it impractical for most commercial use cases.

Stablecoins are where he sees the real near-term opportunity. 

“The killer app for crypto has been stablecoins,” Skigin says. “Everybody can get on board with that — it doesn’t matter whether I hold US dollars or US dollar tokens. It’s one-to-one. I don’t have to worry about price fluctuation. But I can send it faster, receive it faster, cheaper, with more control. I don’t need to ask my bank to do the transfer and fill out a million forms for a $500 transaction. I can just pay someone $500 — or $5 million.”

There is also a longer-horizon argument: as AI agents start executing commercial tasks autonomously, they will need a payment infrastructure that works without human authentication. 

“AI agents cannot use any money other than crypto,” Skigin says. “You cannot have AI — real AI, not just an enhanced Google, but AI that actually performs tasks, buys things, sells things, borrows things, has genuine agency on the internet — without crypto. That’s impossible.” In his view, the stablecoin infrastructure being built today is the payment layer on which autonomous agents will run.

The GENIUS Act’s 1:1 reserve requirement gets this right. A stablecoin backed by audited, liquid reserves is a usable payment instrument. A stablecoin backed by nothing, or by illiquid assets, is a different thing entirely, and the regulatory frameworks are now drawing that distinction explicitly.

The Banking Relationship

Banks have been tightening restrictions on crypto businesses for years. Compliance teams at financial institutions, with a limited understanding of crypto’s operational mechanics, have treated all crypto businesses as equivalent risk. Well-regulated payment infrastructure gets categorized alongside speculative or fraudulent activity, and legitimate businesses have had accounts closed or applications refused on the basis of surface-level pattern matching, with real commercial consequences.

Skigin is blunt about the dynamic. “Banks are their own governments now,” he says. “They look at it and say, we don’t want anything to do with this, and we don’t have to, so we won’t.” But he expects that position to shift. “I think soon it will flip — banks won’t just open your account, they’ll want to integrate your platform into theirs, because they understand that if they’re not getting onto this train, they’ll be left behind.”

What’s needed is an open financial system that holds both sectors to the same standard. Crypto operators that meet the same AML, compliance, and reserve requirements as banks should receive the same access to banking infrastructure. MiCA and the GENIUS Act both push in this direction, creating the evidentiary basis for crypto businesses to demonstrate regulatory compliance in terms that bank risk committees can evaluate.

Where This Goes from Here

The period now arriving is one Evgeny Skigin anticipated when he started building in 2014: serious institutional capital entering a market where the regulatory framework has been clarified, where compliance track record has become a differentiator, and where the technology is mature enough to support infrastructure at scale.

The EU has a framework. The US has a framework, at least for stablecoins. The next phase of work is interoperability: ensuring that a CASP authorized under MiCA can operate in US markets under terms that US regulators accept, and vice versa. The World Economic Forum and the Financial Stability Board have both called for cross-border regulatory coordination. That coordination hasn’t happened yet, but the pressure from transaction volumes will accelerate it.

“Crypto is absolutely going to explode in the next five years,” Skigin says. His position in 2014 was that serious players would only enter crypto once a regulatory framework existed. That framework is now in place on two continents. The serious players are entering. The question for founders and operators is whether they have built the infrastructure to receive them.

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