Crypto in 2025: Regulatory Milestones Across the Globe (Pt. 5)

In 2025, the regulatory landscape for crypto shifted materially, particularly across Western jurisdictions.

After years of legal uncertainty and enforcement-heavy approaches, governments began implementing structured frameworks to bring crypto into the financial system. For the first time, many crypto businesses could operate under defined compliance regimes rather than legal gray zones.

This fifth article of our 5-part series reviews the most significant regulatory developments of the year and their impact on industry adoption.

Read the previous articles here:

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The United States Moved Toward Clear Crypto Laws

In the United States, the regulatory tone shifted early in 2025.

The new administration that took office in January signaled a more crypto-friendly stance, and industry leaders welcomed the change in rhetoric. Backed by this momentum, lawmakers pushed forward comprehensive crypto legislation.

Congress passed the GENIUS Act, establishing federal oversight for stablecoin issuers and setting standards for reserves, audits, and licensing. The law also clarified that compliant stablecoins are not treated as securities.

Lawmakers also advanced a broader crypto market structure bill aimed at clarifying which digital assets are securities versus commodities and defining the regulatory roles of the SEC and CFTC. The House passed its version of this framework in July 2025, with final Senate approval expected in 2026.

Even before full legislation was finalized, U.S. regulators adapted. Banking regulators began allowing limited crypto exposure for banks under new risk guidelines. The SEC approved several crypto investment products and increased coordination with lawmakers on future oversight.

Taken together, these changes marked a shift away from regulation driven primarily by enforcement actions and toward more structured rulemaking, reducing legal uncertainty for both startups and established companies operating in the U.S. market.

Europe Implemented a Unified Crypto Framework

While the U.S. was still finalizing legislation, Europe moved faster.

The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation became fully active in 2025 after its phase-in period. MiCA introduced a single, passportable regulatory framework across all 27 EU member states, covering crypto service providers, stablecoin issuers, exchanges, custodians, and token issuers.

The framework established reserve requirements and transparency obligations for stablecoins and set licensing and compliance standards for crypto companies operating in the EU.

For crypto businesses, this meant operating under one rulebook instead of navigating fragmented national regulations. This regulatory harmonization supported the expansion of crypto services by large financial institutions within a clearer legal structure.

Several major European banks and fintech companies launched new crypto services in 2025 following MiCA’s implementation.

CoinGate obtained a MiCA license from the Bank of Lithuania, allowing it to operate crypto payment services under a regulated EU framework.

Other Financial Hubs Refined Their Crypto Rules

Other major financial centers also advanced their regulatory frameworks in 2025.

In the United Kingdom, regulators finalized key details of a new crypto regime. By December 2025, HM Treasury published the final draft of the Cryptoassets Regulations 2025, outlining how crypto trading, lending, and stablecoin issuance would be brought into the UK’s regulatory perimeter. The framework is set to come into force over the next two years and will require crypto firms to be authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority.

In Canada, securities regulators continued enforcing registration requirements for crypto exchanges and overseeing Bitcoin ETFs, maintaining a strict but predictable compliance environment.

Australia and Singapore also updated their regulatory approaches. Singapore’s Monetary Authority implemented a stablecoin regulatory regime in 2025 that complemented its existing crypto exchange licensing system.

In the Middle East, jurisdictions such as the UAE continued positioning themselves as crypto-friendly yet regulated environments, attracting startups, talent, and capital.

China and a few other countries maintained bans or stayed largely on the sidelines, but these represented a declining share of global crypto activity relative to regulated markets.

Regulatory Impact on Industry Adoption

The dominant regulatory theme in 2025 was integration rather than prohibition.

Governments focused on bringing crypto into the regulatory perimeter, reducing consumer risk, and enabling compliant innovation. This shift changed how crypto was treated by traditional financial institutions.

As clearer rules emerged, crypto became easier to justify internally at banks, fintech companies, and large enterprises. Legal uncertainty had long been one of the biggest blockers to adoption. In 2025, that blocker was meaningfully reduced across multiple major jurisdictions.

With clearer regulatory expectations in place, banks expanded crypto services, asset managers launched regulated investment products, payment networks embedded stablecoins into settlement flows, and enterprises adopted crypto payments and payouts with greater confidence.

Crypto also began appearing more frequently inside operational financial systems rather than only in pilot programs or isolated experiments.

Conclusion

By the end of 2025, crypto had reached a structurally different regulatory environment than in previous years.

Mainstream adoption, institutional participation, real-world payment use cases, and regulatory legitimacy existed simultaneously for the first time.

The introduction of unified regulatory frameworks in the EU, progress toward federal legislation in the U.S., and regulatory alignment across other major financial hubs reduced legal uncertainty and supported broader institutional participation.

While challenges remain – including cybersecurity risks, market volatility, and incomplete legislation in some regions – the regulatory developments of 2025 established a more stable foundation for the continued integration of crypto into the global financial system.

In summary, 2025 marked a structural shift in how crypto is regulated and adopted globally.

The combination of regulatory clarity, institutional participation, and real-world usage moved crypto further into the financial mainstream and created a more predictable environment for long-term growth.