Paris Blockchain Week 2026. Arcanum and Mercuryo on institutional capital, MiCA, and crypto market maturity

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At Paris Blockchain Week 2026, the conversation around digital assets felt different. The old divide between traditional finance and crypto-native firms appeared less relevant, replaced by discussions around capital deployment, regulation, execution, and market structure. BeInCrypto spoke exclusively with Arcanum and Mercuryo to understand what institutional players want now, where Europe stands after MiCA, and how the market may evolve over the next two years. What surprised you most at PBW, and what does European institutional capital want from crypto? Michael Ivanov, Chief Executive Director at Arcanum Foundation: What struck me most was how the “us versus them” dynamic between traditional finance and crypto-native firms has effectively dissolved. It felt like a structural change, rather than a sentiment change. The buy-side interest at PBW was precise. Privacy and composability on-chain are essential for serious institutional capital flows. European institutions are asking whether the market can support the accountability requirements they operate under. That is a fundamentally different conversation, and one that demands market-level answers rather than product pitches. What from Arcanum Pulse’s retail roots still matters to institutions? Michael Ivanov: More than most assume. The discipline of public, real-time verifiability — every trade on record, no black box — emerged from a retail context where trust has to be earned daily. What we are seeing now is institutional compliance teams arriving at the same requirement from a different direction. A live, auditable track record is not a retail feature. It is what a risk committee needs before it can approve an allocation. What retail also forced us to do early was pass real scrutiny. To operate as an Official Broker on Bybit across our product line, we went through full KYB verification — the kind of institutional-grade compliance review most algo products never face because they never seek formal recognition from a regulated exchange. That process matters. It means the trading statistics are not the only thing validated. The entity behind them has been validated too. The architecture did not need to change for institutions. The framing around it did, but the compliance setup was already there. When a risk committee asks, “Does it perform?” and “Who is running this, and can we trust the structure around it?” we have answers that go beyond the chart. During October’s liquidations, none of your clients lost deposits. What worked in the architecture? Michael Ivanov: The strategy does not use stop-losses. What protected clients was the opposite of what most systems do under stress. Instead of cutting exposure, the algorithm read the volatility as an entry signal and executed diversified buys into the drawdown. By the time markets recovered through the night, those positions were already in profit. That month ended with over 6% average return — one of the strongest in our track record, and it came precisely because of the liquidation event, not despite it. The architecture is built to treat volatility as information, not threat. The risk management is in the entry logic and position sizing, not in exits. That distinction matters more than most people realise. A system that exits under pressure locks in losses. A system sized and diversified correctly from the start can stay in and capture the recovery. What has MiCA changed in institutional demand, and where is the main bank-to-exchange bottleneck now? Arthur Firstov, Chief Business officer at Mercuryo: The introduction of MiCA has provided much-needed legal grounding for institutions to adopt digital token services. The legislation has removed the ambiguity that existed before. MiCA has opened the door for digital token services to be adopted in so-called TradFi payment systems. As for bottlenecks, here lies the opportunity, as fully compliant connectivity services remain critical for the industry to grow. It is in the linkages between TradFi and DeFi services where the battle will be won, and in this regard Mercuryo is playing an important role. Is algorithmic trading becoming standard in crypto, or is this still a different market? Michael Ivanov: It is becoming standard, but the conditions that make it reliable are still maturing. Liquidity depth in major pairs now supports serious algorithmic systems. The missing piece sits around custody arrangements, counterparty transparency, and jurisdiction-specific compliance. In traditional markets, algos run on rails built over decades. In crypto, operators are stress-testing those rails in real time. That asymmetry is both the risk and the opportunity. The funds that build rigorous systems now will have structural advantages that are difficult to replicate once the market normalises. How do you navigate regulatory fragmentation across Europe, the U.S., and Asia, and what risk is still being ignored? Michael Ivanov: Regulatory fragmentation is not just a compliance problem. It is a product design problem. Our decision to operate through Bybit, and to restrict access for users in the U.S. and EU, was not a workaround. It was a deliberate choice to stay within legally clear boundaries rather than test grey zones that could put clients at risk. That discipline costs you some markets. It also means you are not carrying hidden regulatory exposure that surfaces at the worst possible moment. What we observe across Asia, and particularly in Hong Kong, is a regulatory environment actively constructing frameworks to attract institutional capital. That is where we are building. The risk still being ignored more widely is counterparty concentration. Most funds have not seriously stress-tested what happens if their primary exchange faces a liquidity event. Regulatory conversations focus on disclosure and custody. Operational concentration risk often sits outside that discussion. Where do retail and small-fund infrastructure needs overlap, and where do they split? Arthur Firstov: Retail and small fund infrastructure needs overlap more than people assume. Both require reliable on- and off-ramps, secure custody, compliant payments, clear reporting, and a user experience that reduces operational friction. Nobody wants fragmented rails, settlement uncertainty, or systems that demand specialist knowledge to operate safely. These principles shape how Mercuryo thinks about its infrastructure, and why building for intuition, trust, and workflow integration sits at the centre of everything we do. The differences emerge at the level of complexity, control, and accountability. Retail infrastructure is about simplicity and confidence. The priority is ease of use, fast transactions, and protections that limit the risk of user error. Small funds need something different. Their infrastructure has to support multi-step approvals, role-based permissions, auditability, reconciliation, and more sophisticated reporting. They are managing mandates, controls, counterparties, and fiduciary obligations. That means the infrastructure has to support operational precision. Retail can tolerate standardisation in a way small funds cannot. A retail user is well served by a streamlined product with limited choices. A small fund may need to tailor workflows around execution, custody arrangements, treasury policies, or jurisdiction-specific compliance requirements. The overlap is secure, seamless, compliant infrastructure. The divergence is how much complexity the product needs to expose. For retail, good infrastructure hides complexity. For small funds, good infrastructure manages it. The strongest platforms are those that can serve both without treating them as the same user. What needs to change by PBW 2028 for the institutional adoption story to look different? Michael Ivanov: The products that matter by 2028 will not be the ones that solved a single problem well. They will be the ones that built the connective tissue between trading infrastructure, distribution, and on-chain capital flows — and did it in a way that scales across different types of participants, from individual allocators to institutional funds to exchanges building their own branded offerings. That is the trajectory Arcanum Foundation is on. Arcanum Pulse was never meant to be a standalone bot. It is the foundation layer of a broader infrastructure — one that already powers white-label products for exchanges and funds, and that we are actively extending. In the coming months, we will be bringing new products to market that expand what that infrastructure can do and who it can serve. We are not announcing them today, but the direction is consistent. We are building the layer others build on, not just a product they allocate to. By 2028, the institutional adoption story looks different when the infrastructure is invisible — when the rails are so embedded in how capital moves through crypto markets that the question stops being “should we use algorithmic infrastructure” and starts being “which layer of it do we want to sit on.” We intend to be that layer.

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