Bitcoin holds after drop as MiCA puts RWA in focus

• Lyla Velez
• February 21, 2026
• News
• 0 Comments

Key Points:

• Crypto-friendly policies attract investment, talent, and infrastructure to local markets.
• Regulatory certainty, licensing, and RWA support reduce capital formation and payment frictions.
• Durable growth requires AML/CFT, custodian supervision, market integrity, and disclosures.

Policy that welcomes crypto can channel investment, talent, and infrastructure into local markets. The drivers include regulatory certainty, licensing pathways, and support for real-world asset tokenization (RWA). These can reduce friction in capital formation and cross-border payments.

However, growth depends on safeguards. Effective AML/CFT controls, prudential supervision for custodians, market-integrity rules, and strict consumer disclosures are prerequisites for durable gains.

Without those guardrails, volatility, regulatory arbitrage, and operational failures can offset benefits. Clear definitions that separate payments, tokenization, and speculative trading help supervisors target risk where it arises.

Armstrong’s claim and why it matters now

The debate sharpened after a prominent industry leader renewed a simple thesis. In short, if jurisdictions embrace crypto under clear rules, they may capture outsized growth in jobs, capital, and innovation.

“countries that embrace crypto are likely to see the most economic growth,” said Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN), as reported by AOL Finance. The comment frames the competitiveness stakes for jurisdictions weighing new rules.

At the time of this writing, Bitcoin traded around $67,882, providing market context amid recent swings, based on data from Yahoo Finance. This snapshot is descriptive, not predictive.

That backdrop underscores why policymakers emphasize predictable rules over market timing. Durable frameworks, not short-term price moves, determine whether firms deploy capital and hire locally.

EU MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets): clarity and competitiveness

The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation establishes a unified framework across member states intended to provide regulatory clarity for crypto issuers and service providers, according to the European Union. By reducing fragmentation, the bloc seeks to give companies confidence about how to operate at scale.

For competitiveness, clarity can lower compliance uncertainty, support RWA pilots under oversight, and encourage institutions to build in-market. Early indicators to watch include licensing activity, hiring, and cross-border product launches.

If implemented with rigorous supervision and consumer safeguards, MiCA could position the EU to attract investment without compromising stability. The balance between innovation and protection will determine how much growth materializes.