Canada Over MiCA: Why Crypto Projects Are Choosing Canada in 2026, per SBSB’s Yuliya Barabash

Crypto projects are still talking about MiCA, but more of them are voting with their setup budgets. According to SBSB’s Yuliya Barabash, the pull toward Canada is not about Canada being “better” in some abstract sense; it is about MiCA’s capital, documentation, staffing and banking demands pricing out projects that do not have deep pockets.

1. MiCA is built for firms that can absorb a heavy compliance buildout: minimum capital ranges from 50,000 to 150,000 euros depending on the services offered, and most exchange-type operations fall into the 125,000 euros tier. That capital has to be deposited and maintained, which means it is tied up instead of being used for product development, hiring or customer acquisition.
2. The paperwork load is not small. Barabash says MiCA applications can require 20 to 60 documents covering AML, governance, IT infrastructure, risk management, complaint handling and more. The fees start around 40,000 euros, but 70,000 to 80,000 euros is more common in practice.
3. For early-stage crypto companies, that is the whole point: regulation is a real cost, and when the cost of entry rises faster than expected return, companies look elsewhere. Barabash frames Canada as the place they are choosing instead, not because it is some magical regulatory utopia, but because the organizational and cash demands are more manageable than MiCA’s bar.
4. The banking piece is where theory meets the usual mess. Barabash says anyone who has tried to open a corporate account for a crypto company in Europe knows banks are cautious, onboarding is slow and expensive, and outcomes are often unsuccessful. Even when an account is opened, traditional banks still tend to treat crypto as a compliance risk rather than a commercial opportunity.
5. Ledger’s CTO recently put a sharper label on the same dynamic: MiCA gives traditional finance an edge over crypto startups by pricing them out of the market. That matters for PSPs and acquiring teams because it means the winning jurisdiction is not necessarily the strictest one; it is the one where regulatory capital, documents and banking access line up with a startup’s actual resources.