Bitcoin.com News Interviews
In 2017, a Bitcoin-maxi friend tried to convert Erald Ghoos. He didn't buy it — he'd spent his career building bank startups across Europe and was, in his own words, on "the dark side." Today he runs OKX Europe and says 80% of crypto exchanges on the continent won't survive what's coming.
David Sencil sits down with Erald at Paris Blockchain Week 2026 to dig into the regulatory pressure cooker reshaping European crypto — MiCA, PI, MiFID, GDPR, DORA — and why struggling rivals are already approaching OKX asking to be acquired. They cover OKX's decision to anchor three financial licenses in Malta, the new X-Perps product designed to bridge onshore compliance with offshore-level liquidity, and the unified spot-and-derivatives account that doesn't exist anywhere else in Europe.
We cover:
- The personal arc: from skeptical banker to OKX Europe CEO
- Why 80% of European crypto exchanges won't survive MiCA + PI + MiFID + GDPR + DORA
- Why rivals are openly asking OKX to acquire them
- The case for stacking three financial licenses in Malta
- X-Perps: bridging onshore compliance with offshore-level liquidity
- Europe's only unified spot-and-derivatives account
- Merz at Davos and the deregulation signal
- Tokenized stocks and 24/7 global market access
Filmed at Paris Blockchain Week 2026.
Host: David Sencil
Bitcoin.com News X: https://x.com/BitcoinNews