MERGE Madrid 2026 preview: a year into MiCA, the MERGE stage is still arguing over licences, stablecoins and tokenization

MERGE is a conference about crypto, blockchain and Web3 for banks, regulators, funds and startups, and its 2026 Madrid edition starts today. The Institutional Summit runs this afternoon at the Bolsa de Madrid, the stock exchange palace, for about 400 speakers and business ticket holders, and the main event follows on Oct 28 and 29 at Palacio de Cibeles, with more than 3,000 attendees and 200+ speakers on three stages ↗1. The organisers pitch it as the leading institutional crypto event in Spain and a bridge between Europe and Latin America 12↗1.

MERGE also runs editions in São Paulo and Buenos Aires, and StreamETH's MERGE channel holds more than 370 videos from those stages, from MERGE Madrid 2025 and from the MERGE Talks interview series 34↗2. Read together, the transcripts keep coming back to the same few fights. Here is where those arguments stood before this week.

At MERGE Madrid 2025, a panel called A Year with MiCA brought together people from Kraken, Santander, Chainalysis and the BSV Association, moderated by the trade group Blockchain for Europe 5. MiCA is the EU's rulebook for crypto asset service providers. Most of the panel agreed the text itself is fairly clear and readable 5. The complaints were about how national supervisors apply it. The head of one exchange that was still waiting for its licence said regulators in different countries read MiCA differently, and that a licensed crypto broker in Austria still couldn't get a bank account even though it follows the same rules as the banks 5.

The panel also took on calls to reopen the law. The Kraken speaker warned against a MiCA 2.0 while most firms are still in their transition period and there's little hard data, and the moderator closed by asking the European Parliament to give the industry and supervisors time 5. From the bank side, Santander's head of compliance for crypto said MiCA lets a regulated bank offer crypto as a new asset class to clients it already has, because a bank can only sell regulated products 5. The Chainalysis speaker said the euro stablecoin EURC had grown by more than 2,700% since January, against 86% for USDC over the same period 5.

In São Paulo, a panel on European versus Brazilian regulation was blunter. Panelists said MiCA passporting, which is supposed to let a licence from one EU country work in all of them, isn't working as designed 3. They described firms rushing to friendlier national regulators, stricter regulators asking for extra requirements, and long queues at authorities that weren't ready for the volume of applications, which left some firms without a licence when grandfathering ran out 3.

A lawyer on that panel said clients who got a MiCA licence and then looked at Brazil dropped the plan, because Brazil's capital requirements are higher 3. The Binance speaker put Brazil's minimum capital at about 10.8 million reais, roughly $2 million, and said most players won't have it 3. A speaker from Notabene compared travel rule rollouts: their survey found every UK respondent compliant after the rule took effect there, while only about 30% of European companies were compliant after it came into force on Dec 30, 2024 3. Brazil is phasing it in, with domestic transfers first and full application on Feb 2, 2028 3.

A keynote at MERGE São Paulo argued that under EU law a transfer of a stablecoin, which MiCA calls an e-money token, counts as a payment service 6. That means a crypto firm moving stablecoins for clients needs a payments licence under PSD2 on top of its MiCA licence, a requirement the keynote dated from March 2 6. It called reverse solicitation, the exception for clients who come to a foreign firm on their own, too narrow to build a European business on, and said partnering with an EU payment service provider is the most practical route until PSD3 6. The keynote came from a partner at Asensi Abogados 6. Marina Villalonga, a partner at the firm, is on the first list of confirmed Madrid speakers ↗1.

Anchorage Digital's stablecoin team told São Paulo that its program for banks centres on treasury management, receiving stablecoin payments from corporate clients, and the first leg of remittances, and said it expects more demand for stablecoins that aren't denominated in dollars 7. At Madrid 2025, a panel on why stablecoins matter for Latin America heard from Avenia, which issues a Brazilian real stablecoin 8. It said local stablecoins grow from business needs, since everyone already wants dollars, and that a token lets an offshore company hold reais without opening a non-resident account at a bank 8. A Nuvei speaker said many people in the region buy dollar stablecoins as soon as they're paid in a volatile local currency, simply to hold value 8.

The bank strategy question has its own episode in the archive. Francisco Maroto, head of blockchain and digital assets at BBVA, appears in MERGE Talks #7 on the strategy of banks in crypto, stablecoins and tokenization, which has no transcript yet 9. He is on the Madrid speaker list ↗1.

At a Madrid 2025 panel on tokenized capital markets, a speaker from Raiffeisen Bank International said MiCA's clarity means EU banks can now build compliant products, and pointed to splitting high-value assets such as real estate and art into smaller pieces for more investors 10. A former London Stock Exchange Group digital assets lead, now at a European broker, said settling the cash side of these trades had been a big obstacle 10. A speaker from a US broker-dealer said the technology was the easy part and consumer protection the real risk 10.

The DEUSS project showed a different route at the same event: SME bonds issued on EBSI, the European Commission's blockchain infrastructure, regulated under the EU's DLT pilot regime instead of MiCA and with no stablecoins, aiming to go live in 2026 11. The sceptical view is in the archive too. Eric Sánchez, chief executive of the real estate tokenization firm Reental, is on the Madrid list ↗1, and his MERGE Talks episode carries a title saying Europe is stifling innovation 12.

The digital euro has two MERGE recordings in the archive, a Madrid 2025 session on its status, timeline and implications and a MERGE Talks episode with Ángel Niño on what it means for public administration 1314. Both are in Spanish and neither has a transcript yet 1314.

The closest transcribed debate came from São Paulo, where a panel on tokenized money included Banco Inter, the Central Bank of Chile and a nonprofit that came out of IDB Lab's LACChain program 15. The Banco Inter speaker said Brazil's Drex pilot stepped back partly because no privacy layer for Ethereum was mature enough at the time 15. The Chilean central bank's fintech lead described a narrow internal proof of concept that settles tokenized assets with wholesale central bank money 15. The IDB-backed speaker said the question that most needs an answer is how private digital money, such as stablecoins and deposit tokens, will sit alongside public digital money 15.

The summit runs 15:00 to 18:00 today with roundtables and panels, and Cibeles has talks on Oct 28 from 09:30 to 14:00 and 15:00 to 18:30, then a second day on Oct 29 ↗1. MERGE lists Banco de España, the CNMV, the European Banking Authority and Banco Central do Brasil among the institutions that have taken part ↗1. Last year's panels left open questions: whether supervisors now apply MiCA the same way, whether the double licence for stablecoins gets fixed, and whether banks move from pilots to products 5610. StreamETH will add this year's Madrid recordings to the MERGE channel as they are uploaded ↗2.