Stablecon EMEA 2026: Finding the Ripcord

We just came back from Stablecon EMEA.

The original Stablecon launched in New York in 2025. This year it crossed the Atlantic to Amsterdam, setting up in an old industrial venue on the North Sea Canal.

Lots of big names were there: Deutsche Bank, Visa, ING, the Bank of Ghana, Mastercard, Ripple, and a healthy contingent of Big Four consultants.

The fact that this conference exists at all is interesting, the EU has always been more deliberate about adopting Stablecoins, and more cautious about letting new rails develop without often severe regulatory permissioning.

The European approach to financial innovation has historically been to wait, study, wait a bit more, and then if everything works out perfectly – permit.

That approach works well when the world of FX moves slowly, which was true for a long time, but not anymore. About 18 months ago, a global overhaul of Stablecoin regulations, including the GENIUS Act and Europe’s own MiCA kicked the door open, and now everyone is falling through the air looking for the ripcord.

Free Fall

We had a conversation at Stablecon with a senior digital assets executive at one of Europe's largest banks. Big title, serious institution, trillions in volume. He sat down with our team and asked us to walk him through, from the beginning, how we actually use stablecoins to move money across borders.

• How does fiat get on ramp?

• What happens in the middle?

• How does local currency come out the other end?

He didn't know. He wanted to learn.

A little later on, we had a similar conversation with a European policy official, a regulator who had essentially the same questions; then a pair of consultants from two of the Big Four, people who actively advise in this space, they sat with us for the very same walkthrough.

By the second day we had lost count of how many times we'd explained the same basic architecture. The complexities of end-to-end transactions, the FX iceberg, what we do and how money actually moves across countries to end up in a client’s account.

These aren't hard concepts, but they are extremely difficult to piece together, to visualize, particularly when it seems like every other person is telling you an entirely different story.

It seems that everyone is scrambling to understand what’s happening before the ground catches up.

Soft Landing

None of this is a criticism of any of the people involved, why go to a conference if not to learn?

What we saw in Amsterdam was an industry doing the hard, unglamorous work of learning. Asking basic questions, rebuilding mental models that were perfectly functional six months ago.

The fear and confusion are critical parts of the process. They're the work you have to do to become a better diver, to stop flailing and begin enjoying the ride.

Nobody planned for this. Even the people who predicted the shift in the market didn’t understand what the operational reality would look like when things actually started moving. Almost everyone was either too pessimistic or too optimistic, and particularly in Europe, this meant that the best action to take was to wait, study, wait a bit more – you understand.

That waiting is over, the door has been kicked open, and now everyone needs to find their chute.