Summary
- Western Europe’s $2.08 trillion crypto economy held firm despite a global downturn. The region grew 1.2% between July 2025 and June 2026, making it the world’s second-largest crypto economy. The EU grew 2.2%, while the UK contracted 8% but remained the region’s largest crypto market.
- Stablecoins and cross-border activity are reshaping Europe’s crypto economy. Regional stablecoin holdings surged 131%, compared with 52% globally, lifting Western Europe’s share of global stablecoin balances from 3.4% to 5.1%. The UK led in domestic stablecoin transfers, while Spanish exchanges attracted growing activity from across Europe, with cross-border inflows rising 79.1%.
- Regulatory shifts and financial uncertainty are driving new patterns of crypto activity. MiCA is helping create a more integrated EU market, while the euro is gaining ground in crypto trading. Meanwhile, rising bond yields coincided with increased euro-denominated trading in Bitcoin and tokenized gold, and French users increasingly turned to self-custodied stablecoins, with balances surging 192% amid mounting fiscal pressures.
As the global crypto market faced a downturn, Western Europe proved relatively resilient. Between July 2025 and June 2026, the reporting period, the region’s all-in crypto economy totaled $2.08 trillion, making it the second-largest worldwide. Activity grew by a modest 1.2%, placing Western Europe among just three regions to record positive growth over the period, after Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.
New regulation, rising institutional investment, and closer ties to traditional finance are reshaping the region’s crypto market, though what this looks like varies from country to country. Stablecoins are gaining traction, the euro is playing a bigger role in global crypto trading, and exchanges are building cross-regional user bases.
For Christopher Beck, co-CEO of Boerse Stuttgart Digital, a leading European crypto infrastructure provider, these developments are part of a broader shift in how crypto is viewed and used: “Institutional adoption is accelerating, marking a shift from crypto being an emerging asset class to becoming an increasingly mainstream financial product.”
But this is playing out as the region deals with rising economic uncertainty and changing user preferences, which greatly impacts how crypto is adopted and where activity is concentrated.
Six markets account for two-thirds of Western Europe’s crypto economy
The UK retained its position as Western Europe’s largest crypto economy, at $424.5 billion, and accounted for 20% of the regional total. As a longstanding global financial hub with deep capital markets and a well-established banking sector, the UK’s crypto market has evolved as a natural extension of its financial services landscape. Yet activity declined 8% over the reporting period, largely due to a drop in decentralized exchange (DEX) activity.
Germany’s crypto economy was second at $288.8 billion, followed by France at $215.8 billion. Germany experienced another modest contraction, largely driven again by declining DEX activity, while France’s crypto economy remained broadly flat. Elsewhere in the region, Spain ($156.1 billion) and Switzerland ($132.8 billion) both saw growth, fueled by increased activity on centralized exchanges (CEXs).
Together with the Netherlands ($207.8 billion), these six markets accounted for roughly two-thirds of Western Europe’s crypto economy, highlighting the concentration of activity within the region’s leading markets. 
As Faustine Fleuret, Global Head of Public Affairs at Morpho, the decentralized credit infrastructure provider, notes: “We are seeing a clear move from experimentation with crypto toward the integration of blockchain into core financial activities. Banks, asset managers and Fintech companies increasingly recognize that on-chain finance is not a parallel system competing with traditional finance, but a new technological infrastructure on which they can build.”
The euro’s growing role in crypto reflects its strength in traditional FX markets
One indicator of the region’s expanding crypto economy is the euro’s growing role as a bridge asset, mirroring its longstanding position in global foreign exchange markets.
According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the euro was involved in 28.9% of global FX turnover in April 2025. To ensure comparability with crypto order-book data, which captures one-sided trading pairs (such as EUR-to-token trades) rather than both sides of an FX transaction, we use half this figure, or 14.5%, as our benchmark.
Our data suggest the euro is increasingly serving as a gateway into crypto markets. By the end of our study period, euro-denominated trading accounted for 11.8% of crypto volume across the 33 leading government-issued currencies. This represents a substantial increase from previous periods, bringing the euro’s share of crypto trading closer to its adjusted FX benchmark.
This growth coincides with when the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation’s implementation took effect. MiCA establishes a harmonized framework for crypto-asset issuers and service providers across the bloc, which in turn can help reduce uncertainty for investors and make it easier for new providers to enter multiple EU markets at once.
While our data cannot establish a direct link, the euro’s growing share of crypto trading volume may be one result of having a more regulated, uniform sector, as well as the growth in the EU’s overall crypto economy, which will be discussed in more detail.
Laurynas Spangevičius, General Manager at Robinhood Europe, points to the significance of MiCA more broadly: “The single most impactful regulatory shift for European crypto has been the complete rollout and enforcement of the EU’s MiCA framework. The resulting market clarity has replaced regulatory uncertainty with mainstream, long-term investor confidence across Europe.”
Western Europe’s stablecoin holdings outpaced global growth
Our research finds that stablecoins are playing a growing role in how people across Western Europe hold digital assets. Stablecoin holdings in personal wallets increased across every country measured.
The shift matters: as stablecoins become more widely held, Europe faces a bigger question about how these digital currencies should fit into its financial system.
Stablecoin holdings across the region surged 131%, far outpacing global growth of 52%, with Austria and France recording the strongest gains in 2026. This rapid expansion also lifted the region’s share of global stablecoin balances from 3.4% to 5.1%.
Several factors may be contributing to this, including rising interest among Europeans in alternative ways to store and transfer value. The expansion of the euro-backed stablecoin market is another potential factor, driven by MiCA’s framework for stablecoin issuer authorization. As stablecoins gain traction across Europe, their potential impact on the region’s financial system is becoming harder to ignore.
And debate over their potential impact is already taking shape: in September 2026, the ECB and EU national central banks called for changes to MiCA’s requirements on how stablecoin issuers hold their reserves, arguing that the current minimum threshold of 30% (or 60% for significant issuers) of reserves held in deposits at European banks could create vulnerabilities for these banks if large-scale redemptions triggered sudden withdrawals.
Meanwhile, traditional financial institutions are beginning to impact the market more directly as well. Jan-Oliver Sell, CEO of Qivalis, a consortium backed MiCA-regulated stablecoin, points to several emerging use cases for regulated euro stablecoins, including serving “as the on-chain cash leg for tokenised assets” and enabling “conditional and programmable payments between businesses, such as payment on delivery.”
A spokesperson for CaixaBank, the Spanish multinational bank, also points out that such efforts are part of Europe “trying to avoid becoming solely dependent on USD-denominated stablecoins.”
Taken together, these developments suggest that euro-backed stablecoins could play an increasingly important role in Europe’s digital financial infrastructure, even as regulators and banks weigh the risks to financial stability and monetary sovereignty.
How changing Euro bond yields are shaping Bitcoin and tokenized gold trading in the EU
Our research also points to rising euro-area government bond yields relative to US yields coinciding with increased euro-denominated trading in Bitcoin and tokenized gold.
This relationship is emerging amid growing concerns over Europe’s public finances, as mounting fiscal pressures fuel questions about sovereign debt risks. While these concerns have reached a boiling point in recent months, they are the result of years of high public debt, successive economic shocks, and persistently weak growth in the region.
France has emerged as a key flashpoint in these mounting fiscal concerns. Rising sovereign debt and political gridlock have unsettled bond markets, with French 10-year government bond yields climbing above 5.14% in October — the highest level in over 20 years — reflecting mounting investor concern over the country’s fiscal and political outlook.
Against this backdrop, we examined whether shifts in sovereign risk perceptions coincided with changes in demand for alternative assets during the report period. Using weekly data from July 2025 to June 2026, we compared yields on the highest-rated euro-area government bonds, based on ECB data, with US government bond yields and trading activity in Bitcoin and tokenized gold.
We found a clear pattern: as euro-area yields rose relative to US yields, euro-denominated trading in Bitcoin and tokenized gold increased relative to dollar-denominated trading. When the yield gap narrowed, euro trading weakened by comparison.
The larger the rise in yields, the stronger the increase in euro trading. When euro yields rose by around 2 basis points (0.02 percentage points) relative to US yields, euro trading was about 7.5% higher relative to dollar trading. When yields rose by around 7 basis points, it was about 12% higher. When euro yields fell relative to US yields, euro trading was 8–10% lower.
One possible interpretation is that traders are broadening their portfolios to include Bitcoin and tokenized gold as confidence in the euro area’s fiscal outlook comes under pressure. French data discussed later in this report point to related shifts, suggesting that crypto usage may shift with mounting debt concerns, although our data cannot establish direct links.
How Europeans use crypto to trade on global events
Prediction markets are extending crypto’s reach beyond digital assets, allowing users to speculate on real-world events, from geopolitics to economic outcomes. To examine this trend in Europe, we analysed European wallet activity involving geopolitical bets.
Our findings predate ESMA’s July 2026 classification of certain event contracts as falling under existing EU restrictions on retail binary options, which effectively banned prediction markets in the EU. Other Western European countries, such as the UK, have bans on the markets. Our analysis accounts for this evolving regulatory landscape.
Our research found that wallets in the region put almost twice as large a share of their prediction market volume (74% compared to 49%) into negative outcomes of US-Iran binary markets in the 2026 period. These bets delivered weaker returns, on average, than the positive side of the bet.
This suggests that prediction markets may be serving not only as venues for forecasting real-world outcomes, but also as outlets for expressing views on geopolitical developments. However, the gap between the share of volume and returns highlights a potential disconnect between what users expect to happen and where they can profitably position themselves.
After years of higher growth, the UK contracts as the EU continues to expand
The UK’s crypto economy has outgrown the rest of Western Europe in recent years, but that growth advantage has now reversed. While the UK remains Western Europe’s largest crypto economy, its crypto economy contracted by 8% during the 2026 period, while the rest of Western Europe grew by 3.8% (the EU specifically grew by 2.2%).
This divergence raises two questions: what drove the UK’s stronger growth in recent years, and why is the EU now holding up better?
MiCA may be at play here again. The initial implementation period starting in December 2024 may have constrained growth at first, as providers faced new compliance costs and uncertainty. But as existing regional domestic providers approached a final July 2026 transition deadline, this may have actually spurred a final push for authorisation. Moreover, once MiCA licensed, all providers have passporting rights to expand across the bloc without seeking separate licences in each member state.
MiCA may therefore have initially held back growth, while then helping set the stage for even greater expansion. This expansion also came as the international crypto market was seeing a downturn, with total market cap falling 50%.
The UK on the other hand didn’t have a MiCA build up to potentially help offset the global bear market. Moreover, the slowdown in the UK could also reflect a wait-and-see approach ahead of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) finalising its rules and opening its authorisation gateway on in September.
Our data cannot establish a direct link, and no story is ever purely regulatory. Other market dynamics were also at play over the last few years, making it impossible to isolate MiCA’s specific impact, though the timing of these shifts remains notable.
The UK now leads region in domestic stablecoin activity
Our research finds stablecoins are gaining traction in the UK, where domestic stablecoin value (UK wallet to UK wallet) surged during the 2026 reporting period. The UK now leads Western Europe in this measurement, with domestic transfers outpacing cross-border activity. This shift suggests stablecoins are expanding beyond cross-border payments to play a growing role in moving value within the UK.
UK domestic stablecoin wallet-to-wallet transfers surged to $2.09 billion during the 2026 period, up from $109 million in the previous 12 months. The UK also outpaced the rest of Western Europe combined, which recorded $1.41 billion, accounting for 65.2% of the region’s growth and 60% of total domestic transfer value.
The UK also stands apart in how stablecoins are used. Domestic transfers were 1.32 times the value of cross-border P2P and service-to-wallet transfers, while the rest of Western Europe saw cross-border activity outweigh domestic transfers by 4.38 times. This divergence suggests stablecoins may be taking on a more prominent role in the UK’s domestic financial activity, beyond their traditional use in cross-border payments.
This shift comes as UK regulators increasingly focus on stablecoin payments. The FCA identified stablecoins as a priority area in its 2026 plans, reflecting a broader push to support their development and use in payments.
In June 2026, the Bank of England published a policy statement and draft rules for regulating systemic stablecoins, outlining a framework that could shape how they are issued and used at scale, including in domestic payments.
UK retail holders are switching more of their crypto into stablecoins
The Bank of England has also proposed a £20,000 per-coin holding limit for individuals in systemic sterling stablecoins, reflecting again how the use of stablecoins has been a key policy question in the UK in recent years.
These rules will help decide what role stablecoins play in household finances. On-chain data offer an early indication of where that role is heading, with our data suggesting that a growing share of UK retail holders already see stablecoins as somewhere to keep their money, not just as a medium of exchange.
In the 2026 period, 1.03% of eligible UK retail personal wallets converted at least 80% of their crypto holdings into stablecoins, up from 0.66% a year earlier. Among the top six Western European markets in this measurement, the UK recorded the highest conversion rate in both periods. It was ahead of the Netherlands (0.54%), Italy (0.52%), Finland (0.46%), Sweden (0.38%) and Germany (0.20%).
Conversion rates rose in all six markets, and more quickly elsewhere. Italy’s rate rose 2.5 times and Germany’s 2.3 times, compared with 1.6 times in the UK. Even so, the UK’s lead widened in absolute terms, from 0.40 to 0.49 percentage points over the Netherlands. This points to a broad shift toward stablecoins across Western Europe, with UK holders further along than their peers.
Notably, the shift does not appear to be a reaction to the recent downturn. UK conversions peaked between July and September 2025, before bitcoin reached its October high. That is more consistent with a gradual change in how UK holders use stablecoins than with a response to a single sell-off. It also raises a related question: once UK holders had moved into stablecoins, did they keep them when prices fell? Following the same wallets through the 2025–26 drawdown offers an answer.
Amidst fiscal pressures, French users turned towards self-custodied stablecoins
As explored earlier, France has become a focal point for concerns over global and regional economic pressure. Rising public debt and a fragmented parliament have complicated efforts to rein in spending and reduce deficits, fuelling protests over austerity and the cost of living. With successive governments struggling to secure budget support, questions over how France will restore its public finances have weighed on confidence.
Against a backdrop of heightened economic and political uncertainty in France, our data reveal three signs that users may be turning to self-custodied stablecoins to manage their assets: a rising share of withdrawals from centralised exchanges, more self-custody wallets holding stablecoins, and growing balances in those wallets. These shifts may reflect users making greater use of alternative financial tools to manage their savings and navigate changing market conditions.
France climbed from 10th place in 2023 to first by 2026 among Western Europe’s largest crypto markets by the share of stablecoin-related withdrawals from centralised exchanges. By 2026, these withdrawals accounted for 54.2% of French service withdrawals, surpassing Germany as number one.
The value transferred from exchanges to France rose 12%, compared with 7% across the rest of Western Europe. As these withdrawals move assets on-chain, where users can hold them in personal wallets or transfer them elsewhere, the trend suggests growing user control over crypto assets in France.
At the same time, the number of French personal wallets holding stablecoins rose every month of the 2026 period, from 3,577 in June 2025 to 12,255 in June 2026, a 3.4-fold increase. Across the rest of Western Europe, the count rose 1.7-fold.
This timing also follows the bond market. Growth in French wallets sped up from about 6% a month in mid-2025 to 18% by end of 2025, after an autumn bout of bond market stress, then slowed to 5% by June 2026 as markets calmed. Since our reporting period ended in June 2026, before this October’s sharpest stress, we cannot yet show whether the latest turmoil is spilling into crypto even further.
French self-custody stablecoin balances also grew 192% during the reporting period. While the sum is still small next to traditional savings, it stands out in the direct and the pace of growth. For comparison, French bank deposits grew 2% over the same period.
Together, these trends suggest that French users may be making greater use of self-custodied stablecoins amid economic uncertainty. This by no means signals a broader loss of confidence in the euro or regional crypto markets, but may instead reflect users diversifying how they hold and access their funds.
Spanish exchanges now draw more from the rest of Europe than from Spain
Spain’s crypto market is increasingly attracting users from beyond its borders, pointing to the growing importance of Spain as a destination for crypto activity across the wider European market.
While inflows to Spanish-registered exchanges from both domestic users and the rest of Europe have grown since 2024, cross-border activity has accelerated more sharply. By the 2026 period, inflows from users elsewhere in Europe had overtaken those from Spanish users, making international customers the larger source of funds flowing into Spain’s registered exchanges.
The acceleration in cross-border flows was broad-based. Among countries that sent at least $0.1 million to Spain-registered exchanges in the preceding year, average growth in the 2026 period reached 198%, nearly double the 100% recorded in 2025. The median growth rate also jumped from 82% to 162%, indicating that the surge extended across a wide range of source markets.
Italy and Portugal, Spain’s two biggest sources of inflows, led the charge. Growth in flows from Italy accelerated from 22% to 329%, while Portugal saw an even sharper increase, from 36% to 751%. These gains helped propel the broader trend.
Inflows to Spanish exchanges grew more than three times as fast as Spain’s crypto economy overall. Inflows from Western European users to Spain-registered exchanges rose 79.1%, compared with 24.6% growth across Spain’s broader crypto economy. A year earlier, both grew at the same pace. Since July 2023, Western European users have sent $984 million to Spain-registered exchanges, including $521 million during the 2026 period.
Why are pan-European inflows to Spanish crypto exchanges on the rise? One possible explanation lies in the structure of neighboring markets. According to Gabriel Ayala, Director of API & Banks at Bit2Me, Spain’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, the absence of large, consolidated domestic operators in some countries has created openings for established European platforms to attract users across borders.
“In Portugal, the size of the market and linguistic particularities may have limited the emergence of local platforms with sufficient scale. In Italy, regulatory complexity and sector fragmentation have historically made it difficult to consolidate certain operators,” Ayala said.
For platforms such as Bit2Me, these gaps create an opportunity to compete beyond their home markets by combining competitive offerings with regulatory expertise, operational scale and the capacity to expand internationally.
The evolving regulatory landscape may provide a further tailwind. The representative pointed to MiCA as opening up new opportunities for pan-European growth, as it has helped facilitate expansion within a single European market.
Spain’s exchange story reflects a broader trend across Europe: the interplay between national markets and European integration.
Defining the next chapter of crypto in Europe
From rising use of stablecoins to declining DEX activity in some markets and established exchanges attracting users from across Europe, Western Europe’s crypto economy is being reshaped by a mix of evolving user behavior, investor and market dynamics, and broader external forces. As Robinhood’s Spangevičius notes: “Europe’s crypto landscape has shifted from regional speculation into structural maturity.”
Financial uncertainty, geopolitical developments and regulatory shifts are reshaping digital asset activity worldwide, with Europe offering a particularly clear illustration of how these forces are playing out. As the region’s crypto economy matures, its trajectory will depend not only on evolving user behavior and institutional participation, but also on how market participants adapt to changing financial conditions and regulatory frameworks.
As institutional participation deepens, consumer protection, regulatory consistency and the links between crypto markets and traditional banking will become increasingly important to the sector’s development.
FAQs
How large is Western Europe’s crypto economy?
Western Europe’s crypto economy totaled $2.08 trillion between July 2025 and June 2026, making it the second-largest crypto economy globally. Despite a downturn in the global crypto market, the region grew 1.2% during the reporting period.
Which countries have the largest crypto economies in Western Europe?
The UK had the largest crypto economy in Western Europe at $424.5 billion, followed by Germany at $288.8 billion, France at $215.8 billion, the Netherlands at $207.8 billion, Spain at $156.1 billion, and Switzerland at $132.8 billion. Together, these six markets accounted for roughly two-thirds of the region’s crypto economy.
How is MiCA affecting crypto adoption in Europe?
The EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation establishes a harmonized framework for crypto-asset issuers and service providers across the bloc. Its implementation coincided with growing euro-denominated crypto trading and expansion across EU markets. MiCA also gives authorized providers passporting rights to operate across the bloc. However, the data cannot establish that MiCA directly caused the region’s growth.
Why are stablecoins becoming more popular in Western Europe?
Western Europe’s stablecoin holdings increased 131% between July 2025 and June 2026, compared with 52% globally. Potential factors include growing interest in alternative ways to store and transfer value, the expansion of euro-backed stablecoins, and a more developed regulatory framework. The data also show different patterns across countries, including increased domestic transfers in the UK and greater self-custody in France.
How is the UK crypto market changing compared with the EU?
The UK remained Western Europe’s largest crypto economy, but its activity contracted 8% during the reporting period. The rest of Western Europe grew 3.8%, while the EU grew 2.2%. The UK also recorded substantial growth in domestic stablecoin transfers and had the highest share of retail wallets converting at least 80% of their crypto holdings into stablecoins among the six largest markets measured.
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