MiCA, VASPs and the new compliance premium

A structural talent gap

Regulated crypto activity across the EU and UAE has created a genuine structural gap: there are more licensed or licensing exchanges than there are professionals who have actually built a compliance program from scratch, end to end, inside a crypto business.

Two very different skill sets, rarely combined

The gap sits at the intersection of two skill sets that rarely overlap. On one side are lawyers who understand licensing frameworks like MiCA but have limited hands-on familiarity with how wallets, custody, and settlement actually work. On the other are engineers who understand the technical stack but have never had to write a suspicious activity report or defend a KYC process to a regulator.

What's commanding a premium

Candidates who can speak to both sides — Travel Rule vendor integrations, hot/cold wallet architecture, and how a swap actually gets booked, alongside SAR writing and licensing experience — are commanding a clear compensation premium over generalist compliance hires. We're seeing that premium show up most visibly in Singapore, Dubai, and increasingly in Lisbon as EU-facing teams build out their own compliance functions ahead of full MiCA enforcement.

Building the pipeline internally

Several of the exchanges we work with have started addressing the shortage by hiring strong traditional financial services compliance professionals and investing in a structured six-to-twelve month ramp-up into crypto-specific requirements, rather than waiting for a fully qualified hybrid candidate to appear.