Regulatory window periods are changing the underlying logic of the entire industry.

Morgan Stanley applying for an Ethereum trust, Circle preparing for an IPO, Hong Kong's Digital Asset Policy 2.0 launch—behind these signals is the deep integration of traditional finance and the crypto world accelerating. But what is the cost of this integration? Simply put, the steep rise in compliance costs.

The application cycle for Hong Kong virtual asset licenses has been extended to 6-12 months, but that's not the most painful part. The real cost bomb is compliance expenses reaching the millions of dollars. Licenses are just entry tickets; mandatory fund segregation and enforcement are the daily operational burdens—BitGo custody combined with CertiK audits have become the industry's "basic configuration."

Why does the traditional banking system still cling to the old SWIFT transfer model of 1-3 business days? The efficiency bottleneck in cross-border clearing has long become a Damocles sword hanging over everyone.

Interestingly, some have already found a breakthrough. A wallet project, through a dual-licensing architecture with Canadian CTP/MSB and New Zealand FSP, uses BitGo to achieve fund segregation, pushing settlement times down to T+0. The moment you sell stocks, your buy order is already executed—it's like opening a dedicated express lane on a congested cross-border payment highway.

Looking deeper, upgrading the underlying infrastructure is the key. The involvement of top-tier exchange rate sources like B2C2 has completely eliminated the traditional banks' exchange rate advantage. Support for local bank accounts in multiple countries, the ability to open IBANs independently, and foreign currency transfers into personal accounts—plus Fireblocks' MPC multi-signature security—make tragedies like the $42 million theft from GMX much less likely to happen again.

Therefore, the real competition has shifted from currency selection to infrastructure selection.