The death of the crypto startup: RIP 2017 – 2026

A notable development has hit the crypto markets. In 2017, a handful of developers with a whitepaper and a GitHub repository could launch a token or a crypto startup in a matter of days. Capital requirements were low, licensing was either non-existent or seen as an afterthought, and a compelling idea was usually enough to draw thousands of retail buyers into an ICO before a product even existed. In 2026, though, many customer-facing crypto companies entering regulated markets need lawyers, compliance staff, banking partners, an anti-money-laundering program, and enough capital to satisfy licensing and operating requirements before they can serve customers at scale.

The crypto industry was built by anonymous founders shipping code from a bedroom, but now it runs on companies with balance sheets, licenses, and institutional sales teams. While crypto startups still exist, the barriers to building them now look much like those that have long protected traditional finance from new entrants. The old crypto startup The first decade of crypto entrepreneurship was characterized by low capital requirements, minimal regulatory friction, and a global pool of pseudonymous talent building in the open.

Market Dynamics

Exchanges, wallets, and protocols could be assembled by small teams distributed across continents, coordinating mostly through Discord and GitHub. Ethereum itself launched in 2015 on the back of a public crowdsale that raised roughly $18 million from thousands of individual contributors rather than a syndicate of venture firms. The ICO boom of 2017 and 2018 pushed that model to its extreme.

Any team with a website, a token contract, and a Telegram group could raise capital directly from the public, skipping the due diligence and vesting schedules venture funding imposed. Some of those startups became durable infrastructure, but many more collapsed or turned out to be fraud, and the resulting investor losses became the central argument for the regulatory scrutiny that followed. The era was marked by the absence of institutional gatekeeping.

Developers didn't need a bank, because payments were denominated in crypto. They didn't need a state money transmitter license because regulators didn't even know what token they were selling. They didn't need to chase clients because early users found them through social media rather than procurement departments.

Market Impact

Entry costs, both financial and regulatory, were close to zero, which led to quite a bit of chaos but also to a lot of pretty interesting financial and social experiments. The new reality That's no longer how the industry operates. A crypto company serving customers in the US, the EU, and Asia now has to operate under a licensing regime that looks and feels essentially the same as that of traditional banking.

A startup pursuing full multi-state coverage in the US can expect to spend $750,000 to $1. 2 million over its first three years, with ongoing annual compliance costs exceeding $2 million once it reaches scale, according to industry licensing guides. New York’s BitLicense is widely regarded as one of the most demanding state crypto approvals, with licensing advisers often advising applicants to budget more than a year and significant legal, compliance, and operating expenses for the process.

MiCA imposes minimum capital requirements from €50,000 for advisory services up to €150,000 for exchange platforms, figures that represent only the floor of the potential costs crypto companies have to face. The real expense lies in the governance structures, compliance staff, and the continuous reporting that MiCA demands, costs that analysts say have made European crypto operations substantially more expensive than they were eighteen months ago. regulatory clarity has also come at a price.

Crypto markets are watching this development closely as investors weigh its potential impact on prices.