Regulated to Lead - How Europe's Digital Finance Rules Were Built| JB Graftieaux, GM Europe Coinbase

For the latest Rubix Unlocked I sat down with Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux, who runs Coinbase's European business from Luxembourg. He ran EMEA compliance at PayPal, then in 2014 left to help build Bitstamp into Europe's first regulated crypto company.MiCA's transition period ended this month, and any firm still operating in Europe without a licence now has to stop.His take on regulation is one I'd push most founders on. He doesn't see a licence as a cost or a constraint. It's what lets you sell to institutional clients in the first place, and the firms that treated compliance as something imposed on them are getting caught out now. There are still 200-plus MiCA applications sitting in the queue across Europe. He doesn't think most of them get through, and expects real consolidation on the back of it.On hiring, when JB brings people in now, on top of the usual experience he wants two things: people who genuinely follow the crypto market, and people already using AI in how they work day to day. He was clear that second one is increasingly what separates candidates.Worth a listen if you're building out a digital assets leadership team this year.