Crypto startups moving offshore over US regulation
Farooq Malik and Charles Naut, co-founders of Rain, on stablecoin-backed credit cards
The strategic point is that crypto founders were increasingly choosing to put the company, capital, and customer activity outside the US because legal structure had become part of the product roadmap. Instead of just building a wallet, card, or treasury tool, teams first had to decide where they could issue tokens, hold reserves, move dollars, and sign up customers without taking US securities or money transmission risk.
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This shows up across the stack. Rain saw customers using complicated international entities earlier than a normal startup would. In adjacent crypto markets, offshore structure also became the default way to offer products that were hard to launch domestically, especially trading, payments, and stablecoin based financial services.
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The contrast with companies like Airwallex is useful. Airwallex built global payments from Australia and expanded into the US later, using local licenses and bank partnerships market by market. Many crypto startups followed a similar geography first play, except driven more by legal risk than by simple go to market sequencing.
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The fundraising angle matters because investors usually finance what can legally operate. Industry executives and investors repeatedly described US enforcement driven policy as pushing jobs and company formation offshore, while firms like a16z expanded crypto efforts in the UK because they saw clearer rules and a friendlier path to launch.
The likely next phase is that treasury, cards, and stablecoin infrastructure get pulled back onshore as rules become clearer, but the winners will be the companies that already learned how to operate globally. Once regulation stabilizes, the advantage shifts from legal workarounds to distribution, licensing, and moving money across borders at lower cost.