Compliance in the Age of Crypto
Jan 13, 2026
Connelly, Stephanie
Crypto is no longer niche
In 2025:
559 million people worldwide own cryptocurrency, representing a 9.9% global adoption rate.¹
The global crypto market cap stands at $3.14 trillion and is projected to reach $7.98 trillion by 2030.²
Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $124,752 in October 2025, cementing its role as a macro asset.³
Tokenized U.S. Treasuries—an experiment in 2023—now exceed $7.3 billion, part of a broader $24 billion real-world asset tokenization market.⁴
The ecosystem is growing faster than the infrastructure supporting it. And that's where there is increased risk of compliance breaking down.
The Compliance Reality Today
Regulatory clarity is on the horizon. Upcoming U.S. legislation may cover digital asset compliance and could prompt enterprises to track and report employee holdings. Without accurate tracking and reporting, here’s what might happen:
A Day in the Life of Compliance
Employee:
“I need to report my crypto holdings for compliance. What do I do?”
Compliance Officer:
“Download your transaction history from every platform you use—Coinbase, Binance, that DeFi protocol—and send it to me.”
Employee:
“Okay… so I log into Coinbase, export a CSV. Then MetaMask—wait, they only give me a PDF. For the DeFi protocol, I have to copy data from the dashboard because there’s no export option.”
Compliance Officer:
“Right. Put it all in an email or Excel and send it over.”
Employee:
“Got it. But this is going to take hours.”
This is the status quo: manual, fragmented, and delayed. Compliance officers receive outdated snapshots, not real-time data. They may spend days reconciling formats that don’t match. Meanwhile, the risk of errors—and regulatory penalties—keeps growing.
Why It’s Broken
Every exchange and wallet uses a different format.
No shared language across DeFi protocols.
Data is siloed and static, not real-time.
It’s like trying to build a compliance system on top of four different internets.
How Calico can help
Calico helps eliminate the manual grind. Our unified API connects exchanges, wallets, and protocols into one real-time data layer. Compliance teams get instant visibility. Employees disclose holdings with a click. Businesses integrate digital assets without rebuilding their stack.
One network. Infinite possibilities. That’s the power of the Calico Network. We’re building the network of networks.
Why It’s Urgent
With upcoming and proposed global regulations in the works, compliance isn't optional. Today, employees send Excel files to HR. Tomorrow, that process needs to be seamless, automated, and auditable. Calico helps make that possible.
The future of finance is programmable, tokenized, and decentralized. But it can’t scale on fragmented data. Calico is here to unify the data layer so innovation, and compliance, can scale with the future.
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FOOTNOTES