Estonia or Lithuania for a crypto-asset licence
This is the choice almost every crypto-asset founder in the Baltics makes twice: once when the company is incorporated, and again when the authorisation turns out to sit somewhere else.
Both jurisdictions supervise the same EU regime, so the legal text is not what separates them. What separates them is how each supervisor reads it, what it expects to see on the ground, how long it takes to decide, and whether a bank will open an account for the result.
What actually differs between two EU jurisdictions
Comparisons that rank jurisdictions by headline cost are the ones that cost the most. The application fee is the smallest number in the exercise, and it is never the number that decides whether the project works.
The differences that matter are supervisory: the evidence the regulator asks for, the people and premises it expects to find locally, how it treats applicants with non-resident ownership, and how quickly a file that is not perfect comes back.
The criteria we compare, and why each one decides it
| Criterion | Why it decides the outcome |
|---|---|
| The supervisor and how it reads the perimeter | The same product can be in scope in one country and out of scope in the other. This is settled before anything else, in writing. |
| Capital and own-funds class | Which class the activity falls into sets the capital that has to be there permanently, not just at the moment of application. |
| Substance expected locally | Directors, compliance staff, premises and decision-making that genuinely sit in the country. This is where most refusals and most later problems come from. |
| Decision timeline and how the clock stops | Statutory review periods pause every time the regulator asks a question. The realistic timeline is the statutory one plus the quality of the file. |
| Banking and safeguarding access | An authorisation the local banking market will not service is not usable. Provider appetite differs by country and by profile. |
| Annual cost of staying compliant | Audit, reporting, the compliance officer and ongoing supervision fees. Over three years this dwarfs the cost of getting the licence. |
How we run the comparison
We take the actual product, not a category. The activity is mapped against the perimeter in both jurisdictions, the capital class and the substance requirement are established for each, and the banking route is checked for the specific ownership and flow-of-funds profile before a jurisdiction is recommended.
Every figure we publish traces back to the regulator's own material or the legal text behind it. Where a number is being repeated across the internet without a source, we say so rather than repeat it.
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