The “Build vs. Buy” Conundrum: Navigating Compliance and Market Entry in the Evolving Digital Asset Landscape

In the dynamic world of digital assets, financial institutions and fintechs face a pivotal strategic decision: Should we build our digital asset infrastructure from scratch, or leverage proven white-label solutions?

This decision may start with technology, but today it’s also heavily shaped by regulation. From the SEC and CFTC oversight in the U.S. to MiCA in the EU, new frameworks in APAC, and national rules emerging in LATAM, compliance is more significant than ever in market entry.

Building an enterprise-grade digital asset platform in-house is an immense undertaking. It typically involves extensive development timelines with significant upfront costs and ongoing expenses for development, updates, and maintenance of infrastructure, alongside significant upfront costs for additional features and integrations of specialized software.

This path introduces considerable technical and regulatory uncertainties.

This is where strategic partnerships with seasoned technology providers which have experience in navigating operational regulatory requirements become indispensable. Leveraging battle-tested white-label solutions, like those provided by AlphaPoint, offers a streamlined path to market, enabling launch within 3 to 6 months.

The right partnership significantly reduces technical risks, helps avoid regulatory setbacks that slow market entry, and offers a cost-effective model that avoids the burden of building and maintaining infrastructure from scratch.

Beyond speed and cost efficiency, these partnerships provide access to:

• Battle-tested Infrastructure and Expertise: Platforms honed over a decade of real-world deployments, powering over 200 customers in 35+ countries and processing over $1 trillion in trading volume with robust trading engines capable of millions of trades per second, designed for scalability to millions of users.
• Integrated Security and Compliance: Our platforms are designed with multi-layer security features, including SOC 2, Type I and Type II compliance programs that are regularly audited. Key security measures like two-factor authentication (2FA), encryption, secure key management, and cold storage are standard. Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) implementation reduces risk exposure by ensuring personnel only access necessary information.
• Streamlined Regulatory Approval: Crucially, partnering enables the integration of key services like KYC, AML, and KYT, accelerating the regulatory approval process and reducing time to market. Regulators gain confidence when working with established providers with proven track records.

The decision to “buy” is increasingly a strategic move to reduce risks, accelerate time-to-market, and leverage specialized expertise to meet rigorous security and compliance standards.

It transforms a complex challenge into a strategic advantage, enabling businesses to scale confidently while staying ahead of compliance mandates in the evolving digital asset economy.

About the Author

Reba Beeson is General Counsel at AlphaPoint, where she oversees legal, regulatory, and compliance strategy, drawing on deep capital markets experience from prior roles at the World Gold Council, UBS, BNP Paribas, and structured-finance practices.