ESMA sanction numbers are down, but are we actually safer?

[Marcus Vance 92]

Just saw the latest ESMA sanctions report, and the headline is that fines dropped 18% in 2025. You’ll see plenty of folks in the mainstream media cheering this as a sign of a "maturing market" or better compliance across the board. Honestly, I’m not buying the narrative that the industry is suddenly playing nicer. If anything, the shift we’re seeing toward settlements—which spiked to 42% of the total value—looks a lot more like regulators are just cutting deals to clear their desks rather than actually cleaning up the bad actors.

When you dig into the data, the fragmentation is still embarrassing. You’ve got a massive pile of fines concentrated in just three countries, while other jurisdictions seem to be looking the other way entirely. It feels like the regulatory equivalent of "pay to play." If you’re a big enough firm, you just bake these settlement costs into your quarterly overhead and call it the cost of doing business. Meanwhile, the smaller fish get hammered with license withdrawals.

It’s also wild to see the hype around the new crypto rules. We’re already seeing the first trickle of MiCA penalties, but at this rate, it’s just going to be another whack-a-mole game where the biggest players stay too big to effectively supervise. Are we really seeing a "level playing field," or are we just watching the bureaucracy get better at collecting "donations" from firms while the actual retail risk stays exactly the same? Does anyone here actually believe these lower fine numbers represent genuine compliance, or are we just seeing the regulators get lazier with their enforcement?

 

[JulianCraft]

Lol, are we safer? Lower ESMA numbers just mean retail traders moved offshore to some shady unregulated brokers in Seychelles or Mauritius anyway. The real systemic risks are still sitting right there under the hood, and the Fed is about to break something with these stupid rate hikes while sticky inflation refuses to go away. Regulators are just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

[Liam Walker]

@JulianCraft You’re actually buying into the fear-mongering narrative that regulators are the problem? Everyone loves to talk about the "Titanic" and "systemic risk" like they’re Nostradamus, but those lower numbers just mean the markets are finally shaking out the tourists. If retail traders are dumb enough to chase high leverage in the Seychelles, that’s just natural selection at work—the market is safer precisely because the hand-holding is ending.