Report contents
Europe · Established
Lithuania
Crypto Livability Index 2025·data to 31 Dec 2025
Scoreboard
Five pillars, then the 22 sub-pillars scored 0 to 4. Empty sub-scores are held out of the total, not zeroed.
The number behind the rank
| Raw capability score | 52 / 84 |
| P2P liquidity bonus (tie-breaker) | +0 |
| Inflation 4.7% · unbanked 1% · remittances 1.2% GDP · capital controls 0 · sanctions 0 | CNI 0.031 |
| Need multiplier | ×0.546 |
| Livability score | 0.338 |
Raw 52/84 = 0.619 capability. Crypto-Necessity Index 0.03, from five components: inflation 4.7% (three-year average 2023 to 2025), unbanked 1% of adults, remittances 1.2% of GDP, capital-control intensity 0.00 (KAOPEN 2023), sanctions exposure 0. Need multiplier ×0.55. Livability score 0.338, rank #62 of 79.
Three findings
A crypto-licensing hub that shrank from hundreds of firms to a few dozen
Lithuania was once the easiest place in the EU to register a VASP (virtual asset service provider), home to one of the bloc's largest crypto-licensed populations per capita. Of roughly 370 registered firms, only about 30 applied for MiCA licences, and unlicensed operation became illegal from 1 January 2026, the steepest consolidation in the European set. The country still registers 63 exchanges, but its grassroots peer-to-peer (person-to-person) market scores a bonus of 0.
The plumbing of European crypto runs through Vilnius, even with no domestic ATMs
Lithuania is the EEA program-management base for the Wirex card and the home jurisdiction of Monerium, the EURe stablecoin bridge that gives so many EU countries their full utility-bill score. Yet Lithuania itself registers no active crypto ATMs as of the cutoff, an absolute floor on access density, and its own merchant adoption sits at 2.
Capability without need pulls Lithuania down 16 places
Lithuania scores 52 of 84 in raw capability but a Crypto-Necessity Index of just 0.03: inflation 4.7%, 1% unbanked, remittances 1.2% of GDP, no capital controls, no sanctions. The ×0.55 need multiplier drops it from rails #46 to livability #62. This is the index working as designed, not a defect: the infrastructure serves a continent, not a domestic necessity.
In one line
"Lithuania built the rails the rest of Europe rides on, the card programs, the stablecoin bridges, then watched its own licence boom collapse to a handful of survivors. Plumbing for everyone, need for almost no one."
Watch in 2026
Trajectory 1/4, likely tightening. Lithuania chose one of the shortest MiCA (the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation) transitions in the bloc, with a hard 31 December 2025 deadline, a 125,000-euro capital requirement, and credible threats of fines, shutdowns and even prison for non-compliant operators after the cutoff. The decisive 2026 question is how many of the roughly 340 firms expected to lose their licences actually exit.