Apparently, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri has led the Prime Minister to a PR slaughter by convincing him to do a promotional visit to a crypto exchange that has has opened an office in Malta. The company in question is blockchain.com which is currently struggling company to fast dwindling usage and a loss of $270 million in capital that it had loaned to Three Arrows Capital in 2022.
The exchange uses customer’s deposits to lend them to third parties for active trading purposes and also offers staking services.
The exchange is declaring it had more than €1 trillion in cumulative volume of transactions as of January 2026 but actual exchange-volume metres indicate that the volume of this exchange is virtually zero. Various exchange metres indicate the same reading.
This means that the exchange volume has dried up and basically no one is trading on the exchange – this also means that if they offer exchange services, they are brokering these services through another exchange.
The exchange had issues getting regulatory approval in the UK, but got the license to operate in February this year after many years of trying. Blockchain.com gained an MFSA license to operate in Europe in October 2025.
In addition, many users have in the past complained that blockchain was withholding their withdrawals. This is a very likely and common situation with exchanges that have no volume of activity.
Malta is home to several crypto exchanges some of which are large and well established in the others while others have a questionable reputation. There are serious issues with this exchange which for a long time have gone under the radar mainly due to its small size. It’s rather strange for me that they pop again in the news in this manner. A bit bold to push through for regulatory approval as well.
Silvio Schembri is known to make grandiose statements without any substance – he recently told us he is going to bring the biggest direct foreign investment in Malta. Was this it?
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