FINANCIAL AND LEGAL THREATS TO BANKING SECURITY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES IN THE CONTEXT OF CRYPTO-ASSET REGULATION

The article is devoted to the study of financial and legal threats to banking security in the European Union countries in the context of crypto-asset regulation. The relevance of the topic is due to the fact that the spread of crypto-assets, stablecoins, tokenized financial products, and service providers for crypto-assets forms new channels of influence on the banking sector, which cannot be assessed only using traditional indicators of capital, liquidity, profitability, and problem loans. The purpose of the article is to substantiate and test a methodological approach to assessing financial and legal threats to banking security in the European Union countries based on a combination of multi-criteria analysis, integral index, TOPSIS method, scenario modeling and regression testing. The study used the Saati hierarchy analysis method to determine the weights of criteria, normalization of indicators to form a comparable data matrix, integral assessment to determine the overall level of threats, the TOPSIS method to rank countries, and regression analysis to test the impact of aggregated factors on the final level of banking vulnerability. The proposed model covers classic banking vulnerability, financial and legal crypto risk, regulatory unpreparedness, anti-money laundering risks, sanctions risks, and cyber-operational vulnerability. The modeling results showed that financial and legal crypto risk has the highest impact on banking security, while traditional financial indicators form only one of the components of the overall threat. It is proven that a more complete application of European regulation of crypto assets can reduce the level of threats; however, the stressful growth of the crypto market pressure can quickly increase vulnerability even in countries with relatively stable banking indicators. The practical significance of the results lies in the possibility of using the proposed model by banks, regulators, and financial supervisory authorities for early detection of financial and legal threats and formation of priorities for supervisory policy.