- The EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation will be debated on April 18, with a final vote scheduled for April 19.
- CEO of Standard Dao answered some questions regarding MiCA in a phone interview with CryptoWhat
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The debate over the European Union (EU) ‘s crypto regulation—known as the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA)—will take place on April 18. According to the standard procedure, the final vote will be held on April 19.
The law’s outlines were finalized in June of 2022. However, the agreement on the final text faced some delays, given that the documents had to be translated into the bloc’s 24 official languages.
The EU’s MiCA—if approved—will offer more comprehensive and stricter crypto-related procedures than any crypto regulations worldwide.
For example, crypto firms must inform the public about their real-time pricing process and trade volumes. Also, they must wrap up trades on the same day they happen.
MiCA classifies and covers three types of assets; asset-referenced tokens (ART), electronic money tokens (EMT), and other crypto-assets not protected by existing EU law.
CEO of Standard DAO, Aaron Rafferty, explained in the phone interview about assets MiCA regulates.
“Yeah, so there’s actually there’s more than three, right? So, there is the crypto asset, which is just like any general thing that uses distributed ledger technology. There’s the art token, which is an asset as a reference token, which is more for like, you know, what we’re calling today’s stable coins, like USDC is pegged to $1,” he said.
MiCA also covers procedures to combat money laundering and terrorism financing through digital assets. The regulation requires all crypto asset service providers (CASPs) to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) requirements.
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All CASPs must report any suspicious transactions to the relevant institutions or authorities. The regulation elaborates special requirements for CASPs in high-risk countries and imposes stricter requirements for due diligence measures targeting high-risk transactions and consumers.
Yet, Rafferty raised some questions on how the framework will apply to certain points.
I think that there’s, there’s a lack of clarity around how, in general, these frameworks will apply when we are, you know, bringing these assets in with any, you know, bringing them in with more asset-backed savings. So, for example, you get real estate on the chain, and you bring things more like gold on the chain. How is that? Who will be the regulator for that?” he explained.
The MiCAs regulation also does not explicitly mention NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)—a crypto asset representing artworks such as images and music.
Still, Rafferty claimed the EU’s crypto regulation is a breakthrough that the U.S. needs to improve.
“Well, they haven’t found clarity between what regulatory body will actually take control of the regulation of crypto. Is it the federal government? Is it the SEC and is crypto security? Is it all securities are parts of it as security are are they commodities is if you’re in commodity is sinking? Like there’s so going back and forth between the definition of staking. Staking was to be a security to deal with and that actually hampers a good chunk of the crypto industry which are proof of stake versus the proof of work mechanism. And so, I think, you know, from that perspective, they, they’ve really taken a long time because they’re using it as an opportunity to, you know, get more funding to do more enforcement without the thought around innovation for the tech industry,”
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