Crypto regulation has become the top priority of authorities and regulatory bodies all over the world this year and the European Parliament has also taken the matter seriously.
It issued a statement recently, which said that its members would soon be voting on the new regulation that has been developed for the crypto space and dubbed MiCA, markets in crypto-assets.
The think tank of the parliamentary body said that the proposed regulations are aimed at providing legal certainty for crypto assets that are currently not covered by existing legislation in the European Union.
Paulius Vaitkevicius, a crypto counselor, stated that regulation of crypto was probably going to give a boost to the talent and capital in the market.
Vote to happen
The European Parliament (EP) spent months in negotiations and discussions about crypto regulation, which finally came to an end in the form of the preliminary agreement made on June 30th.
Now, they are scheduled to vote on the regulations that were agreed upon and have been named market in crypto assets (MiCA).
The vote is scheduled to occur during the plenary session of the legislative body. According to European leaders, MiCA’s adoption would allow harmonized rules to be implemented at the EU level for crypto assets.
The benefits
The think tank of the parliament issued a briefing on November 29th in which it said that the harmonized regulation would be capable of offering legal certainty to all those crypto assets that are not covered under the legislation that currently exists in Europe.
The EP also said in the briefing that the rules were aimed not just at providing protection to both investors and consumers, but also to promote the use as well as innovation of crypto assets.
European authorities are hoping to use MiCA for regulating the trading as well as the issuance of crypto assets, along with managing the underlying assets.
There are some European leaders who have called for even tougher regulation in the form of MiCA II, which include Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank (ECB).
However, critics of the regulation have said that the proposed regulations would only stifle innovation.
Legal clarity
The crypto counselor and founder of law firm VILP Solutions, Paulius Vaitkevicius, talked about the aim of the European Union of regulating the crypto market.
He said that none of the parties would benefit from the ‘Wild West’ environment that currently exists. He also asserted that if there are no regulatory frameworks or guidelines, they would not have investors in the industry for long.
This would happen in the event of a collapse of different players in the industry. Therefore, he asserted that legal clarity is a must for the crypto industry for it to be able to survive.
He also added that legal clarity would also attract mature players to the crypto space. This would mean that the industry would get more talent as well as capital.
Crypto opponents have also asserted that if regulatory frameworks had already been implemented, then they would have helped expose the activities of Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto empire.
Vaitkevicius said that the FTX crypto exchange had been one of the most regulated players in the crypto industry on paper, so it was not necessary that regulations could have prevented the fiasco.
