Europe’s landmark Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA) won’t be implemented until next February at the earliest, as EU lawmakers pushed back voting on the regulation due to the text’s length and complexity, an EU spokesperson told Decrypt.
Lawmakers had previously set a tentative date of December. The delay will likely hold back regulation that would have introduced greater protection for retail crypto investors and certainty for the industry.
The text for the bill was approved in June, with the final text published in October.
“After a political deal (end of June) and its confirmation after it was checked by lawyers of the EU institutions (October), the text has to be translated to have identical copies in all EU languages,” the spokesperson told Decrypt via email. “This process has not finished yet because of length, technicalities, and other priorities such as urgent energy legislation. We expect the text to be finally voted in February, but again, this date is tentative.”
After 2 Years of Debate, Europe Finalizes Landmark Crypto Rules
European Union officials have agreed on the final wording for its landmark crypto legislation which could pave the way for a Europe-wide regulatory approach. The full legal text of the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) was approved at a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, according to a letter from committee chair Edita Hrdá. In the letter addressed to the European Parliament’s chair of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs Irene Tingali, Hrdá said that cooperation between...
The delay is likely to cause renewed turmoil in the crypto industry.
Though MiCA might be voted into law next year, most of its regulations will only come into effect 18 months after publication in the Official Journal of the European Union, which has now likely been pushed back to the latter part of 2024.
“Any such delay would cause further uncertainty for the industry, as MiCA’s text is intertwined not only with the Transfer of Funds Regulation but also with other regulations currently in the works, most notably the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation,” said Marina Markezic, co-founder of the European Crypto Initiative, a Brussels-based advocacy organization.
What’s in the EU’s crypto bill?
The MiCA bill contains several provisions regulators say are necessary to rein in what they call “the Wild West of the crypto world.”
Among the various tenets included in the bill, stablecoin issuers, like Tether and Circle, would be required to hold enough reserves denominated in euros or other currencies used by EU member states to avoid a Terra-style collapse.
What Bitcoin Miners Are Doing to Survive the Bear Market
Cryptocurrency miners have a lot of fixed costs, like power, real estate, and the souped-up computers, or rigs, that do the actual mining. That’s why it can be hell for their margins when the market takes a nosedive and dramatically drops the value of whatever funds they were holding in crypto, such as Bitcoin. And now that the crypto market is in what appears to be a prolonged bear market, miners are being forced to adjust. The global market capitalization of crypto is roughly $1 trillion today...
The bill will also make crypto miners disclose their energy consumption as the continent continues to mull sustainability-focused regulation.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can have a bigger carbon footprint than some small countries.
