Opinion: the MiCA bill will simplify crypto firms’ operations in Europe

The cryptocurrency regulation bill MiCA will benefit small companies involved with digital assets. This view was expressed in an interview with Cointelegraph by Binance’s Executive Vice President for Europe, Martin Brünko.

According to him, oversight of the industry in the region is currently fragmented — in 27 EU member states there are different regulatory regimes in force. As a result, exchanges have to spend a lot of time and resources to ensure full compliance across all jurisdictions.

“We are actually, I would say, almost delighted by MiCA, because the bill creates a single market,” the executive noted.

The current regulatory landscape is limiting smaller players in their desire to scale, Brünko says. He urged not to fear the new rules, as they will ease business development and allow startups to focus on growth rather than compliance.

“Many large crypto projects were launched outside Europe. If you take Ethereum, it basically started in London, Switzerland and many other places. Since then we have seen a huge number of diverse, successful and influential projects from Europe,” the exchange representative added.

In October, the Council of the EU signed the text of the bill on regulating digital assets without further discussion. MiCA includes rules that apply to issuers of unbacked crypto-assets, stablecoins, trading and custodial platforms.

Crypto asset service providers will be required to adhere to strict consumer-protection requirements, and trading platforms will be required to provide a white paper.

The EU authorities’ efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies have concerned former CFTC CFTC Christopher Giancarlo. He said that this threatens to impose the European model and would undermine the ability of U.S. regulators to craft their own rules effectively.

In September, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao called the MiCA bill ‘fantastic’, but ‘slightly strict’ with regard to stablecoins. In his view, the document could become a ‘global standard’ in cryptocurrency regulation for other jurisdictions.

In November, it emerged that the European Parliament postponed the final vote on the bill to February 2023.

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