MiCA signed off by EU council
The Markets in Crypto Assets regulation (MiCA) has been unanimously approved by the EU council which represents 27 member states.
Elisabeth Svantesson, minister for finance of Sweden, who chaired the talks as Council Presidency commented "I am very pleased that today we are delivering on our promise to start regulating the crypto-assets sector. Recent events have confirmed the urgent need for imposing rules which will better protect Europeans who have invested in these assets, and prevent the misuse of crypto industry for the purposes of money laundering and financing of terrorism."
This getting signed off was seen as a sure thing for the most part after ambassadors gave the thumbs up to both MiCA and tax measures last week.
MiCA makes exchanges get a license to operate across the EU's circle. considering this is where we are seeing a large chunk of investment into Crypto, it's pretty safe to say that exchanges will want to comply with these upcoming potential rules, rather than leave the market (such as Binance recently exiting the Canadian market)
It also requires stablecoin issuers such as USDT (Tether) to hold suitable reserves. Something that'll bring a lot of reassurance to people and businesses that have holdings in these tokens, which haven't been without their share of controversy.
Ministers also were in agreement on new measures to force crypto providers to disclose details of their customers' holdings to tax authorities. This will be seen as great by some and hated by others. Though, with a large slice of BTC transactions in particular still happening pseudonymously, it does make you wonder will regulation ever truly be able to control Crypto?