European Parliament finally adopts the Markets in Crypto-Assets Act, MiCA

The MiCA Act was first introduced in 2020.
The European Parliament had previously postponed voting on legislation two consecutive times.
The MiCA act now awaits approval from the European Council to be published as an effective regulation.

After two consecutive vote postponements since the Markets in Crypto-Assets Act, known as MiCA was introduced in 2020, the European Parliament has now voted to adopt the legislation. The legislation will now move to the next step which is approved by the European Council before being adopted as law.

MiCA’s rapporteur and the Member of the European Parliament posted a tweet immediately after the voting On April 20 reporting that the bill has been adopted:

Habemus MiCA! Das EU-Parlament hat die #Regulierung angenommen. Ein Meilenstein für die #Krypto-Asset-Industrie. Danke an alle Kollegen und auch für den ganzen Support der Community hier! #MiCA 🎉 @btcecho @DECointelegraph pic.twitter.com/avPmOE2Vl0

— Stefan Berger (@DrStefanBerger) April 20, 2023

Harmonized European crypto rules

The European policymakers aim at using the MiCA legislation to set a standard regulation for harmonized crypto rules and provide legal certainty for crypto assets in the EU.

The legislation provides guidelines for the operation, structure and governance of digital assets issuers. It will also offer rules on disclosure and transparency requirements for issuing and trading cryptocurrencies.

However, while MiCA is seen as a huge step toward crypto regulation in the EU, there are still a number of issues that some crypto players do not agree with in the 400-page document. For instance, the current draft does not mention decentralized finance (DeFi), crypto lending, or crypto staking, and does not provide any rules for nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

The head of EU policy at Chainalysis recently pointed out that the success of MiCA would depend on the reworking of certain parts of the document and robust feedback from players. Others like Caisse des Dépôts Group’s blockchain program director Nadia Filali stressed on the importance of regulators, governments, and industry participants collaborating to develop the rules.

The EU officials however emphasize that the safety of crypto investors is the main aim of MiCA.