EU agrees on landmark crypto regulation in wake of Terra meltdown and Bitcoin plunge

euronews.com:

The European Union has agreed on landmark rules for regulating the cryptocurrency industry, whose meltdown has been wiping out fortunes and sparking calls for tighter scrutiny worldwide.

EU negotiators hammered out the final details for a provisional agreement late on Thursday on a sweeping package of crypto regulations for the bloc’s 27 nations, known as Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA.

“Today, we put order in the Wild West of crypto assets and set clear rules for a harmonised market,” said Stefan Berger, the lead lawmaker negotiating the rules.

The EU's crypto rules “will ensure a harmonised market, provide legal certainty for crypto-asset issuers, guarantee a level playing field for service providers and ensure high standards for consumer protection,” he said in a statement.

The new law gives issuers of crypto assets and providers of related services a “passport” to serve clients across the EU from a single base, while meeting capital and consumer protection rules.

Like the EU’s trendsetting data privacy policy, which became the de facto global standard, and its recent landmark law targeting harmful content on digital platforms, the crypto regulations are expected to be highly influential worldwide.

The EU rules are “really the first comprehensive piece of crypto regulation in the world,” said Patrick Hansen, crypto venture adviser at Presight Capital, a venture capital fund.

“I think there will be a lot of jurisdictions that will look closely into how the EU has dealt with it since the EU is first here,” Hansen said.

He expected authorities in other places, especially smaller countries that don’t have the resources to draw up their own rules from scratch, to adopt ones similar to the EU’s, though “they might change a few