The Cryptocurrency Market and The Regulatory Framework of EU Legislation

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies belong to a global market without national or regional boundaries, the location of whose users is often unknown. In most jurisdictions, they do not fall within the regulatory scope in force and in any case there are no specific provisions. The EU is the first legal system that defines a framework for cryptocurrencies, a complete and timely legislation even though it does not fully achieve all the objectives it sets itself. On crypto-asset markets the European Commission published the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on 24 September 2020 as part of the broad digital finance strategy package, which is destined to have significant and long-term effects on the system global financial as it aims to provide regulatory certainty for companies offering financial services of this type in the European legal space. Overall, the package deals with the retail payments strategy and digital finance. The first includes four legislative proposals, including MiCA2, where the Retail Payments Strategy sets out a series of specific measures for payments which, taking into account the pace and scale of technological change in the sector, go beyond the horizontal scope of the digital finance strategy. This is the first legislative initiative at European level which describes a market with ethical and secure boundaries, capable of achieving innovation and responsible competition among financial service providers by introducing a harmonized and comprehensive framework for the issuance, application and provision of crypto-asset services.