SILICON CONTINENT: EU MICA IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF LEGISLATION FOR CRYPTO
FOREWORD
In the last decades, the US has been leading in terms of generating the most influential and largest companies in the tech sector. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Intel, AMD, Oracle, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, Tesla, SpaceX and hundreds of others. On a Wikipedia page about unicorn startup companies, there are 460 companies from the US and additional 81 companies that were removed from the list due to IPO or acquisitions. That’s 541 companies. In the EU, the total number is 84. Various sources differ in numbers to some small degree, but I think, as a ballpark figure, it is sufficient. The US has 6.44x more unicorns than the EU. At the same time, the EU has 448 million people whereas the US has “only” 333 million. The EU has 1.35x more people. You can see the discrepancy. The EU has been lagging behind the US for decades in generating the greatest and most innovative businesses.
In January 2009, Bitcoin came into existence and its genesis block was mined. 13 years ago, there was no crypto market. As of 29 April 2022, the total capitalization of all crypto tokens is hovering around USD 1.9 trillion. 1 900 000 000 000. That’s insane.
The whole blockchain industry has been plagued and the same time blessed. The industry has been regulated only ad hoc in some particular countries, on the AML/CFT front or by (if applicable) antiquated securities laws. Plagued because there has been so much unclarity on different legal questions in relation to crypto. Does securities law apply? What about DeFi? That lead to going offshore, being anonymous, saying in purchase agreements that buyers buy tokens not as an investment, suing with the SEC (e.g., Ripple) or spending tens/hundreds of thousand dollars on lawyers making sure you do not trigger any securities law. And blessed because it created the wild west where everything is possible where innovation has a chance to take roots and where the best minds of our time could build new fabric of our society. I am not joking. Blockchain, Bitcoin, crypto, DeFi, DAOs, NFTs and Metaverse have brought and will bring totally new ways how we interact, how we transact and how we live. Therefore, it is super important how law will handle this. Bad law kills everything. Great law helps people flourish. We need law that helps the industry to use up its full potential.
Why am I telling you all this?
The European Union is currently deciding on concrete shape of MICA: Markets in Crypto-asset Regulation. MICA will create a comprehensive regulatory framework for crypto. The US, on the other hand, will not have any federal-level crypto regulation any time soon and SEC’s Gary Gensler is super anti-crypto which will cause only delays for any possible future changes.
Embracing USD 1.9 trillion market, getting ahead of the US in the crypto sector and most importantly helping the new industry to meet its full potential while changing our society for the better by enacting MICA as a regulation directly applicable in all 27 member states, is one of the greatest opportunities and responsibilities for the European Union. An opportunity and responsibility of becoming Silicon Continent of our time.
Oldrich Peslar | Crypto Oldrich
P.S. Amid the current turbulent situation on crypto markets due to the collapse of multi-billion Terra’s UST and Luna token, the question of great, fair, protecting and friendly crypto-regulation has never been more important than today. I hope we all will come stronger and wiser out of this.
GOALS OF THIS ARTICLE
By writing this article, I want to find out what a MICA proposal is, what does it mean for us and what needs to be changed and how. The goal is to take my findings and present them in a friendly format to you, the industry, users, people of the internet, legislators and politicians, so we could have our Silicon Continent. I have hope it is worth the shot.
HERE YOU CAN SEE AND DOWNLOAD THE WHOLE ARTICLE (DROPBOX)
There is a 5-page summary, too!
#blockchain #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #mica #regulation #investing #europeanunion #europeancommission #councileu #nft #defi #web3
