Dear clients and friends:
On the past October 5th, 2022, the European Council published the agreed text of the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation, which aims to regulate crypto-assets related activities carried on in the EU. MiCA provides rules for several areas including transparency, disclosure, supervision and protection in the offering, issuance, trading and marketing of crypto-assets. MiCA also includes provisions for consumer protection, money laundering, accountability of crypto-assets service providers, market abuse, change in control regimes, ESG, and administrative measures and penalties.
MiCA provides a definition for “crypto-asset”, as well as three subcategories “asset-referenced token”, “e-money token”, “utility token”, among other relevant definitions to understand the regulation, such as “offer to the public” and “crypto-asset service provider”. It is worth to mention that MiCA ends not being applicable to NFTs. The regulation also imposes several obligations to issuers and service providers, most of them including an “information duty” in the form of transparency and disclosure requirements (e.g., produce a publicly accessible white paper including specific information prior to the offer/trading), regulatory authorizations, governance, among others, including the requirements and conditions to be recognized in such category, and to trade on a trading platform.
While the agreed text may differ from the final published text of the MiCA, which it must be voted on at a European Parliament plenary session, we consider this an important legal development in the crypto area since MiCA is providing an increase consumer confidence in crypto-assets by bolstering consumer protection through regulation, and this may “voluntarily” force other jurisdictions to offer certain level of legal certainty to the market of crypto-assets and a clear recognition of the new rising digital area that were are facing. We will be on the loop to identify and provide updates on this matter.
You can read the full English text of the proposed regulation here.
For more information, please contact:
Luis Burgueño, Partner: +52 (55) 5258-1003 | lburgueno@vwys.com.mx
Gloria Martínez, Counsel: +52 (55) 5258-1016 | gmartinez@vwys.com.mx
Carlos Ugalde, Associate: +52 (55) 5258-1003 | cugalde@vwys.com.mx