It has been little over two years since the European Com­mis­sion pro­posed the new reg­u­la­tion of Mar­kets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA). On 5 Octo­ber 2022 the European Coun­cil approved of its pos­i­tion on the MiCA reg­u­la­tion. Shortly there­after, on 10 Octo­ber 2022, the Com­mit­tee on Eco­nom­ic and Mon­et­ary Affairs (ECON) voted to con­firm the pro­pos­al for the MiCA reg­u­la­tion.

The cur­rent ver­sion of the MiCA reg­u­la­tion is not offi­cially adop­ted, as it awaits a vote from the lar­ger European Par­lia­ment plen­ary. The vote was delayed late 2022 and we cur­rently expect the final MiCA plen­ary vote to take place around Feb­ru­ary 2023. When adop­ted, we expect the reg­u­la­tion to take effect from the second half of 2024 (note that since MiCA is a reg­u­la­tion it applies dir­ectly and does not need to be trans­posed into loc­al law).

In anti­cip­a­tion of MiCA intro­du­cing a com­pre­hens­ive leg­al frame­work har­mon­ising the reg­u­lat­ory require­ments for crypto-asset related ser­vices across Europe, crypto firms2 (firms) are start­ing to get up to speed on MiCA and in par­tic­u­lar, are determ­in­ing what it could mean for their (future) busi­ness mod­els (includ­ing their licence to oper­ate).

In part one of two series we will dis­cuss sev­er­al main con­sid­er­a­tions firms should take into account when determ­in­ing wheth­er they are sub­ject to MiCA and, if so, when to be “MiCA com­pli­ant”. For a gen­er­al over­view of MiCA, please refer to our pre­vi­ous Law Alert.

Click on below Law Alert to read more about expec­ted EU crypto reg­u­la­tion for 2023.