However, according to Hansen, MiCA has achieved many of its original goals. There are around 20 euro-denominated stablecoins that have been authorized by the regime, and their adoption was driven by its formal regulation.
However, it is not perfect, he added, pointing to reserve rules that require minimum bank deposits. Attention is also shifting beyond national regulation to global oversight. The next phase of policymaking could focus on allowing tokens regulated in one jurisdiction to circulate in another through mutual recognition regimes.
“We could benefit from the global and Internet-native nature of these assets rather than fragmenting their circulation through locally fragmented regulations,” he said.
The EU may have had something of a first-mover disadvantage when it came to regulating cryptoassets, as in major markets like the United States or Hong Kong there was no framework to work with like there is now.
Fortress Europe
Sebastian Barling, financial institutions regulatory partner at Skadden, compared the EU’s approach to building a “fortress”.
“The consultation is clearly a serious review aimed at ensuring that the European regime aligns internationally and remains competitive,” he told CoinDesk.
Barling and Legler explored the Commission’s fundamental shift towards the assessment of a third-country equivalence regime and the management of cross-border multi-emission structures in a recent article. They highlighted that while MiCA currently lacks a mechanism to defer to foreign marks, an equivalence regime could transform the market by enabling mutual recognition and allowing globally circulating stablecoins to be listed on EU exchanges.
