The proposed European Union Regulation on Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, (hereinafter the “regulation”) was put to a vote in the European Union Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs on March 14, 2022, and in the end, the proposed amendment to ban or restrict proof-of-work-based crypto assets, which would have effectively resulted in a ban on Bitcoin (BTC), was rejected.
The question of how crypto assets will be assessed from an environmental regulation perspective remains, however, with the Member of the European Parliament in charge of the text indicating that crypto assets will be included, like all other financial products, in the area of the union’s taxonomy (the process of classifying economic activities that have a favorable impact on the environment), without specifying the treatment of these assets in view of this taxonomy.
Thibault Verbiest, an attorney in Paris and Brussels since 1993, is a partner with Metalaw, where he heads the department dedicated to fintech, digital banking and crypto finance. He is the co-author of several books, including the first book on blockchain in French. He acts as an expert with the European Blockchain Observatory and Forum and the World Bank. Thibault is also an entrepreneur, as he co-founded PayFoot. In 2020, he became the chairman of the IOUR Foundation, a public utility foundation aimed at promoting the adoption of a new internet, merging TCP/IP and blockchain.
Jérémy Fluxman has been an associate at international law firms in Paris and Luxembourg in the fields of private equity and investment funds, as well as at a Monaco law firm since 2017. He holds a Master II in international business law and is currently an associate at the Metalaw firm in Paris, France where he advises on fintech, blockchain and crypto finance.
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