With this week’s passage of the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation on Thursday, in one fell swoop the EU advanced a legal framework for the crypto industry and its commercial and consumer participants, and showed the world that when it comes to American leadership in financial technology and markets, there’s much to be desired. Especially in the areas of advanced technologies in commerce and financial services, the EU has once again established its bonafides as the global leader in governing and policy making, recognizing both the power and speed of transformational technologies and the need to be proactive in providing regulatory guidance to protect consumers and drive innovation.
Meanwhile, in the U.S, as it relates specifically to the creation, use, and exchange of cryptographic assets, regulatory bodies (the SEC in particular) continue to abdicate their responsibility to do the heavy lifting, and instead, foist crypto “policy” on consumers, innovators and cryptographic ecosystem participants alike, in the form of enforcement actions and policing mechanisms that wreak of laziness, incompetence, and bad faith.
To bring the U.S.’ failures into sharper contrast, while the EU’s new MiCA reforms this week will facilitate greater efficiencies in crypto issuance and trading, provide a safer and less risky environment for crypto startup investment, bolster innovation, and pave the way for greater financial inclusion via cheaper and more efficient payment mechanisms, the CEO of one of the U.S.’ most established and most esteemed crypto trading platforms (Coinbase), also this week, put moving the exchange outside U.S. jurisdiction on the table if the SEC and other U.S. peripheral agencies can’t formulate a clear policy around the crypto asset class and trading.
If the U.S. doesn’t get its act together quickly, and at this writing, there’s no sense that it will, it’s logical to expect the EU to be on the receiving end of a boon in private equity and venture dollars for Web3 startups, and the destination-of-choice for a lot of Web3 innovation that wanted to stay in America, but couldn’t.
