Bitpanda's public affairs manager alerts persistent disparities in the application of Mica regulations across Europe. Despite its promises of harmonization, the European Union is struggling to establish a real single market for cryptos. Mica is underway, certainly, but each member state interprets and applies the law in its own way.
In short
- The Bitpanda platform holds three Mica licenses, a record in Europe.
- The implementation of Mica remains fragmented according to the member states of the EU.
- Some national regulators apply the law strictly, others much less.
- Bitpanda calls on to fill these differences to guarantee fair competition.
Bitpanda criticizes Mica's incomplete harmonization
Benedikt Faupel, head of public affairs at Bitpanda, exhibited his concerns during the German Blockchain Week.
The Austrian Exchange, founded in 2014, now has three Mica licenses, a record in industry. This privileged position offers him a unique observatory on the application of the European regulatory framework.
“” With Mica, everything is much simpler », Recognizes Faupel.
The regulations indeed put an end to the previous Chaos, where no less than 17 separate license regimes coexisted in Europe. This fragmentation forced crypto actors to navigate in a complex regulatory labyrinth to operate on a European scale.
However, the promised harmonization remains largely theoretical. National regulators interpret Mica according to their own prisms, creating de facto different standards from one country to another.
This “à la carte” approach compromises the fundamental objective of a single European cryptocurrency market.
The most striking example concerns the processes of obtaining licenses. Some regulators require exhaustive institutional examinations before granting their authorizations.
Others favor a more pragmatic approach, deepening their analyzes in the event of necessity.
This creates a kind of imbalance.
The challenges of European harmonization
This fragmentation hardly surprises familiar observers in the sector.
It is predictable. It is not inherent in Mica, but simply the result of an attempt to regulate a sector as young as cryptos.
Benedikt Faupel
By definition, a market as disruptive as that of digital assets is resistant to regulatory standardization efforts.
But the consequences of this heterogeneity go far beyond a simple administrative puzzle. They introduce a distortion of competition between European actors: some evolve in a favorable environment, when others come up against heavier or slower regulations.
For Crypto companies, this means adapting their expansion strategies according to national constraints – an obstacle to the fluidity of development on a continental scale.
Faupel therefore calls for further harmonization between regulators.
The sector was to expect. We must fill the regulatory gap between the member countries of the mica to guarantee fair competition conditions throughout the European Union.
However, he recognizes that this convergence can only go through progressive adjustments of the regulatory framework.
With this in mind, Bitpanda militates for real consistency in the implementation of the rules. The objective is clear: allowing compliant companies to operate without hindrances throughout the European market.
And this is not a theoretical issue. Institutional adoption is accelerating, as evidenced by the partnership between Bitpanda and Deutsche Bank, which plans to offer the storage of cryptos to its customers next year.
Mica represents a major advance for the regulation of digital assets in Europe. But without real harmonization of its application, its promises may erode. Bitpanda calls on to correct the shot before the EU loses its advantage in the world race to establish the standards of Crypto regulation.
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