The European Parliament on April 20 vigorously backed the first set of rules by the European Union to regulate the cryptoassets markets.
Notably, the parliament voted 517 in favour of the rules, while 30 votes went against them, giving the nod to the first comprehensive set of regulations for issuing and trading cryptoassets like bitcoin.
The passing of this regulation indeed brings a competitive advantage to the European Union, according to Stefan Berger, the lawmaker who was the driving force behind the rules that let it pass parliament.
Berger further said that European cryptoassets landscape has regulatory clarity that isn’t found in nations like the US. Apparently, the EU states have already given their go-ahead, which will be put into use by mid-2024, requiring firms that issue as well as trade cryptoassets to be licenced by a national regulator, thereby giving them a sort of passport to serve customers across all 27 member nations of the bloc.
Notably, major service providers will have to go ahead and declare their energy consumption. According to Mairead McGuinness, the EU’s financial chief, he hopes that their rules could go on to become a model for other countries to follow. Besides this, the parliament also gave its backing to the new rules for tracking transfers of cryptoassets such as electronic money tokens and bitcoins.
The parliament does apply the international travel rule that is already used in traditional financial transactions, which means that the information source as well as the recipient of the cryptoassets will have to accompany and also be stored on both sides of the transfer in order to curb the issue of money laundering.
As far as tracing rule is concerned, it also entails transactions above 1000 euros from a crypto address or a self-hosted wallet of a private user.
