Today the EU Council endorsed the Markets for Crypto Assets Regulations (MiCAR) after the European Parliament approved it in April. This was the final step in passing the legislation. It is expected to come into force around July this year, so some provisions will be applicable from July 2024, including those for stablecoins.
Elisabeth Svantesson, Minister for Finance of Sweden who chaired the Council meeting, said, “Recent events have confirmed the urgent need for imposing rules which will better protect Europeans who have invested in these assets, and prevent the misuse of crypto industry for the purposes of money laundering and financing of terrorism.”
MiCAR also had a companion bill that imposes the anti-money laundering (AML) travel rule on crypto, which was also approved by the Council today. This means the sender and recipient’s details must be transmitted whenever a crypto-asset service provider is involved in a transaction. Originally there was to be a threshold of €1,000, but that has been dropped, so the travel rule is required for transfers of as little as a few cents.
However, p2p transactions between self-hosted wallets are excluded, and if the transaction is between a self-hosted wallet and an exchange, then there is a €1,000 threshold.
Svantesson described the AML regulation as “an important step forward in the fight against money laundering.”
We previously explored the potential for these two regulations and others to impact stablecoins.
