“MiCAR – Gold Standard or Regulatory Poison for the Crypto Industry?“ by Matthias Lehmann (University of Vienna) was published on 12 January 2024 in the EBI Working Paper Series No. 160.

The EU’s Market in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) is set to reshape the legal framework of the crypto industry. For the first time, cryptocurrencies and token will be subject to regulation. Issuers and service providers in the crypto-assets markets will be submitted to a comprehensive regime. Especially stringent rules will apply to stablecoins.

MiCAR has every chance of becoming the new global standard. But it is equally possible that MiCAR will isolate the EU from the global crypto-market and stifle further innovation. To understand why this is so, one must deep dive into its rules and understand the Regulation’s real impact. To this end, I provide a critical analysis of MiCAR’s provisions and an assessment of their potential consequences.

To read the entire paper, please follow https://ssrn.com/abstract=4692743 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4692743.