EU Issues New Crypto Guidelines As It Eyes “Web4”

The European Union has laid out the first significant powers under its forthcoming Markets in Crypto Assets Law (MiCA), a set of stringent guidelines poised to reshape the cryptocurrency landscape within the 27-nation bloc. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has issued a detailed proposal outlining how EU crypto companies should be authorized under the law, extending from user complaints handling to conflict of interest management.

Specifically, stablecoin issuers find themselves under intense scrutiny, as the MiCA directives implicitly draw lessons from the notorious collapses of USDT and FTX. The regulations stipulate that to operate within the EU under a single MiCA license, companies issuing stablecoins must meet certain requirements. These include demonstrating clear segregation of client funds and crypto assets from the company’s own account and detailing the security of their systems, particularly with regard to distributed ledger technology.

The new measures come amidst the European Commission’s (EC) ambitious push into “Web4,” a concept blending blockchain technology with artificial intelligence, the internet of things, virtual worlds, and extended reality capabilities. Two key projects underpin this effort: CitiVerse, an immersive urban environment aimed at revolutionizing city planning and management, and the European Virtual Human Twin, which seeks to create a digital replica of the human body to advance medical treatments and disease management.

The MiCA regulations — agreed upon in 2022 but not taking effect until 2024 — as well as the EU’s Web4 ambitions, emerge as part of a broader EC strategy to support EU-based creators, media companies, developers, and more. The aim is to establish a regulatory framework comparable to MiCA for these innovative ventures, driven by recommendations from the Virtual Worlds citizen panel in April this year.

These developments highlight the EU’s concerted effort to balance fostering innovation with maintaining market integrity and consumer protection. As crypto assets gain traction and the frontier of digital technology expands into the EC’s definition of Web4, it remains to be seen how these regulations will shape the future of the European digital economy.

Editor’s note: This article was written by an nft now staff member in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4.