Top EU Tech Body Says Progress Is Being Made On NFT Regulation

The EU reached a provisional agreement on the MiCA earlier this year, 2022, which attempts to regulate crypto-assets, trading venues, and crypto-wallets. (WHEN).

The MiCA sets out solutions for the protection of investors, the preservation of financial stability, and the fostering of continued innovation in the crypto sector.

Cryptocurrency traders and investors alike now have some clarity about the industry’s future in 2024 once the regulations come into effect.

The MiCA is almost entirely void of information regarding NFT regulation, and this has left investors, traders, and marketplaces such as OpenSea and MagicEden somewhat directionless.

Peter Kerstens, head of the European Commission’s financial technology task force, stated that “The parliament is working on a resolution on NFTs.

He admitted that the MiCA fell short of offering guidance on NFTs. However, he believes the door is still very much open for future actions regarding the digital proofs of ownership that have gone from an obscure internet fad to a multi-billion dollar economy in just a few years.

Kerstens added: “If we don’t act on it, we’ll have a lot of explaining to do, and I think we’ll end up having an unhappy parliament. We don’t like an unhappy Parliament.”

Eva Kaili, the current Vice President of the European Parliament, made a similar statement to Kerstens’, confirming that additional legislation is on the way.

Kaili added that she wants to take a different approach than those proposed in MiCA, which focuses on regulating individual entities in the crypto industry.

Currently, MiCA only applies to fungible tokens, but Kersten again stated that there is “a lot of prose” in the final draft concerning exactly when self-proclaimed NFTs might fall under the law, although the framework doesn’t always get it right.