Greetings from Frankfurt. I was at Block Im Park’s opening reception last night. It was a blast – so many EU sports and business superstars. One big topic: MiCA.

A nearly-completed text of MiCA (The European Union’s Markets in Crypto Assets) has leaked, and it is going to be brutal. How brutal is yet unknown, but lawmakers seem to be happy with their work: “Legal certainty was one of the main reasons why we need MiCA,” said Stefan Berger, the lawmaker who negotiated the law for the European Parliament. “We now have a legal framework that can be relied on as an investor but also as an issuer and offeror… order is created in the Wild West of the crypto world.”

It’s unclear how NFTs will be handled. Apparently, those regulations are still being negotiated. The leaked document outlines how EU member countries will treat stablecoins; the rules are so strict (gold-pegged stablecoins would need to be backed by 100 percent of the gold they represent) that there won’t be any stablecoins issued in the EU.

Many industry experts have expressed positive opinions about MiCA. I am not one of them. Regulation is required to protect the public from bad actors, but these rules are so restrictive that one can only conclude that the EU is doing what it can to kill crypto before it gets any bigger.

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