Nevertheless, MiCA has achieved many of its original goals, according to Hansen. There are around 20 euro-denominated stablecoins that have been authorized by the regime, with adoption buoyed by their formal regulation.
It’s not perfect, though, he added, pointing to reserve rules that require minimum bank deposits. Attention is also shifting beyond domestic regulation to global oversight. The next phase of policymaking could focus on allowing tokens regulated in one jurisdiction to circulate in another through mutual recognition regimes.
“We could benefit from the global, internet-native nature of these assets instead of fragmenting their circulation through locally fragmented rulebooks,” he said.
The EU may have had something of a first-mover disadvantage with regard to regulating crypto assets, as there was no framework in major markets like the U.S or Hong Kong to work with like there is now.
Fortress Europe
Sebastian Barling, partner for financial institutions regulatory at Skadden, compared the EU’s approach to building a “fortress.”
“The consultation is clearly a serious review intended to make sure the European regime aligns internationally and remains competitive,” he told CoinDesk.
Barling and Legler explored the Commission’s pivotal shift toward evaluating a third-country equivalence regime and managing cross-border multi-issuance structures in a recent article. They highlighted that while MiCA currently lacks a mechanism to defer to foreign frameworks, an equivalence regime could transform the market by enabling mutual recognition and allowing globally circulating stablecoins to be listed on EU exchanges.