This Monday, the European Parliament Committee members that were having a discussion about the Economic and Monetary Affairs actually made the decision to vote against the version of the Markets in Crypto Assets bill or the MiCA bill.
According to the best news site for cryptocurrency, the bill had the potential to ban PoW or Proof-of-work-based crypto options without the European Union. The moderate version of this particular regulatory framework actually managed to prevail in the voting of the ECON committee.
This actually comes off as a pretty huge relief for the people who belong to the crypto community. Having a hard framework for the regulation of crypto would have been pretty hassling for a few users of cryptocurrency. Hence, this decision taken by the voting members of the European Parliament has been welcomed by the majority of the crypto community.
MiCA is considered to be one of the popular regulatory frameworks that include 126 articles. There is also a pretty detailed plan for the implementation of these articles in the different institutions of the EU States. This particular draft was properly introduced by the European Commission in the year 2020. It was introduced as a part of the strategy of Digital Finance.
There are some greatly effective cryptocurrency subjects that are included in the MiCA bill. The status of different stablecoins and currencies, exchange platforms, details about mining and operations, and much more details are included in this bill.
There are some exclusions as well such as different currencies that are issued by the central bank which are called CBDCs. NFTs and security tokens and DeFi or decentralized finance are also excluded.
The main intrigue of Monday’s parliamentary session lay in the significant differences between two versions of the draft that were up for a vote. One of them contained language that could outlaw any operations with the cryptocurrencies that rely on the proof-of-work, or PoW protocol. The problematic line would require currency providers to submit a detailed plan of their compliance with environmental sustainability standards.
In the case of Bitcoin (BTC) and some other decentralized systems, such details couldn’t be provided in principle, as there’s no existing central operator or an individual or collective decision-maker. That is why this version of the draft was previously corrected to remove such a regulatory deadlock. As the European Parliament Committee on Economics and Monetary Affairs member Stefan Berger assured earlier, the problematic language was not supposed to emerge in the final draft.
MiCA Bill Failed To Gather Support From Parliament Members
Ultimately, the hardline version of MiCa did appear on the floor but was not supported by the majority of the MEPs. As Patrick Hansen, head of the strategy at crypto firm Unstoppable Finance reported, 32 members of the ECON committee voted against the restrictive version, and only 24 cast their votes in favor. The latter minority consisted largely of the members of the Green fraction and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
The more moderate version of MiCA, which will now continue its journey through the EU institutions, doesn’t contain any direct or implicated ban on PoW mining. Instead, it directs the European Commission, the EU’s chief executive body, to present a legislative proposal “with a view to including in the EU sustainable finance taxonomy any crypto-asset mining activities” by the 1st of January, 2025.
The mining of cryptocurrency could still be considered to be unsustainable before we reach 2025. Hence, the investment and support of the European government and companies might be stopped for these activities of crypto mining.
However, this is still quite far from an outright ban, the enactment of which could have dramatically altered the state of crypto in Europe. According to the best news site for cryptocurrency, next up for the MiCa is a three-way consideration by the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the Council of the European Union.
Also Read: The New EU MiCA Bill Considers Environmental Sustainability to Be Its Major Focus Point
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