By Valentina Za

MILAN (Reuters) – The European Commission is investigating the extent to which EU rules on crypto assets protect the redemption rights of blockchain investors in identical electronic money tokens (EMTs), whose value is linked to that of a single official currency. .

France’s Autorité de control prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), the country’s banking and insurance supervisor, asked the European Banking Authority last year to establish whether it would be possible to have technically identical and fully fungible EMTs issued by an entity licensed in the EU. Union and elsewhere not subject to EU rules.

The EBA then referred the matter to the EU Commission, as it is a matter of interpretation of EU law.

In 2023, the EU adopted a broad set of rules for crypto assets, known as MiCAR, under which EMT issuers must receive supervisory authorization to operate and hold reserves, including as bank deposits, against the tokens sold to ensure they can repay investors when required. .

In the United States, President Donald Trump has pledged to ease the regulatory burden facing cryptocurrency companies, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week creating a task force to work on new rules.

Some issuers operate both inside and outside the EU. For example, Circle, the US dollar pegged “USDC” is the world’s second largest stablecoin by market value, operates in the EU as Circle SAS. USDCs issued by Circle SAS are fully fungible with those issued by Circle LLC.

France’s ACPR also asked whether, in the event of an identical EMT being issued both inside and outside the EU, it would only be possible to allow EU customers to submit redemption requests to the entity based in EU

ACPR declined to comment further.

“The MiCA regulation already has some flexibility built in, to avoid stifling innovation,” said Andrea Resti, professor of finance at Milan’s Bocconi University.

“Starting to interpret the rules in a way that is not clearly spelled out in the text could create risks and weaken the effectiveness of the newly minted rules.”

(Reporting by Valentina Za; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)