Wow.
In an historic election, Donald Trump has once again captured the spirit of a nation.
I promise, I won't make this too political. I just want to talk about Crypto.
Gary Gensler and the SEC
As we know, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (under Chairman Gary Gensler's leadership), has gone beyond any previous SEC mandate with respect to Crypto regulation and enforcement activities.
Gensler has brought more than 100 actions against crypto firms so far at the SEC, and he believes crypto belongs under SEC jurisdiction.
Crypto firms disagree.
What has DJT promised he will do?
So many things! But here's some of the highlights:
- "On day one, I will fire Gary Gensler."
- US will keep 100% of all the bitcoin the U.S. government currently holds or acquires into the future
- interestingly, this includes bitcoin seized from criminals
- All the remaining Bitcoin (!!!) will be mined in the USA
- He will lower interest rates
- historically correlates with surging crypto prices
- Create a bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council
- "The rules will be written by people who love your industry, not hate your industry"
These are big promises, but - love him or hate him - Trump is a man with big goals.
The US SEC will likely ease off on enforcement actions
Let's take that as given, and keep going...
But... Regulation IS coming... and Trump can't stop it...
The US SEC has clearly a giant influence on global markets.
But the SEC's efforts have been doomed from the start - the SEC is trying to "create regulation" without the right legal framework. They are trying to regulate Crypto, using the a regulatory framework designed for stocks and bonds.
It was clearly never going to work.
Crypto is different and needs a different approach.
The EU's MiCA Regulations are Real
I won't go into everything, I've written about it in the past.
But for now - here's the TLDR on MiCA:
- Your crypto project is probably affected if either of these are true:
- if your crypto project sells direct to Europeans en masse, or
- if your crypto project is listed on an exchange that takes fiat from Europeans
- Stable coins and asset backed coins have to have enough assets segregated and more disclosure.
- Crypto white papers are going to need to be filed with EU regulators, and they need to disclose more risks
- Crypto marketing is going to be scrutinized.
- Affected crypto exchanges are probably going to need to do more KYC if they accept Fiat money
Some of this is already in effect. The rest comes into force Dec 31, 2024.
(Well, there's more, but this is TLDR version - what do you expect?)
Why does this matter to the USA?
Well, clearly we know that there are other countries. But the United States of America are a powerful nation with lots of resources. They don't need to worry about what everyone else is doing!
Well, actually, maybe that's not entirely true.
The EU is also a big player, with a lot of nations, citizens, capital and innovation too.
The major crypto exchanges aren't going to risk losing access to EU customers, so they are going to fall in line. And they will require their listed tokens to fall in line too.
Then, as token issuers adapt processes so they can offer their tokens to Europe, it will become familiar and good business to offer the same set of disclosures everywhere.
So this is going to trickle around the world.
But it's not that bad.
I've read through the requirements.
As far as regulations go - this is pretty light. I'm impressed at the crypto-friendly approach that the EU has taken.
They have taken the approach to make the crypto exchanges the "Enforcers" - which they already were, in a way.
They aren't slowing down innovative companies from doing amazing things. They are just making sure that buyers and investors know what they are getting.
And at the end of the day - isn't that what every project supporter wants?
Happy HODLing!