France may reevaluate its lenient licensing system for suppliers of digital assets in light of the global trend toward tighter cryptocurrency regulation in the wake of recent market disasters. That would undermine the country’s efforts to position itself as one of Europe’s most pro-crypto nations.
A change to remove a provision allowing crypto businesses to operate without a complete license until 2026 was proposed, according to the Financial Times, by Hervé Maurey, a senator from France who sits on the finance committee. Even after the Markets in Crypto Assets Act (MiCA) was passed into law in 2024, the current system will continue to allow for this option.
The Maurey amendment will eliminate the opportunity to conduct business without undergoing strict scrutiny by requiring businesses to apply for licenses from the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) as of October 2023. According to him, the FTX crash changed everything in that regard:
“This led a number of players within the French system to consider that things needed to be supervised more tightly.”
At least 50 registered businesses are now active in France without an AMF license. An ex-member of the AMF board, Thierry Philipponnat, considers the level of investors’ protection within this regime as “extremely minimal if not non-existent.”
The change will be discussed in Parliament in January 2023
The local industry’s organisation, Developing the French Digital Asset Industry (Adan), regard the legislation as a sign of “abandoning an industry of the future” by French politicians.
The Emmanuel Macron administration, which recently began its second term as president, is well known for its outspoken backing of the digital assets sector. Macron emphasized his belief in the necessity of increasing the number of digital unicorns in the nation, creating an NFT policy, and the “European metaverse” back in April, before the second round of the presidential election. He did, however, also express his doubts about the banking industry’s self-regulation.
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