Italy’s central bank will publish guidelines on how to apply incoming European Union crypto rules “in the coming days,” Bank of Italy Governor Fabio Panetta said Tuesday.
The guidelines will be ”aimed at facilitating an effective application” of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) and to “protect the holders” of some cryptocurrencies, according to a text of Panetta’s July 9 speech to the Italian Banking Association.
He said MiCA outlines two primary categories of tokens — asset-reference tokens (ARTs) and electronic money tokens (EMTs) — as meeting the requirements to be used in payments.
However, he noted the Bank of Italy has found only EMTs can "fully perform the means of payment function while preserving the public’s trust.”
An EMT’s value is linked to a single official currency — such as a US dollar-backed stablecoin — while an ART’s value is pegged to one or more assets, such as the gold-backed token PAX Gold (PAXG).
Panetta named Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) as examples of what he called “unbacked crypto-assets,” which he claimed “have no intrinsic value” and “are in effect akin to a gamble.”
He claimed the “main objective” of crypto investors is to sell their assets at higher prices and noted they may use them to “dodge tax rules or the regulations in place to counter money laundering and terrorist financing.”
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“Clearly, they do not possess the characteristics that make them suited to perform the three inherent functions of money: a means of payment, store of value, and unit of account,” he added.
Panetta said the number of investors in “unbacked” cryptocurrencies who might not know their risks are “low, but not negligible, and their numbers “could grow in the future.”
In late June, Reuters reported the Italian government was set to increase surveillance on crypto markets to comply with MiCA.
A decree showed it plans on fines ranging from 5,000 euros ($5,400) to 5 million euros ($5.4 million) for violations ranging from market manipulation to insider trading.
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