Vote on EU’s Landmark MiCA Crypto Bill Delayed Again

Voting has once again been delayed on the European Union’s proposals to align crypto rules across its 27 member states.

Members of the European Parliament will not have the opportunity to vote on the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation until April, a European Parliament spokesperson confirmed to Decrypt. Lawmakers had previously set a tentative date of February.

The delay, which is the second since the vote was pushed back from an initial date in December, is down to hold-ups in the translation of relevant materials. While the full text of the regulation was finalized in October last year, EU laws and regulations must be translated into all 24 official languages of the bloc.

The document laying out the proposed regulation, which will require stricter rules to be imposed on crypto companies, is almost 400 pages long.

What MiCA Will Do

More than two years of debate have gone into the production of MiCA. If approved, it will usher in a unified approach to crypto-asset providers across the European Union, though countries would have a further 18 months to implement the rules.

One key part of the regulation would require issuers of stablecoins to hold enough in reserve funds to avoid a Terra-style collapse.

It will also ask crypto miners to disclose their energy consumption, in a concession to environmental concerns after a proposed proof-of-work (PoW) mining ban was taken off the table.

Meanwhile, any company seeking to issue crypto will need to publish a white paper containing information about the project, including its possible risks.

Separately, EU lawmakers are mulling uniform tax rules for crypto, as part of a wider package of anti-tax evasion measures, in a move that policymakers say could bring in an additional €2.4 billion ($2.6 billion) a year in income for member states.