"In line with the principle of proportionality, significant crypto-asset service providers should be subject to both stricter requirements and enhanced supervision: neither of the two is catered for by MiCA," she argued. Another issues is how the size of crypto-asset service providers is measured because the now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX would not have counted as significant given how the firm was organised. "In fact Binance, which is the largest crypto player, is alleged to have between 28 million and 29 million active users worldwide, but would probably not even meet the threshold to be classified as significant in the EU," McCaul said.
The crypto world has been rocked by high-profile failures,
bankruptcies and fraud over the past year, but the value of many
assets has still risen in the past month as worries about the
health of the banking sector prompted some to move away from
bank deposits.
McCaul argued that new quantitative metrics are needed that
could take into account the type of business, such as volume for
trading platforms or assets under custody for custodian
businesses.
She said that thresholds needed to be measured at group
level rather than at individual entity level, given the
complexity of operations. The same goes for conflicts of
interest, which must be identified across the group and at
affiliated entities, McCaul said.
(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi;
Editing by Bernadette Baum)
