Gibraltar Finance Report The resilience of Gibraltar in the face of MiCA

By The Hon. Albert Isola MP, Minister for Digital and Financial Services

at Government of Gibraltar

The recently passed Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation is expected to provide greater regulatory certainty for the European crypto industry. The vote marks the beginning of a transitional period of 18-24 months until the new laws are enacted. However, even though this landmark legislation has finally passed, many distributed ledger technology (DLT) companies find themselves in limbo as they scramble to find a regulatory base in the meantime. It remains to be seen whether MiCA will sufficiently address the challenges of the rapidly evolving crypto industry. In the last six months alone, the world has experienced the spectacular fall of the now infamous FTX exchange, while we are currently navigating our way out of a banking crisis caused by the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Credit Suisse.

MiCA is meant to be the legislation that protects EU-based consumers from the ramifications of these kinds of industry events — but now it has finally been passed, will it be sufficient?

What can we expect?

To date, MiCA is one of the most significant attempts by a single jurisdiction to regulate the DLT industry worldwide, mainly because of the more than 450 million people these laws will protect. Other global attempts such as those by VARA in Dubai, the latest developments across APAC (most notably in Hong Kong), and the curious clampdown currently underway by the SEC in the US are