Crypto-assets, Blockchain Infrastructure And Crowdfunding Regulation – Big

With a combination of finalisation of existing legislative
proposals and publication of new ones, the EU has over the past
month made significant advances in the regulation of
21^st century financial services in areas as diverse as
crypto-assets, market infrastructures and crowdfunding. In three
new Insights, Plesner’s market-leading Fintech specialists
analyse the new and proposed rules that will shape important parts
of the EU financial regulatory framework for digital finance for
years to come.

During the last month, the European Commission has unveiled
proposals for a comprehensive legal framework for the regulation of
markets in crypto-assets and a new and innovative pilot regime on
distributed ledger market infrastructure. These proposals are part
of the European Commission’s new Digital Finance Strategy, a
strategy launched on 24 September 2020 and seek to achieve greater
legal certainty to the growing crypto-assets industry and general
use of distributed ledger technology in both fintech and more
traditional financial services firms.

Separately, on 20 October 2020 a new regulation on the provision
of crowdfunding services was published in the Official Journal
which will regulate the cross-border provision of both equity
crowdfunding and crowdlending services. The regulation is intended
to create a single market for crowdfunding and to help ensure that
crowdfunding service providers will no longer need to ponder
multiple national crowdfunding legal regimes when considering
whether to provide their services on a cross-border basis.

While these new and proposed rules will bring significantly more
clarity of the legal frameworks for market participants, the
proposals and rules will also impose new and substantial legal
requirements on market participants.

In order to provide an overview over the new rules, we have
prepared insights into each of the new proposals and rules, all of
which can be found via the following here:

Originally Published by Plesner, October 2020

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.