MiCA and eWpG: Overview and Summary of the latest regulatory developments for digital assets in the financial industry

A comprehensive summary of what 2020 brought in going towards the massive adoption of digital assets in the financial industry.

2020 has been an unusual year for everyone. The global economy has been shocked unprecedentedly, but the markets’ resilience has set a pace for the necessary transformation that the financial industry needs: digitalization.

This urgency has been pivotal for digital assets, and this year has been of particular importance for this increasingly relevant asset class. Big innovations for the industry, derived from the use of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), have been central topics of conversations among experts and market players. Thus, the regulatory perspectives have been promptly developing in response to the market’s evolution.

Progressively, different jurisdictions have introduced a more coherent and comprehensive framework of legal and regulatory perspectives regarding digital assets. Recent publications by the UK Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, jointly with the German Federal Ministry of Finance, and the EU regulatory authorities — amongst many others — have…