The European Union is preparing with a package of measures for digital finance, now close to the milestone, which could see the light as early as March 2022. The opportunities and risks of blockchain and it’s applications in finance are focused on Consob, the authority that regulates the markets in Italy, which is preparing for a cycle of seminars to prepare the insiders.
“The continental Big Bang is approaching”, said the Commissioner of Consob, Paolo Ciocca – the financial markets are ready”. But on the regulatory front “time is running out”, in particular in Italy, given that other countries such as France and Germany have already started with national regulations. “Consob, together Mef, are participating in the discussion taking place at the European Council on the start of the digital finance package”.
The Consob Commissioner also explained that the digital finance package would provide for three EU regulations, which, however, individual EU countries will have to expand by adopting more specific regulations at national level.
Technological progress “is unstoppable, it is a certain thing. Only the when is uncertain”, said the president of Consob, Paolo Savona. Among the various factors of uncertainty, “there is the nature of cryptocurrencies”. Despite recent statements, primarily by the Sec, on the fact that bitcoins are not money, but financial products, we know instead that they are used as financial product and store of value, Savona noted.
“In last 9 months of 2021, 13,000 new ATMs were opened to bitcoins, in addition to the 26,000 already existing, which accept and deliver bitcoins”. Yet “my illustrious colleague Gensler, president of SEC, said that cryptocurrencies are not money but are financial products. So the SEC can apply existing rules but must regulate technological platforms: a thesis that I share widely”.
To highlight the urgency of a regulation on crypto-assets was also the executive director of the ECB Fabio Panetta, who declared that “we do not have to wait for another crisis to regulate an increasingly digitized finance with new global players” and that central banks will also have to go digital with a currency that meets market demand. It seems that all the supervisory authorities are therefore preparing for the transfer of financial markets into the blockchain.
