(Commonwealth Union)_ According to Martin Bruncko, Binance’s executive vice president of Europe, smaller cryptocurrency exchanges and start-ups could gain from the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) regulation.
Cointelegraph spoke with Martin Bruncko one-on-one at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon in early November 2022. Bruncko, who oversees Binance’s operations in Europe, provided unique insights on the exchange’s expansion throughout the continent as well as its perspective on the legal landscape.
On October 10, the European Parliament Committee passed the MiCA crypto policy, which intends to provide a one-size-fits-all legal framework for the industry throughout the EU’s 27 member countries.
Bruncko told Cointelegraph that the European crypto ecosystem is currently fragmented, with separate regulatory regimes ranging from “quite restricted to non-existent” in each of Europe’s 27 countries. This has resulted in time-consuming and financially demanding requirements for exchanges to achieve full compliance in several jurisdictions “This is exactly the issue right now, and it’s why we’re actually, almost enthusiastic about MiCA, because it creates a single market.”
Europe remains a focus for Binance, which sees the continent as having one of the world’s largest and most advanced crypto economies. Given the concentration of financial innovation and prominent fintechs in Europe, Bruncko emphasised that the wider region will remain an essential operational zone for the exchange. “A lot of important crypto projects started in Europe. Ethereum, for example, began in London, Switzerland, and a number of other locations. Since then, we’ve seen a slew of successful, significant enterprises emerge from Europe.”
Bruncko stated that Binance has been working hard over the last year to achieve regulatory compliance across Europe. Five European countries, including two G7 members, regulate the exchange. The passage has piqued the crypto community’s curiosity, and a linked post on Reddit’s cryptocurrency forum indicates that the community is sympathetic, with the thread’s top comment stating: “Shilling particular enterprises but never accepting responsibility for the losses they cause. It’s past time for those influencers to get what they’ve earned.”
While MiCA is unlikely to be fully implemented until 2024, it appears very likely to pass, with Martin referring to it as a “pure formality” following the text’s finalisation on October 5.
