Benedikt Faupel, head of public affairs at Austrian crypto exchange Bitpanda, said Europe’s flagship crypto regulation still allows uneven implementation across the bloc.
Faupel told Cointelegraph on the sidelines of the German Blockchain Week that, as far as he knows, Bitpanda is the only player with three Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) licenses. The exchange was founded in Austria in 2014 and has since established additional offices in Berlin, Bucharest, London and elsewhere.
Faupel said that MiCA provides the European Union with long-awaited regulatory clarity and harmonization. Before MiCA, he said, the European crypto landscape was fragmented by as many as 17 separate licensing regimes. “With MiCA, you just make it way easier,” he said.
Still, Faupel raised concerns that the harmonization is not up to standard. Instead, different jurisdictions still show substantial differences.
Related: Crypto platform Bitpanda expands services in UK with FCA approval
MiCA is up for interpretation
Faupel said the harmonization aspect of MiCA falls short of expectations, citing local regulators taking different approaches to implementing the framework.
Faupel said some local regulators assign licenses only after an in-depth institutional examination, while others only examine deeper when necessary. “This creates a kind of imbalance.” He added:
“This is something that is expected. It’s not something that is inherent to MiCA, it is just something that happens when you try to regulate something as new as crypto.”
Faupel said that this is something the industry needs to be aware of. He suggested that the regulatory gap between MiCA-adhering countries should be closed to create a level playing field across the EU.
Related: Austrian crypto unicorn Bitpanda receives MiCA license in Germany
How can MiCA be improved?
Faupel said MiCA is a “good legislative act to a great degree,” but further iterative modifications could improve the reporting requirements. He explained that local regulatory bodies often appear to request all the data they can obtain and only then consider what this data can be used for.
Bitpanda’s public affairs team, which Faupel leads, is focused on educating politicians and supervisors in the EU. The company is in regular contact with lawmakers in the European Parliament and with national regulators where it operates.
“The [crypto] market needs to mature. And the market, I think, in Europe has matured quite well. And so this is something that we need to drive forward,“ he said.
The comments come as Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank, reportedly plans to allow its clients to store cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) from next year in partnership with Bitpanda.
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