Posted on 24 Nov. 2022 15:39
by Hugh Jones
LONDON, Nov 24 (Reuters) – The resounding bankruptcy of crypto asset exchange FTX makes it even more urgent to regulate the sector and these types of “conglomerates” will be a priority in 2023, the new president told Reuters. coordination body for financial authorities.
For Jean-Paul Servais, the regulation of “crypto” platforms can be based on the main principles in force in other fields exposed to the risk of conflicts of interest, such as financial rating agencies or index specialists. develop from scratch.
If the cryptoasset field does not yet have its own regulation, the fall of FTX, which has left nearly a million creditors and losses amounting to billions of dollars, should allow progress to be made in this field, Jean-Paul Servais has stated.
“The sense of urgency was not the same two or three years ago. There are different opinions on whether this is a real problem at the international level, as some think it is not yet a major topic or risk,” he explained.
“Things are changing and with the interdependence between different types of activities, I think it’s important now that we can open up the discussion, and that’s where we’re going.”
IOSCO, which coordinates regulation for G20 and other countries, has already established principles for regulating “stablecoins,” a particular category of crypto-assets, but the focus is now on the platforms on which these assets can be exchanged.
In the “classic” financial sector, there are clear divisions between brokerage, exchange, banking and issuing activities, each with its own code of conduct and regulatory framework.
“Is this the case for the crypto market? I would say no most of the time,” said Jean-Paul Servais.
The crypto industry has spawned several conglomerates like FTX, which take on different roles ranging from brokerage services and custody to proprietary trading and issuing “tokens”, at the risk of falling into a conflict of interest, explains Jean-Paul Service out.
“For investor protection reasons, it is necessary to bring greater clarity to these crypto markets through targeted oversight of the application of the IOSCO Principles to crypto assets,” he said.
“We plan to publish a consultation report on these topics in the first half of 2023,” he said.
The new European regulation on crypto asset markets, or MiCA, represents an “interesting starting point” for the development of an international framework as it focuses on the supervision of the operators in these markets, says Jean-Paul Servais, also president of the FSMA . , the Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority.
“We know that there is room for developing new rules in the supervision of these types of crypto conglomerates. There is a clear need for this,” he emphasized. (Report Huw Jones, French version Marc Angrand, edited by Blandine Hénault)