- Jurisdictions globally are jostling for primacy to lead the charge on cryptocurrency regulation.
- A key regulator charged with overseeing Europe’s landmark bid to regulate cryptocurrencies is struggling to hire staff with the necessary skills to police the space that Gensler has called the “Wild West.”
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission may be helmed by the crypto-savvy Gary Gensler, who previously taught blockchain and cryptocurrencies at the MIT Sloan School of Management has no functional equivalent in Europe and regulators there are struggling to staff oversight and enforcement agencies as the region pushes to police the space.
Given the spate of high-profile failures of some of the biggest firms in cryptocurrency, including lender Celsius Network and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, jurisdictions globally are jostling for primacy to lead the charge on cryptocurrency regulation.
The U.S. is set to take the lead, but even as the SEC commences enforcement actions against insider trading at Coinbase Global and other cryptocurrency offerings it considers securities, Europe is trying to stake its own jurisdictional and regulatory claims but appears understaffed to deal with the challenge.
A key regulator charged with overseeing Europe’s landmark bid to regulate cryptocurrencies is struggling to hire staff with the necessary skills to police the space that Gensler has called the “Wild West.”
Chairman of the European Banking Authority (EBA), José Manuel Campa has expressed concern that his organization is ill-equipped and understaffed to the task at hand and making matters worse, there is still a lack of jurisdictional clarity until 2025, when Europe’s sweeping new cryptocurrency regulations are due to come into effect.
The EBA, which is headquartered in Paris and not Brussels, was set up in the aftermath of the 2008 Financial Crisis to ensure that banks had enough capital to weather future crises and has been tasked with supervising what has been termed “significant” tokens that are widely used as a means of payment and popular tokens linked to traditional financial assets.
Europe Markets in Cryptoassets Regulation is due to come into force in 2025, and would put the EBA in-charge of policing the space, but with banks, fintechs and consultancies all jostling for talent, the authority is struggling to hire in the fast-moving cryptocurrency sector.
Fortunately, a current bear market has increased the pool of talent available, but even then, the EBA’s salaries, which are aligned with those of the European Commission, are well shy of those available from the private sector.
