The European Parliament Appears To Have Dropped A Paragraph From The Proposal About The Restriction of POWs.

A provision of a planned regulation in the European Parliament has been canceled that would have made it illegal for crypto services to deal in currencies based on proof-of-work—the consensus process Bitcoin and Ethereum use to “mine” new currency and secure their networks.

Stefan Berger, the bill’s main supporter, had stated that the section may be “misinterpreted.”

The Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) bill, introduced by a coalition led by Stefan Berger, was scheduled for a vote in the European Parliament on Monday, February 28. However, it was postponed last week when many members of parliament objected to a clause requesting evidence of labor.

Berger announced today that the bill’s paragraph 61 (9c) had been deleted entirely, however the vote has yet to be rescheduled.

MiCA has the ability to change European cryptocurrency adoption. It was first suggested in September 2020 and would enable the European Central Bank to “establish uniform rules for crypto-asset service providers and issuers at EU level.” In a nutshell, it would provide a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency across the European Union, something the United States and other countries are still working on.

However, one sentence in particular sparked the interest of cryptocurrency users. It required that no crypto assets be issued, sold, or exchanged within the EU by 2025 if they employed “environmentally unsustainable consensus mechanisms.” Crypto assets would have to fulfill “minimum environmental sustainability standards.” to avoid a ban.

Opponents of the measure said that it would effectively prohibit Bitcoin and Ethereum mining in Europe, as well as make it impossible for custodians to store proof-of-work tokens for customers.

Berger argues that was not the intention of the legislators. He noted in announcing the postponement of the vote last Friday that “individual passages of the draft report can be misinterpreted & understood as a POW ban.”

However, environmental worries are weighing on Europe, whose member countries are attempting to reach the Paris Agreement’s climate targets. Finanspektionen, Sweden’s financial regulator, suggested a ban on mining Bitcoin and other proof-of-work currencies last year, stating that the energy consumption was not justified by the advantages.

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Patrick

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