France's top financial regulator has proposed to modify the manner the cryptocurrency industry is supervised in Europe.

Robert Ophèle, chairman of Autorité des Marchés Financiers, addressed crypto-realted regulatory problems at the fifth Annual Conference on FinTech and Regulation. The official argued that financial supervisors must take a new approach in regulating blockchain-based financial instruments due to massive growth in the market.

Ophèle proposed that the European Securities and Markets Say-so, or ESMA, should exist the responsible authority for this new area of regulation and supervision. Ophèle emphasized that the current stage of regulation in the Eu would make information technology easier for the ESMA to develop guidelines and policies:

"Equally this regulation is make new, it is easier to provide ESMA with competence from the outset than if this is considered at a subsequently phase. Moreover, it would brand sense to gather all the expertise within the same authority, since the cost of entry in the crypto-world is quite loftier."

Located in Paris, the ESMA is an independent European union authorization focused on safeguarding the stability of the union'southward fiscal organization by enhancing investor protection and promoting stable financial markets. In early 2018, the ESMA issued a joint alarm that cryptocurrencies were highly risky avails, warning investors non to "invest money they cannot beget to lose."

Ophèle likewise suggested more enabling regulations, including a regulatory sandbox for the security token industry. The official said that current rules hamper the development of blockchain technology every bit they were designed for centralized systems. Ophèle said that the decentralized nature of blockchain could play a crucial role in the European economy:

"DLT would reduce risks, both by speeding up the market place concatenation and by its distributed nature that could mitigate some cyber risks raised by centralised marketplace infrastructures, such equally the unmarried point of failure [...] Information technology is too a question of keeping Europe competitive at a time when like approaches are now beingness rolled out in many countries."

The European Commission published its Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA, regulations in September 2020, providing a legislative regime for crypto markets and relevant service providers. Major crypto companies including ConsenSys subsequently expressed concerns near the MiCA, alarm that the new regulations could overburden the industry with costly and complex compliance and legal requirements.