Payment tokens and the path towards MiCa

The Regulation for Market in Crypto-assets is still underway. The European Commission submitted a proposal in September 2020 and now this proposal is going through the legislative procedure collecting the opinion of issued by the ECB on the 19 February 2021 and the Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee of the 24 February 2021. This legislative proposal is still underway in the European Parliament. This paper shall analyse the main aspects of MiCA regulation proposal from the standpoint of EU money and payments law. More specifically, it focuses on the scope of MiCA, policy priorities pursued, asset-referenced and electronic money tokens, and the statute for issuers and crypto-related service providers. The close link between the value of payment tokens and the business plan behind an initial coin offering (ICO) ends up deeply influencing the normative approach, raising questions about the nature of ‘alternative’ payment instruments.