Earlier today, members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in the European Parliament voted against a version of the Markets in Crypto Assets, or MiCA, bill that could have effectively banned the proof-of-work-based cryptocurrencies within the EU. This comes as a huge relief for the crypto industry, whose representatives had previously warned about the threat of a hardline regulatory scenario. MiCA is a regulatory framework that contains 126 articles, as well as a detailed plan of their implementation by the EU’s and member states’ institutions. The draft was introduced by the European Commission back in 2020 …

The internet is filled with Bitcoin (BTC) price forecasts. For example, some analysts believe that the flagship crypto will hit $1 million per coin in the next 10 years, while others think BTC price will eventually drop to zero. Without dwelling on predictions that are five or more years ahead of us, let us focus on what Bitcoin could do, say, in the next six months? Again, the forecasts vary drastically. For instance, Antoni Trenchev, the founder of Nexo Finance, sees Bitcoin price hitting $100,000 by mid-2022. On the other end of the spectrum is Sussex University professor Carol Alexander, …

The European Central Bank (ECB) has announced the formation of a Market Advisory Group for the purpose of exploring the infrastructural and circulation potential of the digital euro from the perspective of industry spearheads. The group also aims to uncover the digital euros optimal function within the pan-European currency's vast payments ecosystem. The group includes a number of well-established experts from the banking and financial sector, including Aleksander Kurtevski, managing director of Bankart, Antonio Macías Vecino, head of payments discipline at BBVA and Axel Schaefer, payment regulation and innovation specialist at Ingka Group (Ikea), among others. It is expected that …

Too much is happening in the realm of crypto policy and regulation to leave the biggest developments of each week without a roundup and at least some conceptual reflection. Starting today, we are getting back to decoding crypto law and everything around it that is worth decoding. Who’s next to follow El Salvador? Eyeballs galore will be pinned to the great Salvadoran experiment from now on. People with PhDs in economics and applied statistics within central banks and research institutes will chase every accessible data point that could be remotely helpful in making sense of the effects of Bitcoin’s adoption …

The world’s first decentralized token is on its way to cheaper transactions and widespread adoption with help from a well-known DeFi protocol. With the mission to help users access the best of the services available on the blockchain, Mimo has undergone an integration with the Polygon framework to bring added utility to their network. Mimo DeFi became the first platform allowing its users to mint stable tokens algorithmically pegged to the Euro without spending any digital assets. Instead, cryptocurrency investors could lock up any cryptocurrency in their possession. Investors could do so while simultaneously minting PAR tokens, letting their assets …

Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance continues restricting support for some of its trading services amid an ongoing regulatory crackdown. Binance officially announced Monday that the exchange would delist margin trading pairs for three fiat currencies: the euro, the Australian dollar and the British pound sterling. According to the announcement, Binance will suspend the mentioned fiat trading pairs on Aug. 10 and then switch to automatic settlement and cancel all related pending orders. The isolated margin trading pairs will have been entirely delisted from the exchange by Aug. 12. Binance Margin to Delist $AUD, $EUR & $GBP Pairshttps://t.co/gyBP8XzITI — Binance (@binance) July …

The European Central Bank, or ECB, joins the growing club of crypto-friendly financial institutions as it announces the decision “to launch a project to prepare for possibly issuing a digital euro.” The ECB’s official tweet noted: “We will look at how a digital euro could be designed and distributed to everyone in the euro area.” According to a press release on July 14, the ECB's governing council has launched the investigation phase of a digital euro project. This phase is planned to last for two years, during which time Eurogroup will design a digital currency focused on “users’ preferences and …

Europe knows it will have to embrace a digital euro soon. To become a global digital leader and avoid dependence on American and Asian technological infrastructures, European policymakers and regulators have to make progressive decisions. A critical stumbling block for Europe’s digital economic thinking is so-called stablecoins. Stablecoins can be privately issued and have the potential to become globally accepted and systemically relevant, disrupting long-established financial systems. Consequently, today’s political discussions surrounding stablecoins are dominated by concerns over financial stability and orderly monetary policy. Related: Stablecoins present new dilemmas for regulators as mass adoption looms Current regulatory plans undercut innovation …

The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the governing political body in Spain, is backing a new national digital currency initiative. PSOE, Spain’s oldest active party and the leading force in the Congress of Deputies, has introduced a non-law proposition to launch a national digital currency in response to the ongoing decline in cash usage, local news agency El Economista reported Monday. The party noted that the proposition comes in response to the European Central Bank’s experiments with a digital euro. Carlos Conesa, general director of the financial innovation division at the Spanish Central Bank, recently said that “the decision to …

The central bank of France — Banque de France — is continuing its work on the development of a European central bank digital currency (CBDC). On Monday the bank officially announced the successful completion of a CBDC experiment with major Switzerland-based cryptocurrency bank SEBA. Conducted in collaboration with SEBA, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, and Luxembourg central securities depository LuxCSD, the experiment used a CBDC to simulate the settlement and delivery of listed securities on TARGET2-Securities (T25), a European securities settlement engine. SEBA purchased securities from Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, with post-trade settlement managed by LuxCSD. Related: Digital euro offers better …

A crypto payments platform has undergone a rebrand — and has launched a new suite of easy-to-understand applications that are designed to deliver innovation in decentralized finance. Mimo is a new protocol that serves as a successor for TenX, which captured the imagination of early adopters by allowing them to complete crypto transactions anywhere using a card. Much of the foundational technology used to build TenX is now being implemented in Mimo, which aims to bring exciting new features to the DeFi space. At the center of its offering is Parallel (PAR), which has been billed as the first decentralized …

The European Central Bank will put itself in jeopardy if it waits around o a digital euro for too long, according to an executive at major cryptocurrency firm ConsenSys. ConsenSys South Africa lead Monica Singer joined the European Blockchain Convention to discuss the role of the private sector in shaping global central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. She spoke of CBDC-powered benefits and opportunities in a Monday panel with BNP Paribas CIB digital transformation leader Dean Demellweek and Philipp Sandner, a professor at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center. Singer — who served more than 18 years as CEO of South …