Two months after Germany’s general election, three parties agreed to a coalition deal last week and have put crypto high on their priorities list.
The new German government has cited crypto in its coalition agreement and has called for stronger supervision of crypto assets by the European Union’s institutions.
The coalition, made up of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Alliance 90/The Greens, and the Free Democratic Party (FPD) have stated in their 177-page coalition agreement that the country needs “comprehensive digital awakening” and has advocated for an equal playing field between traditional finance and “innovative business models” such as crypto assets and blockchain businesses.
The document states:
We are making European financial market supervisory law fit for digitization and for complex group structures in order to ensure holistic and risk-adequate supervision of new business models.
We need joint European supervision for the crypto sector. We oblige crypto asset service providers to consistently identify the beneficial owners.
The coalition agreement stated that the European Union supervisory authority should not only concern itself with the traditional financial sector but also ensure the there is no misuse of crypto assets for money laundering and terrorist financing.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s FI has called for ban of energy-intensive crypto mining. The Swedish market regulator reminded that mining for crypto-assets requires immense amounts of electricity and produces substantial CO2 emissions.
