Infrastructures talk about Blockchain

Integration of Blockchain, tokens and crypto-assets within existing financial worlds: what about regulation's requirements and compliance?

Blockchains are distributed data bases that keep up-to-date records linking digital assets to their owners.

Now that we have a better understanding of the technological, economic and strategic implications of what blockchain is, it is of upmost importance to address the question of whether blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (“DLT”s) need, beyond any specific trade sector, a dedicated and harmonised legal framework at both EU and international levels.

The French Parliament has recently enacted the PACTE bill that will set a new regulatory regime applicable to Initial Coin Offerings (for utility tokens only) and to several categories of “crypto-asset service providers”, where crypto-assets do not qualify as financial instruments pursuant to MiFID II.

The operational efficiencies that tokenisation brings have done wonders for back office simplification, for better real-time risk pricing, for cyber security, and have smoothed out the customer experience. Yet we still have to fully explore how they can fundamentally change business models for asset management; and they will, oh, they will.