European Banking Authority Chair Needs Staff to Govern Crypto

European Banking Authority (EBA) Chair José Manuel Campa is worried about being able to find enough talent to govern and enforce the mandates around cryptocurrency and digital assets coming into effect in 2025.

By its very nature, the crypto sector “tends to go behind the curve” Campa told Financial Times (FT), adding that in three years, the space may have “moved and transformed into other uses that I cannot anticipate.”

A major concern is that the agency doesn’t have the staff right now to supervise digital assets, and it’s not expected to get easier to find the best people given the global competition for talent, Campa said Wednesday (July 27).

See also: SEC Seeks Funding to Take On Crypto Issues

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) boss Gary Gensler has called the crypto and digital asset space the “wild west,” but Campa isn’t worried about the reputational risk to the EBA if the agency gets it wrong, FT reported.

“My concern is more about making sure the risk we have identified . . . [in the crypto market] is properly managed. If we don’t do as well as we should have, we’ll have to live with the consequences,” he told FT.

Headquartered in Paris, the EBA is an independent authority of the European Union (EU) and was created in 2011 as part of the European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS), according to its website. Among its duties is supervising tokens under Europe’s proposed Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation.

Read more: CFTC Introduces Office of Technology Innovation as Crypto Regulation Develops

The EU’s MiCA legislation affects all 27 member nations and heavily focuses on crypto and stablecoins. The EBA is concerned that it will be difficult to enforce its new powers because it won’t know which cryptocurrencies it will supervise until it gets closer to 2025, Campa told FT.

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