The European Parliament has given its final approval to the EU AI Act, making it one of the world’s first comprehensive regulations on artificial intelligence. The bill will undergo a second vote in April and is expected to be published in May. The EU AI Act categorizes machine learning models into four groups based on the level of risk they pose to society, with high-risk models subject to the strictest rules. Applications deemed high-risk include critical infrastructures, educational and vocational training, safety components of products, essential public and private services, law enforcement activities that could infringe on people’s fundamental rights, migration and border control management, and administration of justice and democratic processes.
EU financial regulators are also looking to introduce additional guidelines for stablecoin regulation under the MiCA framework. They plan to release draft regulatory standards for stablecoin issuers to address complaints. The European Banking Authority has already published the Regulatory Technical Standards (RTS) for efficiently and fairly resolving complaints by asset reference token (ART) holders. These guidelines outline the procedures and standards that stablecoin issuers must follow to effectively handle complaints.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden has proposed a 30% tax on the electricity used by cryptocurrency miners in his administration’s budget proposal for 2025. If implemented, crypto mining companies would be required to report the amount and type of electricity they use. Additionally, companies that purchase electricity externally would need to report its value. Miners who lease computational capacity would also be mandated to report the value of the electricity provided by the leasing company. The tax would be implemented in three phases, starting with a 10% tax in the first year, followed by 20% in the second year, and finally 30% in the third year.
In Nigeria, the government is pressuring Binance to disclose information about its top 100 users in the country as part of a crackdown on the exchange. Nigerian authorities have also requested Binance’s transaction history from the past six months. In response to Binance’s attempt to engage in dialogue, two senior executives, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, have been detained by local prosecutors. Despite Binance delisting all naira transactions and stopping peer-to-peer naira transactions, the executives remain in custody. Opinions within the local crypto community are divided, with some supporting the government’s actions and others disagreeing.
The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), a special economic zone with a population of over 5,000, has announced the adoption of a new digital assets law and security law, as well as amendments to existing legislation. The DIFC operates under its own legal system based on English law. The Digital Assets Law consists of seven pages of text, along with appendices. A law amending several previous laws to accommodate digital assets has also been passed, although it is not currently available online. The DIFC has stated that the changes to the Law of Obligations have made electronic records functionally equivalent to paper records.
In the United States, Democratic Party Senators Jack Reed and Laphonza Butler have expressed opposition to the approval of any more crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the SEC. They argue that allowing further approvals would expose investors to thinly traded markets that are prone to fraud and manipulation. Currently, eight proposed spot Ether ETF applications are awaiting SEC approval, with hopes that other altcoins may follow. Reed and Butler also urge the SEC not to use the recent approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs as a precedent for future approvals. They claim that while the Bitcoin market has shown some weaknesses, it is more established and closely scrutinized compared to the market for smaller cryptocurrencies.