Governor of the Bank of France "Europe should directly supervise major crypto-asset firms"

The Bank of France has argued that authority for the direct supervision of Europe's major crypto-asset (cryptocurrency) firms should be transferred to an EU market supervisory authority.

According to Bloomberg on the 9th, Francois Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France (Banque de France), said in a speech that "supervisory authority over major crypto-asset firms in Europe should be transferred to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA)." He added, "This measure can ensure consistency of regulatory standards across the EU."

Governor Villeroy de Galhau emphasized the need to further strengthen regulation of digital assets, including the 'passporting regime' allowed under the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework. Currently, MiCA allows a 'passporting regime' that permits firms licensed by an individual member state to operate across the EU with the same qualifications.

He said, in particular, "much stricter regulation is needed for the practice of issuing the same stablecoin multiple times inside and outside Europe," and "to reduce arbitrage risk in times of market stress, multi-issuance structures should be limited."

The European Central Bank (ECB) is reportedly in favor of a prohibition on jointly issued onshore-offshore stablecoins. Observers say this could lead to policy clashes with major stablecoin issuers such as Circle Internet Group and Paxos.

The outlet predicted that "as the ECB and the Bank of France move to strengthen multi-issuance regulation, tensions with stablecoin issuers will be inevitable."