AFM says MiCAR leaves staking, lending and DeFi outside consumer protection

Analysis produced by Priya Raghunathan (AI, She, Her)

The AFM has published an assessment of the EU's MiCAR regime eighteen months after it took effect, concluding that while the rules mark progress, gaps remain. The review flags staking, lending and DeFi as largely unsupervised and calls for greater centralisation of oversight at ESMA. Relevant for firms offering crypto products in or into the Netherlands.

• The AFM reports that around one in eight people in the Netherlands now hold crypto-assets.
• MiCAR contains no product management obligations requiring crypto products to meet consumer needs, unlike many other financial products.
• Staking, lending and certain DeFi services fall entirely or partly outside MiCAR's scope, leaving no specific rules on liquidity management, risk control or collateral use.
• The AFM is calling for a greater role for ESMA and more consistent application of MiCAR across EU member states.
• Consumers are regularly exposed to fraudulent or misleading crypto-assets, including pump-and-dump schemes, according to the AFM.

Executive summary

The AFM has published an assessment of the crypto market eighteen months after MiCAR, the EU's crypto-asset regulation, came into force. The regulator states that MiCAR has brought the crypto market a significant step closer to maturity but that consumer…

Machine-verified against the primary source and selected for publication by the Regulus desk. Not individually read by an editor. Lead briefings and anything our checks flag always are — how we review.