EU Banking Regulator Worries It Can’t Find the Staff to Regulate Crypto: Report

The European Union’s banking regulator is worried about how it will enforce new crypto rules that are expected to take effect by 2025, according to the Financial Times.

European Banking Authority Chair José Manuel Campa said the agency does not yet have the capacity to supervise digital assets. A major concern is hiring and retaining the specialized staff required because there is a high demand for crypto talent, he told the FT in an interview published Wednesday.

The EU recently finalized its Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation, which has a heavy focus on stablecoins and will be applied across all 27 member nations. There is still a long journey before the details are put into law. Once they are, some details will need to be fleshed out and more rules could come. Campa told the FT that in three years crypto may have "moved and transformed into other uses that I cannot anticipate."

The EBA is worried about planning the logistics of enforcing its new powers because it won’t know which cryptocurrencies it will supervise till 2025 nears, Campa told the FT.

"My concern is more about making sure the risk we have identified ... is properly managed. If we don't do as well as we should have, we'll have to live with the consequences," he said.