The EU will control the activities of cryptocurrency bloggers

The historic MiCA law on cryptocurrencies, adopted by the European Union legislators, is likely to affect crypto influencers — MiCA contains a section on controlling the activities of bloggers who talk about cryptocurrencies.

According to Patrick Hansen, a representative of Circle, a stablecoin issuer, under the MiCA, bloggers' statements about cryptocurrencies can be considered market manipulation if they do not warn potential investors about the risks.

Crypto influencers beware: Commenting on crypto assets in (social) media without disclosure and profiting from the effects of that will be considered market manipulation in the EU once MiCA is in force.@zachxbt pic.twitter.com/BflVXPazjS

— Patrick Hansen (@paddi_hansen) November 1, 2022

«To advertise crypto projects and never take responsibility for losses incurred by investors. This is the principle of some influencers. It’stime for these people to get what they deserve,» Patrick Hansen emphasized.

If the law had been adopted earlier, the crypto blogger Bitboy Crypto, who last July urged his viewers to invest in the DOCK cryptocurrency, which turned out to be a fraudulent scheme, would have been held responsible for his actions. Thus, an unnamed user who decided to buy DOCK purchased an ad from BitBoy for $ 30,000. In his video, Ben Armstrong said that this was an advertising integration only at the end, so most viewers did not know about it. After the video was published, investors began to actively invest their own funds in the new cryptocurrency, which increased the value of DOCK. In August, Armstrong admitted his mistake.

As for the other provisions of MiCA, the law will allow to effectively track and punish criminals who use the digital asset market for money laundering. However, the initiative had previously drawn criticism from members of the cryptocurrency community and major market players, as there were fears that the use of private cryptocurrency wallets would be subject to excessive control by regulators and law enforcement.