Unregulated crypto business models

1. Business models outside the scope of MiCA

MiCA covers a large part of the business activities performed by companies active in the crypto industry. Certain other activities were already covered under European financial regulations prior to MiCA (e.g., tokenized financial instruments). However, there are still several business areas that will remain unregulated even after MiCA enters into force. These include, for example:

• Offering self-hosted or unhosted wallets, either in the form of wallet software or a paper wallet, as long as no crypto-assets are sold or transferred with the respective wallets.
• Infrastructure operators, i.e. the operation of mining facilities or validators (depending on their structure). In this context, however, we refer to the legal opinion of the Austrian FMA, according to which the operation of mining facilities or validators may constitute an alternative investment fund under certain circumstances.
• Truly decentralized financial applications (DeFi), i.e., those software solutions in the form of smart contracts where no contractual relationships are established or executed.
• Genuine non-fungible tokens, i.e., those in which an individualized and non-fungible asset is linked to the token, such as rights to use works of art.

It remains to be seen whether these or other business models will be subject to regulation in the future, possibly with MiCA II.