Is there a change of vision in the crypto-blockchain environment in recent years?
Blockchain has remained a channel, something that is proposed as the basis on which to develop and choose the technology well. We have passed the concept tests and we notice a tense calm where there is little noise and we notice that, being the first sector, the financial sector is positioning itself very strongly in the realization of projects based on digital assets.
I think that in the beginning we made a mistake in trying to explain the technology. We don’t know what’s behind Google’s protocols and I think a lot of effort has been wasted in explaining what’s behind it to come to the conclusion that the value is in the digital asset part of tokenization. Are we talking about purely digital assets or tokenizing an existing one?
The key is for technology to continue maturing and within that process, the financial sector will have both worlds. Bonds that already exist and that can be tokenized to other products that are new where the possibility of trading both traditional tokenized and purely digital products appears. In any case, in this maturity process, once the technological part has been overcome, we must focus on the business part, not only the creation of these products but how banks and insurance companies adapt their machinery to this new world. Issues of security, risk, compliance, regulation appear there… and that is where the focus is now on once we have overcome the fact that technology can generate efficiencies in making these tokenized projects.
We have legislation in Europe that allows us to get to work now and seeks to optimize the entire process and even how securities, shares, investment funds, bonds are going to be liquidated. What is the current status? MiCA was the great umbrella to build the tokenized world but recently the CNMV has issued a note…
We are stopped and it is something that, from a national point of view, worries me that within an EU context there are other countries that, having left before the transposition of MICA, for the mere fact that there was that ERIR figure defined or vehicular, may be making these emissions. The ERIR comes to certify that both the registrations in the registry and the information related to the tokens are being properly produced, that there can be adequate transmission both pre-, during and post. That’s where the ERIR would come in. Until now, due to the positioning of the ERIR, there was great uncertainty because it was not known if there had to be a registry that securities agencies had to join. This is what has led the CNMV to launch this note giving certain guidelines that will have to be strengthened. But it is something that is not closed.
You said that we have been left behind. What has been done in other markets?
I have more knowledge of the Italian market where the regulation is the same, MiCA EU, the one that makes the difference between being able to issue or not is the ERIR and there is already one in Italy so it may be the case that companies in Spain go to issue to Italy using that figure, with everything it entails from a business and knowledge point of view. The same thing is happening in France.
Where do we want to go? What advantages does it bring?
I think the advantages are for everyone. If we talk about financial entities, they will have the capacity to generate other vehicles supported by tokenization (stable bonds, bonds, shares…) that will generate efficiency in processes, security from the point of view of the knowledge you can have of your clients and new business models based even in the retail public. Give your retail clients the ability to access other resources with safer guarantees and greater knowledge. You will have a broader market to decide where to invest, we are talking about tokenized products that do not necessarily involve investing in cryptocurrencies. You can buy a fraction of a bond by investing with your euros.
That tokenized money that we do need in the crypto world. How will it look?
I am a firm defender that the system as it is set up will not change much and we speak from a regulatory point of view. What decentralized technology was born for was to disintermediate and “take down the financial system” and that is not the reality. The system is supported by regulation to provide certainty to the user and everything that goes behind it, the system will generate regulation to make it available to citizens with certainty and guarantees.
Do you think we will have a CBCD with which I will be able to buy all types of tokenized instruments or will I have to have a wallet, my shares tokenized but I pay with my CBCD or a stable coin… a tokenized deposit?
In the end, this is what remains under MiCA, it does not have to be a stable coin launched by a central bank but rather the digital money instrument used is regulated because along the way we have seen falls of large companies that managed high assets and in the end It was not sustainable. Whatever the model, it has to meet several premises: be regulated, supervised and have a simple user experience. With this we make the technology permeable.
