Insights & News / Avihai Tal

Under MiCA, a critical aspect for non-EU crypto firms is the reverse solicitation exemption. This rule allows firms from outside the EU to offer crypto-asset services to EU clients without needing MiCA authorization.

The SEC approval has aroused considerable excitement, especially among people in the crypto and bitcoin industry. However, these are approvals of specific applications and not across-the-board approvals, and the SEC still considers this an unstable sector requiring investors to remain cautious.

The SEC is taking a regulation by enforcement stance toward NFTs and is creating legal uncertainty in the field. Will the Israel Securities Authority follow suit?

After considering public comments, the Israel Securities Authority is promulgating a revised draft bill seeking to regulate the field of digital assets.

The draft of Israel’s Arrangements Law – Economic Plan for 2023-2024 addresses digital assets extensively for the first time. The draft bill contains a section dedicated to the regulation of digital assets and addresses stablecoins, taxation issues, the banking system, DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and more.

The Israel Securities Authority recently published a proposal for a series of legislative amendments relating to digital (cryptographic) assets, whose implications go beyond the realm of digital assets and do not herald much good news for Israeli crypto ventures.

Activity in the form of financial decentralization (Decentralized Finance - DeFi) does not exempt from requirements in the field of prevention of money laundering prohibition or compliance with sanctions. It turns out that DeFi is subject to the same "laws of gravity" as projects in the traditional financial industry.

For the first time, companies providing virtual currency services will be required to comply with Israeli anti-money laundering provisions. This follows an amendment to the Prohibition of Money Laundering Order that recently came into effect. The amendment will apply to financial asset service providers obligated to hold a license under the Control of Financial Services Law.

While Israel’s banks are in no hurry to accept the blockchain industry and are avidly trying to keep their distance from cryptocurrencies, this is not the case elsewhere.

Recently, the major global securities, derivatives and financial trade associations sent a joint letter to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which develops banking supervision standards and criteria, to adopt regulation that will enable their involvement in the crypto asset sector.