Europe

Several Italian companies in the field of blockchain including Intesa SanPaolo group, Italia4Blockchain association, together with other major firms including IBM, Ripple, IOTA, Cardano, ConsenSys, have officially joined the International Association for Reliable Applications Blockchain (INATBA).

The rate of illegal activities including money laundering through Bitcoin (BTC), is alarming in Italy and throughout Europe at large. Crypto startup Eidoo, founded by Italians, which allows users to store, convert and spend digital currencies, selected an apartment in 2017 in a building structure that was sequestered for ndrangheta in Chiasso, Switzerland, just 0.4 kilometers from the Italian border.

The Commissione Nazionale per la Societa e la Borsa (Consob) has published a consultation on the Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) which gives important innovative guidelines in Europe through a project seeking to safeguard both crypto users and broadcasters.

The Italian legislator, among the first in Europe, made attempts to regulate the smart contract and blockchain phenomenon, introducing the Simplification Decree 2019. The document defines the nature of financial technologies and provides a regulatory framework for them in Italy.

Crypto currencies such as Bitcoin, Ether, Ripple and others, facilitate money laundering activities by 4% in Europe. In June 2018, the European Union (EU) created the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AML5) to tackle these illegal activities related to virtual currencies including funding terrorism.

The European Union (EU) has shown the need for a consistent blockchain technology protocol which would enable interoperability as well as scalability. The report labeled “Scalability, Interoperability, and Sustainability of Blockchains” was issued by ConsenSys on behalf of the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum. It gives insight into the latest and possible future states of distributed ledger technology (DLT) in Europe, allowing for the contribution of diverse stakeholders and sources.

The two legal experts (L. Egitto and G. Busuttil) were recently interviewed to give light on where Italy stands on the regulation of blockchain, cryptocurrency, smart contract and other innovative technologies. Several institutions, firms, organizations, businesses and governments have been moving forward for few years especially in Europe, such as Switzerland with its Crypto Valley project (of the canton of Zug) and Republic of Malta started before any other country.

Italy’s financial market has seen a lot of investments in different projects, including those related to blockchain. However, the vast majority of them have not approved the budget yet, with 2% of the IOC considering it an important thing to do.

San Marino, a country in Europe, located within the borders of Italy, issued the Delegated Decree n.37, dubbed "Rules on blockchain technology for businesses." The standard, inter alia, makes an interesting reconstruction of the marvel of cryptocurrencies, which are notably classified as utility (usage) tokens and investment (security) tokens.