At an event today, the Italian Banking Association (ABI) Director General Giovanni Sabatini called for a level playing field for the regulation of crypto assets.
He was discussing the final Basel cryptocurrency rules, requiring banks to give 1250% risk weight to cryptocurrencies (the second group of cryptoassets).
This usually means setting aside one euro of capital for every euro of cryptocurrency exposure. In addition, Basel rules limit exposure to 2% of Tier 1 capital.
Giovanni Sabatini said that we think there may still be room for improvement in this prudential program and that banks are penalized as they will not be on equal footing with other entities, namely fintechs, big techs and new players such as crypto asset service providers (CASPs) competition, these entities are not subject to the same capital requirements. The proposed European law (MiCA) is less strict on CASPs.
