France Becomes Europe’s Leading ICO Hub By Accepting New ICO Framework

The parliament France has accepted the framework of Initial Coin Offering (ICO),  proposed by French financial market regulators AMF (l’Autorité des marchés financiers). Drafted in March, the ICO framework aimed to protect investors by introducing a voluntary “ICO visa” system.

Bruno Le Maire, the Economy, and Finance minister of France confirmed the acceptance of the legal ICO framework in a recent Tweet:

?Article 26 adopté en commission #PACTE !

??Un cadre juridique des #ICO est créé. L’@AMF_actu pourra délivrer un visa aux acteurs respectant des critères de protection des épargnants
??Ce cadre juridique va attirer les innovateurs du monde entier #blockchain #DirectAN

— Bruno Le Maire (@BrunoLeMaire) September 12, 2018

The aforementioned Visa could be applied by companies, who seek to launch an ICO by submitting their whitepaper to French authorities for review. For the visa to be granted the whitepaper must include specific details and guarantees:

• A description of the project related to the ICO and its roadmap;
• The rights conferred by the token;
• The legislative court in the case of disputes; and
• The economic purpose and use of funds collected during the ICO.

To attract more projects to incorporate within the French nation, the visa excludes foreign corporations. The new ICO visa will allow the legitimate projects to more easily access services from banks and accounting firms, which until now has been difficult due to the regulatory uncertainty in the sector.

The CEO of Blockchain.io, a new French cryptocurreny exchange , Pierre Noizat,  is set to conduct their own ICO this coming Thursday, September 27. Pierre states :

“The French government is not hiding its ambition to make France an ICO capital, as they do not want to miss out on the blockchain revolution. They are regularly speaking with French blockchain and crypto-entrepreneurs in France in order to get a better grasp on the market, to understand its problems, and to regulate the market accordingly.”

Earlier this year, a crypto regulatory task force was appointed by France’s Finance Minister, which might have attributed to the positive regulatory changes towards crypto in France. While in April, the taxation from a progressive taxation of 14 and 45 percent was effectively lowered to a fixed rate of 19 percent.

The new ICO framework will further open up the opportunity for the French blockchain projects to flourish within the nation. While further regulations will be required for this nascent space, it is unlikely that the French authorities have a similar positive outlook for cryptocurrencies. Well, most governments around the world have a similar outlook towards the digital assets.

Read more: People’s Bank of China Issues Fresh Warning Against Cryptocurrencies and ICOs