ICYMI: ESMA confirmed that miners & validators are NOT responsible for market abuse monitoring under MiCA 🇪🇺 Good news for the crypto industry in the EU. ESMA has officially concluded end of last year that miners, validators, searchers, and builders will not be classified as Persons Professionally Arranging or Executing Transactions (PPAETs) under MiCA. Based on their initial draft, this was a major industry concern. ✅ What This Means: • No obligation for miners/validators to monitor or report market abuse. • ESMA acknowledges their limited visibility to detect abuse. • Avoids unnecessary regulatory burdens. • MiCA’s market abuse rules still apply to all participants (incl. miners/validators etc), but not all participants will need to carry these complex PPAET obligations. ESMA also decided not to rigidly define PPAETs in the regulatory technical standards (RTS), keeping room for flexibility as the market evolves. PPAETs will mostly be: • Crypto-Asset Service Providers (CASPs) operating a trading platform. • CASPs providing services like order execution, portfolio management, and asset exchange. • Persons dealing on their own account in crypto-assets on a professional basis​. Important decision by ESMA. And good to see they took the potential negative impact for the industry and the EU into account, highlighting how a different decision could have incentivised these minors/validators to leave or avoid establishing in the EU, pushing innovation offshore.