France's Double Tap: Bank of France Wants Tighter Stablecoin Leashes as Self-Custodians Face €5K Snitching

Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France, dropped some regulatory realness at the EUROFI High Level Seminar in March, basically telling the EU it's time to put stablecoins—especially those backed by non-euro currencies—on a shorter leash. His speech, now living its best life on the Bank for International Settlements website, confirms the Bank of France has been pushing hard to beef up MiCA to address these concerns. Because apparently, letting people use their money the way they want is just too chaotic for comfort.

Beau went full "the sky is falling" on the US dollar stablecoin dominance situation, noting that greenback-pegged stablecoins are basically the 98% majority shareholder of the entire stablecoin market. The solution? More tokenized central bank money, more private money tokens, and stricter regulation. While touting progress on settlement infrastructure projects like Pontes and Appia, the official basically admitted that current rules might not cut it. Turns out trying to fight financial innovation with paperwork is harder than it looks.

"MiCA only partially addresses the risks posed by changes in the sector, particularly in the event of widespread adoption of stablecoins issued by non-European players," Beau said. Translation: the regulations are trying their best, but they might need therapy and a vacation after dealing with this.

Meanwhile, France's National Assembly decided to get in on the action by adopting on April 7 a provision in an anti-fraud bill that would require annual reporting of self-hosted crypto wallets above a €5,000 threshold. According to Gregory Raymond, founder of local outlet The Big Whale, this means your hardware wallet just became a tax reporting obligation. Because nothing says "we trust you" like forcing you to snitch on yourself to the government every year.

Raymond noted that the proposal has faced pushback from lawmakers and parts of the government and tax administration,