Requested by the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, a July study titled Competition issues in the Area of Financial Technology (FinTech) analyzes anti-competitive forces and their effect on the overall FinTech ecosystem. One of the report’s key markets of focus is cryptocurrencies. The authors of the report assert that the cryptocurrency market features competition between currencies (inter-cryptocurrency), “where different cryptocurrencies compete against each other with diverse strategic behaviours,” and between providers (intra-cryptocurrency), “where different service providers (mining, wallet, exchange and payment services) compete.”
Concerning the inter-cryptocurrency market, the study notes that in March 2017, the cryptocurrency market, broadening the number of competitors.” They note that wider public participation in the cryptocurrency market through central bank-issued digital currencies (CBDCs) may be a “remedy” for the “potential inadequacy” of traditional competition policy.
To complicate the competition issue further, the report discusses the international nature of cryptocurrencies and its effect on European-level policy. Because many key crypto players operate globally, the “investigation or prosecution on anticompetitive behaviours [is] more difficult.”
For example, most mining activity occurs outside Europe, so the European Union has no jurisdiction to regulate it. The US Internal Revenue Service exhibited similar insight, as it formed the internationally based Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement earlier this month to combat tax crimes across borders.
Concerning the intra-cryptocurrency market, “incumbent banks” may employ “pre-emptive acquisitions or predatory pricing schemes” to limit competition. Another anti-competitive practice is the denial of access to exchanges or wallet gateways, sometimes manifested as “low service quality, delays in negotiation, proprietary technical standards or excessive pricing.”
The report does not explicitly cite bank-issued bans on the crypto purchases as an anti-competitive practice but does state that anti-competitive behaviour by banks ultimately deters consumers from using permissionless cryptocurrencies and may encourage them to use permissions, bank-promoted ones instead.
The authors conclude their report by noting that the FinTech ecosystem, including cryptocurrencies, is “too fluid to reach firm conclusions on the existence of competition challenges that need the deployment of competition tools on a large-scale basis.”
However, they believe that “the FinTech ecosystem shows the need for a more symbiotic [relationship] between regulatory and competition frameworks” because of present insufficiencies in this sphere. In other words, the cryptocurrency competition policy is a work in progress and requires further research.
The European Parliament published another cryptocurrency – and study this month titled Cryptocurrencies and blockchain: Legal context and implications for financial crime, money laundering and tax evasion.
