Announcement of Regulation No. 2024-03 on Crypto-Assets

The Central Bank of the Republic of San Marino has announced the issuance of Regulation No. 2024-03 on crypto-assets, today, as an implementation measure for the areas of its competence, based on Decree No. 138 of August 29, 2024, titled "Regulation on Distributed Ledger Technologies," and Law No. 165 of November 17, 2005 (known as LISF), as amended by the same Decree.

This Regulation, developed with reference to Regulation (EU) No. 2023/1114 (known as MiCAR), aims to introduce a specific supervisory framework within San Marino's legal system for those tokens defined as crypto-assets (or type A tokens) in the Decree. These fall under the competence of the Central Bank, while other tokens (type B tokens) fall under the competence of the Institute for Innovation of the Republic of San Marino.

The Regulation specifically applies to the following three types of crypto-assets:

• Related crypto-activities;
• Electronic Money Tokens;
• Cryptocurrencies,

Other crypto-assets, such as tokenized financial activities issued within activities reserved under LISF and tokenized financial instruments, remain subject to the regulations issued by the Central Bank and applied in the ordinary course of business, in line with the principle of "technological neutrality."

In particular, the Regulation introduces rules on:

• Crypto-Asset Firms, a new category of authorized entities for two newly reserved activities introduced in Annex 1 of LISF: J-bis (Services for issuing linked crypto-assets) and L-bis (Services in crypto-assets). These firms will be under the supervision of the Central Bank, with particular reference to capital, organizational, governance requirements, ownership structures, and the provision of these services.
• The issuance, offering, and admission to trading of the aforementioned crypto-assets, establishing precise informational obligations, including the publication of a white paper, which must be pre-notified to or authorized by the Central Bank.

The Regulation will come into effect on October 2, 2024, but its effectiveness is subject to the adoption of the complementary regulations by the Institute for Innovation of the Republic of San Marino, as provided for in Article 37, paragraph 1 of Decree No. 138/2024. The joint announcement regarding this will be made public in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 5 of the same article.